Fan Favorite Summer! - That Time I Walked Away from My Multi-6 Figure Business.

It's been 2 years this month since I walked away from my real estate business of 10 years.  It's been interesting to detach from the identity of "successful Realtor with an established business" and the importance I assigned to how much money I could bring home. Redefining success was one thing. Retraining my nervous system was another - after 10+ years of reacting and being "on" all the time, it took a while for me to recover my energy and learn to rest.

So we're going back in time this week to talk about big transitions, our fears, and what's on the other side.
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Transcript

Juli Wenger: 0:03

Welcome to becoming ourselves, the podcast, where we help you answer the questions Who Am I? And why am I here. And then we help you get out of your own way because the world is waiting for you to show up and own your power. You have been placed on this earth for purpose, with purpose and on purpose by a God who loves you fiercely. And he has called you to something that has been specifically created for you right now. I'm Juli Wenger. I'm a coach and author, speaker and Enneagram teacher, a Jesus lover and an entrepreneur that rocks ADHD, I am passionate about helping you step into the life you've called to, that something you know is possible, but haven't been able to reach. So buckle up, because it's not always an easy ride. But on the other side, is a life that is fired up to filled. Let's go.Welcome to fan favorite summer,I'm really excited about this series. Because of Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, I get to take a break. Since November of 2020, we have been consistently releasing episodes weekly, sometimes twice a week,and heading out of book launch season. Heading out of a time where there has just been so much output of energy, I am intentionally stepping into a season of pulling back and really focusing in on refueling me. And also refocusing in on Okay, what's next Scott and there are going to be a few things that are coming. Like a course that pairs with fired up fulfilled free, we're going to be working on a work through journal that will get published late this year or early next year. And there are a lot of moving pieces, and then love the podcast and they want to be consistent and at the same time and recognize that I have limits to my capacity. Okay. With that,here's the time, we have looked at what have been some of the most downloaded and impactful episodes over the history of the podcast. And so over the next month to two months, depending how God leads let's be real.We're going to focus in on and rerelease episodes like the time I quit my $500,000 business,integration and frames of reference the challenges and benefits of impostor syndrome,and overcoming the comparison trap. These are things that not only have been the most downloaded, and some of what I have particularly heard from you have been some of your favorite episodes in terms of the solo episodes. But they're also things that I see people struggle with all the time. So this week, we are going back in time to one of the very first episodes of becoming ourselves the podcast that talks about that hold your nose and jump moment and that lead up to God saying to you trust me, because I've got something else for you,I want you to walk away from this thing. I want you to go do something that people are going to look at, and they're going to think that is nuts. Or at least that's what you think they're going to think. Because I have something better for you. And let me tell you, he does okay, I had no idea that a year and three quarters, we'll see if I'm mapping Well, a year and three quarters later, I would not only have a thriving coaching practice, but I would be speaking I would have published my first book. Speaking of which, if you have not grabbed your copy yet have fired up,fulfilled and free, know who you are, get out of your own way,live your purpose, go grab that we'll make sure we have a link in the show notes for you. Or you can head to Juli wenger.com/fired up book, and we have all of the links out from there for you. This is one of those books that's going to change your life. And I know that because the journey that I'm walking you through of moving from fear and into freedom of moving from a place of is this it into living out purpose and walking in your calling. That's what we're stepping through in this book together. The things that are happening in life right now were not things that I could even imagine for myself at the point in time when he asked me to walk away from that. And we're almost two years from that point, as this release is but cuz it was September of 2020, that I hung up my real estate license. So let's go back in time, shall we?This episode has been a long time coming, I've been talking about it here and there and seating for it. And I'm gonna be completely transparent with you there is this little bit of tension that's showing up,because this is all about my hold my nose and gentlement of when I walked away from my career, part of what the tension is, is that I haven't talked about it super publicly and done a whole lot of announcement until now. So this is a bit of a coming out for me, this is a bit of a telling the world and announcing to the world what they kind of already know. So let's jump back to a bit of story 10 years ago,plus a couple of months, I started real estate. And I kind of fell into it. Like I graduated from University with a Bachelor of Science in Human Ecology. No one ever knows what that is. Don't worry if you don't know what that is. But essentially, it is the study of people in their environments.It's looking at quality of life,it's looking at how do people connect with their things? How do people connect with their clothes? How do people connect with their homes? How do people connect with their immediate and further out environments, we think of nesting circles at the middle is you and then moving out from there stuff that's immediately surrounding you. And then you move out into like your small community, and then you move out into your broader community. And then, you know,just keep going out from there.And it was a really perfect degree fit for me. Honestly, I did really, really well. And I didn't think before them that I was smart. She was a total divergence. But I jumped out of university and followed my husband's job around for a couple of years. This was when the 2008 crash happened. So that's how old I am. I'm 36 If any of you are curious, anyway,so we went we lived small town for a year we went we lived in Fort McMurray for a year. It was not our jam. So we moved back to Edmonton. Part of that was because I have a stepdaughter who's in Edmonton and we wanted to be close to her. And my husband's family was mostly here, a lot of our university friends were here. So it just made natural sense to quote unquote, come home. And the job I had at the time was not a good fit. The job I had at the time was exhausting. And I didn't want to get up and go to work in the morning. And I had nothing to do with the company and the company was great. My boss was great. But they had me in a blended branding and quality control space. Now I can do branding in my sleep. But quality control is not what I'm wired for. It is not in my highest and best it does not align with my superpowers. It breaks my brain it was like not a good fit. So I'm looking for what am I going to do next? What on earth am I going to do next?And I bought into the stories.My whole life that I wasn't that smart or that I wasn't entrepreneurial, were that I just wasn't good enough to know to run my own business or to do anything that seemed big and exciting. Well, I had focused in university on interior design,because I spent so much of my life attached to what people think of me and people pleasing and what I perceive their expectations to be of Me and we jump back into that. Check boxes, what are the boxes? What are the roles I was putting myself in and I was fully in this space of. I'm just going to live according to everyone else's checkboxes. And so one day my husband says to me, you should go be a realtor. And I was like, hell no, because one of the jobs I had in our moving around was as a real estate assistant. And what I saw was this caddy, back biting, smarmy garbage. And I was like, I want nothing to do with that. But he kept kind of pushing seems like you love houses and you love people could be a good fit. So it gave it a shot. Which is amusing to me now because for those of you who are in that space in the real estate space,you know that you don't just like give real estate a try and make a go of it. Most of the time the failure rate is exceptionally high. So stepping have this job and didn't really view it as a business for the first few years was, which was part of my problem. But I survived in spite of myself,because I cared so much, and I worked so hard. So both four years in, I have this bit of an awakening, because I was exhausted, we just had our first baby, I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore, started working with coaches, and realized that I could do it differently, that maybe I didn't have to fit into the mold of what this business quote unquote, was, and started working through what's my purpose here. And at the time, I really scratched the surface on it, but I thought my purpose was to take care of people. Hello,Enneagram, to help her.Anyway, I thought my purpose was to help people. So off, I go building this culture around,I'm just going to show up for people. And we're going to have,you know, this purpose statement of taking care of our clients and taking care of our community and taking care of her family.So those were our three pillars for a while. And then we figured out that you know what, maybe there's more to this and drifted into empowering people in their journey. And so their real estate transactions and really supporting them, and how could we do that? What did we value,and it was a relational business, and it was a systematized and automated business. And it was amazing,honestly, like our growth in one year, when we started leaning into this stuff was pretty much double in a down market. So this is awesome, right? I'm five, six years into this business, it's growing, it's doing great, I'm looking at growing the team, I have an assistant, we work our way along and we're, you know,operating according to what I value we're giving back to our community, we're doing things that feel really great, that take my bleeding heart, save the world. Complex, that's what I used to call it, not so much anymore. And I could have an outlet for that I could make an impact, I could create some difference that wasn't only guiding people through what is a very emotional journey. But we fast forward to the last couple of years. And yeah, it was successful. And I had this team,and there were lots of things that were really great about it.And I was doing well. You know,from the outside, it looked amazing. Right? From the outside, people are asking me,How do you do this? And you must love it, and how do I do it, and I started to look at it and go,I see what you're seeing from the outside, but from the inside, it's still just not filling me up. It's still not what I want my life to look like, you know, that nagging,there must be something else that comes up in life. It was starting to get louder. And I'd gone through my cycles of burnout. And I've gone through my cycles of overworking. And I've gone through my cycles of having zero boundaries. Because that's something that shows up for my type, because we're so out for taking care of other people and showing up for other people that sometimes we don't take care of ourselves. And I had a lot of lessons there. And we can talk about that in other episodes. But I got to this point where it's like there has to be something else. And so I launched my first coaching program, and it was a real estate coaching program. And turns out, I loved it. And then I started getting my coaching credentials, because frankly, on a tirade here for a minute, the way things function right now anyone can wake up one morning and slap a sign on the door and be like, Hey, I'm a coach. There is a difference between telling people what to do. And holding space for them. There's a difference between guiding them to where you think they should go, and helping them self discover and be the expert in their own life. There is a difference between true coaching and empowerment of people and curating codependency. We'll jump into that another time.Anyway, I'm on this journey of launching this program starting to bring in a few clients and I'm thinking I'll just do both.This will help me Empower some people. This will help me support some people. Let's see what happens. And then COVID hit and it was this beautiful opportunity for me to pivot and for me to realign to myself and say okay, what do I want?because you know what happens when you're running a busy,successful business you've been in the weeds of for 10 years,it's tough to zoom out, it's tough to see yourself doing anything other than what you're doing. And this is where I found myself, all of a sudden, I had this two month break, because our entire industry essentially went on hold for two months of being able to do something else,of having time to think of saying, I really love this new work that I'm doing. Let's see what we can build here. And within a couple of months, the awareness and the clarity that came for me of doing this reflecting and doing this work and building this new business was, this is what I'm called to do. That my purpose and my passion, and my power is in helping humans find their fire,their power, helping them trust themselves in their intuition,helping them get clear on their purpose. So they can live their most impactful life, their most purposeful life, their most fulfilling life. And I can do way more of that and create way more impact outside of a real estate space, just opening myself up to people. So welcome to the story imposter syndrome.impostor syndrome has always been a thing. This has been with me my whole life as a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist, and impostor syndrome, and came in and said,What do you think you are? What makes you qualified to do this?I heard old coaches in my head from when I was not in my power.When I would say to them, I couldn't do what you do. I heard them saying, yeah, maybe not.And I wrapped all these stories around by value as a successful entrepreneur as a successful realtor as a successful member of my industry. And I had to start untangling all of that.Because this whisper started of,oh, there is something else. And here's what it is. But I'm scared. I can't make the same money. Maybe I need to hit some targets first. Maybe I need to find someone to sell the business to, which is really tough. By the way, if you want to jump out, like within a year,maybe I need to just give it some more time. Maybe it'll just kind of happen. Maybe this maybe that maybe. And my own personal favorite, getting really wrapped up in what if people think I'm crazy, because this business was bringing in $500,000, a year of gross commission, I was stepping into something that was not. It wasn't there yet, it's still not there. And it's not to say that,you know, real estate versus coaching has to be abundance versus not abundance. That is not this conversation. There is something to be said for building things up. And there is something to be said for having fractured attention into two spaces, which actually ties in beautifully to this story.Because while I'm worrying,while I'm trying to figure out how do I do this in a way that makes sense. How do I do this in a way that avoids shame? How do I do this in a way that is not going to have me come up against people thinking I'm crazy, or putting my family in any sort of financial strain or, you know,on and on and on and on whatever story you could come up with.The voice was getting louder,that, hey, there's something else was turning into more of a yell was turning into resistance to doing the real estate work it was turning into I'd really rather spend time over here, but I do, you know, need to do this real estate stuff. And I would I'd make it a priority. And then would come the fracturing then would come the we really want to launch the podcast, but I just don't have capacity right now.Because I'm putting out all these real estate fires. I really want to run another event, but we just don't have the capacity right now because a surprise new client has come up that needs our attention in the next week. And what ended up happening was the opportunity cost of creating impact in this new space and this new business was being raised all the time because I couldn't fully step in. And the cost was that there were people that were ready for my help are ready for me My skills are ready for my abilities to support them in their journey. So they could create more impact in their life and the life around them.Because there's a ripple effect to everything we do, there's a ripple effect. And sometimes it goes beyond anything we'll ever see. This is what occurred to me when we were running our conference a couple of weeks ago, was that there may be impacts from someone being open to change from someone being open to new self awareness that flows out beyond anything I'll ever hear about or see. But that exists. And so we went on vacation was the middle of summer, I had all this tension is trying to figure out how to sell the business, I was frustrated, I was tired of being pulled in two directions. And we went out to Canada's wine country in the Okanagan. What's beautiful, about getting out of our own space, what's beautiful about getting out of our own homes or own cities, is that it allows us an opportunity to gain perspective on our life, because we're not in the energy of our normal life or not in the flow of our normal life. And I started to get more and more perspective. And I started to realize that just get over it,you're just done. And I came back after this week, and I couldn't check back in, I couldn't make myself do it. In the meantime, I had significantly geared down the business, but I came back. And I knew that I needed to have the conversations with my team that were purely on the real estate side and tell them, we're shutting it down. And I called my partner and I said, what's it going to take for you to take over take my clients. And so on October 1 of this year, I quit real estate. I walked away, I put my license on hold, it officially goes offline end of December. And I shut down my 10year business. For me this is both vulnerable and powerful.For me, this was a huge uplevel in my becoming myself in my owning who I was, and what I wanted, and what my strengths and skills and abilities are and what the potential for impact I can create in the world was instead of playing small,instead of dimming my light,instead of trying to make everyone comfortable around me.It was all about what does standing in my power look like?What does owning what I'm called to look like. And transparently.This is a God calling for me.Both the podcast and the career change. These are things that I have felt so pulled to. It's like, God was tapping me on the shoulder saying, hey, go do this thing. And the message I kept getting especially over the summer was like Do you trust me yet, just jump in. Here we are.Both feet in jumped with this podcast launched with all sorts of plans and dreams for what2021 looks like with new clarity on who we will serve, who we will support how we will structure that how we will create massive impact in the world and through that allow others to step into their own power and create their own massive impact. Because together we rise, because the impact that I can create or that Sophie and I can create is not enough on its own to change the world. But if we all come together, if a handful of us come together if100 of us come together, the potential for us to shift our culture for us to shift our society for us to change things is incredible. For us to build more compassion for us to create space of being able to love ourselves.Being able to understand where other people are at and how to support them being able to meet each other where we're at and really operate from a place of love. This is where my I ams are so important to me is that when I looked at this career shift as scary as it was, and as much of my identity as I had wrapped into that box of, but I'm a successful realtor, I'm a successful boss. I'm a successful mompreneur. All of that's just bullshit and ego.And I had to ask myself the question of what does being love? What does being joy? What does being strength, light and grace require of me? How does that mean I show up in the world. And it was to hold my nose and jump. It was to trust that I would be carried and held and go for it. Even though it was scary, even though it wasn't as financially stable. As my old business, even though some people might think that I was crazy. Interestingly, literally,zero, people have come at me and told me I'm crazy. And I believe that's for a couple of reasons.One is I'm not holding space for those people. When we look at Brene, browns arena, and how she trains on that, and, you know,there's the different seats,there's the cheap seats, the people that hurl criticism,there's the box seats, those are the privileged seats, the people that built it, that create the rules. There's the support seats, those are the ones we pay attention to. And I can't remember off the top of my head right now what the other seats are, there's four sets of them,the people who are in the support piece of the arena, who are going to build me up who are going to keep me accountable,who are going to love on me who are going to call me on my crap,but not from a place of shame.Those are the people whose opinions matter. So I think part of it is that I haven't allowed it in. And I think that the other part of it is, because of congruence. I love how just like name dropping all over the place here today. But Tony Robbins talks about congruence, as when we believe what we say subconsciously. And I've heard it from other people, as a when we believe what we say, at a cellular level, deep down, that there is power in that there's congruence in that of what I'm saying to you consciously what I'm saying to you in my tone, or if you could see me right now in my body language in my eye contact. matches, right, the subconscious, because part of our communication is conscious part of it is literally just the words I say, but most of it is everything else. And when we're not congruent about something,something's off about the energy around it. If I said to people,like Yeah, I'm gonna go jump into this coaching thing. And I seemed hesitant or seemed like,I didn't believe in it, or I seemed like I wasn't excited about it, then probably I would have got something like, Are you sure? Are you crazy, but when I can approach it, and have someone call me and be like,Hey, what's up, like, I quit,dude, I'm out. This is amazing.I'm so excited about it. And they're picking up on all of that energy that backs it up.That's congruent both consciously and subconsciously.That's our power lifts. And that doesn't create space for people to come at us. That's a standing in our power. It's me standing in my power and saying to all of you, I quit I'm done. I've had enough not because I didn't like the industry, not because I didn't like the work not because they didn't like the people but because there was something else that I was called to. That is where my passion lies. That is where my purpose lies that I can stand in my power and own so if there's something calling you right now pay attention and get curious about do I trust myself?Do I trust the calling do I trust those little whispers that I guarantee you if you ignore are gonna get louder? Is this my hold my nose and jump moment?And that doesn't have to be a career shift. It doesn't have to be a shutdown your business,although it might be. But pay attention to that little voice into that inner knowing of there's gotta be something else.I hope you've enjoyed this episode. This was a big deal for me and I am so appreciative of you holding space for the story and I hope that it inspires you.Like it continues to inspire me.I would love if you would leave us a review and subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already.And you're always welcome to tell your friends about it. We'd love Up until next time, this is your loving reminder that you are powerful. You are a creator,you are worthy. You are enough.And you can tell impostor syndrome to go take a back seat because it's time to rise. Until next time on my lap and Virtual hugs I hope this episode stirred something up in you or gave you some hope. Until next time, know that you are enough that everything in you that has been placed in you has been put there to help you carry out the calling that is on your life. If you've enjoyed this podcast,please please please hop into wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a positive review for us. And the links that we mentioned during the episode will be in your show notes. So make sure to check those out too. Until next time, be love.Be joy. Be strong and courageous and be too much. I dare you