S2. E22. Knowing your worth, aligning business, purpose and values w. Julia Falci

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[00:00:24] I kind of had Big pillar themes that I was working through throughout the year, but I had a lot of flexibility. So I was able to bring in what I think were a lot of interesting topics and maybe perspectives on certain topics that people would not have necessarily thought of that fell within wellness.

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[00:01:08] If you listen to the first one or two episodes, I talked about that from the very beginning, but I wasn't really using that in my branding. And I realized that that's what makes me different from other wellness speakers, it's I'm the one who's talking about disruptive wellness.

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[00:01:45] And I realize I miss that kind of spontaneity and creativity and fluidity that I used to have with my podcast, because I feel like this current structure is actually very restrictive. And if you know me, I don't like to be restricted in life. And so I want to be able to record things as they come to me or as I feel like they're in alignment for me.

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[00:02:26] So I'm making a few changes, three to be exact, or three for now. So the first is that I'm going to go back to my old way of doing episodes where they aren't structured by month and a specific theme for the whole month. They're just going to be covering topics. A lot of them will still talk about the pillars of wellness and I'll still.

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[00:03:21] So you can just kind of quickly get some motivation or wisdom or insight, encouragement for the day and keep it moving. And a lot of people seem to share those with their friends, or I don't know who they're sharing them with, but they're sharing them with somebody. So thank you for sharing and hopefully brightening and empowering somebody else as well.

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[00:03:59] And I've just noticed that even though I love this podcast so much, it takes up a lot of my time. There's so many things that happen behind the scenes. You have to find guests. You have to coordinate with guests. You have to record with the guests. You have to edit, you have to promote on social media. You have to write the email newsletter.

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[00:04:39] And that kind of made me pause and I was like, I'm just producing, producing, producing, producing, but I always believe that there should be space and pauses and rests. And so even in my work to allow for more space and pause and rest for me to refresh and do other things, but also for like listeners to just be able to catch up on episodes and not feel like, Oh my gosh, this mountain is just getting bigger and bigger.

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[00:05:16] So yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. This year, I'm really focused a lot on public speaking, so I'm booking more keynotes and workshops. So, if you are looking for a speaker, please reach out. I would love to collaborate with you. And so, prepping for those kinds of speaking engagements actually takes a lot of time, and so I need time to dedicate to it.

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[00:05:57] I might have to change my trailer or my intro or something like that, but I'm not going to worry about that for right now. I'm just going to make the change and let everything adjust. I can't wait for you guys to hear this episode.

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[00:06:38] All right, let's dig in

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[00:06:40] Natalie: Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of From A Full Cup.

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[00:06:52] Julia: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.

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[00:07:04] Natalie: But Julia, let's just start off by talking about this idea of purpose. So many times people are searching for their purpose, wondering what their purpose is There's a lot of ambiguity around that word, but there's also a lot of pressure. So I'm curious to know for you, what does purpose mean to you?

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[00:07:25] Julia: Yes, that's such a great way to start and it's a great question and also so hard to define this word. It's like one little word, but has so much meaning. And I see purpose not as a noun or a thing, but it's almost as a thing.

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[00:07:59] Julia: And in the end, I think it's all about what makes you happy and in alignment. And what are you bringing to your life, to your day to day, whether it's through work or your personal time, that you are fulfilling that part of your life.

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[00:08:22] Natalie: Like they, it's like almost like, Oh, it's on the shelf. I'm just going to go grab my purpose today. And that's it. But really, it's something that we have to action. We have to take action towards it and as we are doing whatever the things are that we're doing. That's how we're kind of tapping into it and living, living out our purpose.

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[00:09:02] Natalie: They're not meeting it. So what would you say in response to that?

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[00:09:20] Julia: So I think it's unfair to put that expectation on everyone that you need to find purpose through your work, because sometimes that's not the reality. But if you can, that would be the ideal amazing scenario. It is my purpose to support people to find purpose through work and It would be beautiful, but it's just the reality of things.

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[00:09:52] Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that can be you know, really powerful for people who kind of feel stuck there.

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[00:10:16] Natalie: But when you're working with Someone who's maybe trying to figure out what their path is and they're trying to figure out how can they have alignment. Maybe their work, but also in starting a business. What does that process look like for you in kind of navigating or helping people navigate that can be very rocky or unknown path?

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[00:10:57] Julia: And I think that's one of the most challenging parts as you're going through this process. And one thing I love that you did is you left an industry and a career that you had a lot of experience in. That's basically like it was your world working with education and childcare and all of that. But how can you transition into something else that it's, it's more aligned with your moment right now and supportive to your business as a coach yourself as speaker, wellness advocate.

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[00:11:46] Natalie: Yeah. And I would say too, it's, it's not always that, that clear. Like, I think a lot of times people are afraid to make a decision or afraid to. You know, just take a step because they're not quite sure of what the whole roadmap is going to look like. Right. But sometimes the clarity, I always say this, the clarity comes in the doing, and you just need to take a step in the right direction.

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[00:12:26] Natalie: So once you find a common theme in my nine to five, I feel very fulfilled because I'm still making an impact. I'm still serving others and it's aligned to where I'm headed. In this next phase of my life kind of thing. Right. So I think it's so important to. Get that clarity. And even if you're not crystal clear, just.

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[00:12:49] Julia: Yeah. So I did go through some transitions in my life. I'll just share a little like tip that helped me in the process about this clarity that you just mentioned. My background is in graphic design and when I moved to Canada, so I've been in Canada for 16 years and I saw that I wanted to change careers for many reasons.

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[00:13:32] Julia: I think it was a great change. I love arts and I love design. So that's why I went to school for graphic design, but I was a horrible designer. So just loving arts and design is not good enough. And even knowing that I can study and perfect my skills and become better at that trade, I just know like I'm never going to be as good as I want to be or as good as my peers and all of that, which drove me to look for something else.

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[00:14:16] Natalie: Yeah, I think that's such a good strategy. And I just did a podcast, an off the cuff episode talking about what do you not want to do? Because I think a lot of times in life, we're always thinking, what do we want to do? Right? But it can be equally as powerful. And you can get a lot of insights from thinking of the things that don't make you feel good when you do them, or you don't want to spend your time doing them.

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[00:14:59] Natalie: You can have those words come back to you and then you can really figure out what you're doing. And so now you're a business coach, you're still able to use. You're marketing background. You're able to help your clients with marketing strategy. And then because you yourself are a holistic coach, you care about the overall wellbeing of who you're working with.

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[00:15:36] Natalie: Right. So, and I think that's important too, because you know, there's lots of business coaches out there in the world, but how do you differentiate? How do you make yourself different? And again, not necessarily for other people, but just to be more aligned to the kind of service that you want to provide, the kind of impact that you want to provide in the world is by taking those unique skills that you have transferring them over to kind of round out this offering that you can now give to people.

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[00:16:23] Julia: I used to believe that if I want to make something for myself, I need to work extra hard. And I believe like in putting in extra hours, just going way beyond and even in detriment of my own health. And that's what I believed in. And then at some point in that climbing the corporate ladder, which by the way, like I was doing all the right steps to get where I wanted until I, I was director of digital marketing at a web development agency, which was, A dream for me like to have that position and then I was like, you know what this is great where I got but This is not it.

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[00:17:18] Julia: I quit the job to follow this. I got burned out. I got anxiety burnout. I had to quit everything to get back to my health. And then when I became a coach, I had this new vision that it's not hustle. That's not the answer. Hustling is not the answer. But it's about how can I Leave my purpose and leave my dream and do what I want to do, but taking care of myself first.

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[00:18:02] Julia: And that's how I've been working with all the clients I've worked so far. And it's just like a completely transformed purpose from a like total hustle mentality and climbing corporate ladder into Entrepreneurship, but well being first kind of approach. So yeah, just evolving and changing. And that's beautiful.

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[00:18:52] Julia: That's a great question. I feel it's a lot about knowing yourself again. So I really have to do a lot of exercises to understand like my values, my vision, my mission for the business. And then I can always go back to that. make decisions for the future. So for example, I got to a point at the second chance of having a business as a business coach now, I was side hustling.

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[00:19:36] Julia: I'm either gonna hire someone to help me. So they are going to do the work or I need to quit the job so I can put all my energy in. So when you know those values and what's important to you, like having those boundaries, right? I'm not going to burn out again. So I decided first to hire someone to help me because I wanted the financial stability.

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[00:20:13] Julia: It's a lot of time. So she was creating most of the things, even strategy. I would just kind of film and maybe write something here and there. And we put a lot of content out and we did it for about three months and it was a great experience, but after three months, we had a launch during the three months and my results were the exact same.

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[00:20:51] Julia: I was already making enough that I could quit. I just didn't want to let go of my salary because it was very comfortable. But yes, just taking the leap of faith, it really allowed me to grow in so many areas because When we say no to something and we close the door to something, we're opening space to so much more.

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[00:21:33] Julia: On why you do what you're doing

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[00:21:52] Natalie: And I think that that's so important is alignment in values, because sometimes you'll see certain businesses. And I think even for entrepreneurs, like there's this idea of, of profit, right? And so of course, everybody who owns their own business, they, they want to make money. Right. But that can be interesting thinking about, or kind of like navigating that, how do you pursue purpose?

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[00:22:32] Julia: Yes, I think a lot of people in this space. Definitely. They are here to help and support others, and it can be harder to charge to do that because it's just something that they really, they just want to do it. It's like they just want to help and it gets hard to charge or even to charge what they are worth it.

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[00:23:14] Julia: So being profitable is a hundred percent. It's necessary. For your business to thrive long term and for you to keep doing that work. And I see that with how I'm working as well. So if I'm supporting other businesses to thrive and to get paid and to all of that, they can do their work. And then by doing their work, they're supporting other people.

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[00:23:47] Natalie: Yeah. And I think that there, maybe there's like a limiting belief. There's something that affects or. Impact our mindset, right?

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[00:24:14] Natalie: One of the things that happens is this leads to burnout over time too, right? And like a perfect example of this is, let's just use a social worker as an example. So a lot of times people in social work, or just in general working for non profit companies, they don't get paid great huge figures. And then what happens over time, The work that they're so passionate about changing our communities, doing things for good, helping people improve their lives.

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[00:24:55] Natalie: We always talk about this holisticness and this interconnectedness when we think about our well being and just our existence in general. And so I think it's really important to consider when you have a business or if even in a nine to five, what's the kind of life that you want. And you kind of talked about that too, like this idea of a fair life.

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[00:25:16] Where do

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[00:25:36] Natalie: There's also a connection to value and to worth and I think sometimes people might not feel that they can charge a certain price because they doubt their own value or their own worth. And so I'm going to tie this back to mindset for a second because that is another pillar. Can you, have you experienced that maybe with some of the clients that you're working with that there's, there's kind of like a belief that they have to overcome about their value and worth before they can charge higher?

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[00:26:25] Julia: You don't know the value of the currency. Like people may know back home how much they would charge for what they do, and they feel comfortable there. They have their diplomas and certifications and experience and network, and they understand the currency. As soon as you move that person to a different country, they're Most of them even feel like stripped even from their diploma.

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[00:27:10] Julia: Like I'm not worth this many dollars. So that's something that definitely comes up a lot.

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[00:27:40] Julia: 80 at the time, like in 2008. So, in the end of the month, and I was working part time, in the end of the month, I had 1, 000. And that was just my reality. Like, I didn't know any better. I was making 1, 000 in the end of the month. And, slowly, as I started to build my career, and started to grow, I was still, like, not perfect.

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[00:28:22] Julia: It's like, it's easy for him and I don't see myself worth of that. And I had a very hard time negotiating for this promotion. And what I did is, I ended up getting not a great job, but what I learned actually is, Promotions will never be a great, a great deal for you. It's always going to be better for the employer, but your next job is where you're going to win big.

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[00:29:06] Julia: I talked to a lot of people and then on those phone interviews, I would ask, what's the range of the salary, which by the way, it's a standard. Super okay question to ask, because sometimes you're like, Oh my God, is it okay to ask the salary is the first thing to do? It's okay. Like maybe not to the dots, but just the range.

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[00:29:38] Julia: And they are paying this much. And it took a lot of phone calls for me to realize like, okay, I am worth this much. And then the next interview that I did. It's fun because I didn't want a job because I already wanted to quit and start a business and a recruiter reached out and she was insisted that I went to this job interview.

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[00:30:25] Julia: And I'm like, you know what, I'm going to quit this business owning thing right now. I'm going to take care of my health and I'm going to take this job. So I got it. I started taking care of my health first. So meditation was huge for me to deal with the anxiety. My anxiety levels were very high and also like what I'm eating.

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[00:31:02] Julia: But anyway, long story short, this Like seeing the market, how much it costs for what you do, remembering like your experience, your diploma and everything that you have, that you have accumulated over time. I tell my clients, like make a little folder with messages from your clients that are praising you and thanking you for the work you did for them, how you changed their lives and things like that.

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[00:31:43] Natalie: Yeah, that's really good advice. This idea of kind of seeing what's out there in the market.

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[00:32:06] Natalie: That's really what you're doing. You're collecting evidence from multiple people, multiple companies to show that this position is worth this value, this salary, right? Even if that salary was. For you like, whoa, this is a lot, the more evidence that you collect and you see, well, other people can get this.

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[00:32:46] Natalie: You had to, you had to do some steps and you had to kind of get yourself ready to really see that that was available to you and that you were deserving of this. And I I really like kind of your experience as an immigrant, because I think that, you know, everybody looks at the world from their lens, right?

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[00:33:18] Natalie: But sometimes we do have to do that mindset work based on just, The position that we're coming from, the background and the experience that we're coming from, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just how, how do we work through those things? And I'm going to connect this to community because even in this sense, your partner at the time, that was a person in.

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[00:33:53] Natalie: Like sometimes in life, we just need hacks or, or people to just give us like the go tos because we don't know everything, especially if you're coming from another country and you're, or you're just in a new society and you. space, even in a job, you just might be in a job where you've never done this kind of work before, and you kind of need that insider information.

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[00:34:27] Natalie: So what do you find has been the benefit of hosting these kind of networking and community groups?

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[00:34:52] Julia: Thank you for sharing this. I feel like I was feeling the exact same last week. So that's something that I feel it's very valuable in sharing. In terms of the pricing and being worth and everything, I think it's nice as well to just connect with people who are where you want to be, because if you are talking about pricing with someone who is also struggling to price themselves, it's like you're both

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[00:35:47] Julia: So It can be extremely difficult and lonely to try to navigate it alone and I think having community as well just to see not only that it's possible that there are so many other people doing it, but you can just share both the wins, the challenges and support each other. So there's just so much into community.

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[00:36:18] Natalie: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And this will be my last question before we move into rapid fire, but thinking about marketing, I want to talk about marketing and business and purpose together.

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[00:36:53] Julia: for sure.

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[00:37:17] Julia: Like we would go to Coca Cola factory. They had a thing for kids to go and see the production. They would give you little things. And I remember seeing those signs as a kid of mission, vision, values, et cetera, on the walls of those companies. And I just like never connected to me. It's just, A lot of empty words.

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[00:38:01] Julia: So. Knowing those things, those are your pillars, right? The bill is pillars of your business, your foundation. That's how whenever you hire someone, you want to make sure they follow those same values, right? That they already share that, that it's not forced, that that's who they are. And you want them to be in every part of the culture of your organization.

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[00:38:51] Julia: So definitely like a lot of companies run by that, but you don't want to be that. So just really understanding and doing the work and understanding that those values or your vision may shift a little bit with time and it's okay. Just keep aligning it. And that's also going to have help with positioning yourself, brand positioning, so how other people are going to perceive you.

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[00:39:33] Julia: So definitely worth spending some time there.

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[00:39:44] Mhm.

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[00:39:55] ,I'm going to go gold.

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[00:39:59] Natalie: Okay. But this is not about me. But anyways. A really good book that you've read that you would recommend others to read as well.

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[00:40:12] Natalie: Okay. What is your favorite way to fill your cup?

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[00:40:22] Natalie: Yeah. No, I love that answer. I wish more people would say that, honestly. I think our society is detached from this idea of rest and I think it's one of the most restorative things we can do.

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[00:40:37] Julia: Balance, happiness, and alignment.

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[00:40:53] Natalie: So it's great. And I just want you to tell the listeners about yourself, the services you offer, how they can get in touch with you.

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[00:41:10] Julia: F A L C I. So I work as a business coach both in group programs and individually. I also host Clarity sessions. So Clarity, it's actually a great single session if you are not sure about your purpose and what to do next in your life. And it's just kind of exploring that next step without having to commit to a full program.

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[00:41:47] Julia: Come say hi.

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