Million Dollar Grit
Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy, and dreams meet reality. Here, we explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories - it's about the grit it takes to get there.
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Can You Sell Courses Sustainably?
Someone DM'd me and asked whether selling courses can ever really be sustainable, and I realized we're all using that word to mean something we never say out loud — what she was actually asking is the mortgage test: can I put this income on a loan application, book the vacation, buy the car, and trust that it won't get snatched out from under me? Don't forget to subscribe to my email list! https://emailsbyjulie.com
What Content Creators & Business Owners Can Learn From Each Other
My lead pipeline just flipped — for 10 years about 80% of my clients have been business owners, and in the last two weeks it's been about 80% content creators, all because of traction on Instagram. And it got me thinking about how each side is staring at the other with envy: business owners wish they had the creator's reach, and creators wish they had the owner's offers, email list, and body of work. In this episode I make the case that each side is holding exactly half of a complete business — creators have mastered speaking to the masses (a real skill set that take...
A Personal Update After A Crazy Week!
This one's personal — I'm unpacking the wild weekend behind me after Jessie Jean gave me a shout-out on her Instagram story and my following jumped from about 17,900 to over 21,600 almost overnight, along with an inbox full of coaching applications I'm still working through. I talk about what it's actually like to be flooded with brand-new people after years of going deep with a smaller, tight-knit community, the free resource I put together to help new followers get to know me fast, and a small real-time experiment I ran between a polished, mathy reel and a raw, unfiltered story that did so...
Consider the Source Before You Follow the Advice
The worst business advice you'll ever take won't come from a troll — it'll come from someone you hired, polished and confident and completely wrong. In this episode I get into why the things that actually harm your business never look harmful (the cop with the badge still has a gun), why I tell my clients that ideas are guilty until proven innocent, and how to hold two true things at once: you don't want advice from someone who's never lived your life, and a great coach doesn't have to have walked your exact path. Then I give you the actual fi...
The Only Wrong Move in Business Is Doing Nothing
There's exactly one wrong move in business, and it isn't picking the wrong name, launching the wrong offer, or running the wrong marketing strategy — it's doing nothing, and in this episode I make the case that a messy, half-baked, even wrong attempt will always work in your favor over the perfect plan you never execute.
Problem First Building: The AI Workflow Framework That Ends the Dopamine Spiral
I just wrapped the first in-person AI & Sheep workshop at my farm, and I couldn't let these takeaways leave my brain before I got them on record. The truth is, most people are losing ground to AI, not gaining it — they're in the dopamine pool, working longer, building more, and not seeing a single dollar of return. So before anyone goes another week adding tools and workflows to their life, I want to share the core philosophy I teach: if AI isn't making you more money or buying back your time, it's a distraction. This episode walks through Problem First Bu...
The #1 Thing To Learn From Jessi Jean's Viral Launch
I recorded this one from my car — a little hat tip to Russell Brunson, who taught me that "in the car" beats "not at all" — because I had something I couldn't wait to break down: the launch my client Jessie Gene just ran on Instagram, and what it actually teaches the rest of us. I met Jessie back in the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club days when I was a head coach and she was running a binge and disordered eating recovery program, and even then she had this rare combination of high standards and magnetic transparency. Fast-forward through her walking away...
Is Everything Negotiable? The Two Muscles Most People Never Build (with Aryeh Sheinbein)
This is a candid conversation with friend, client, and business partner Aryeh Sheinbein. I have two real-time negotiations on my desk right now (a post-divorce mortgage refinance the bank told me had only one path, and a $10K non-refundable sheep deposit I'd already mentally written off), and partly because Aryeh is one of those rare people whose default assumption is that almost every "this is the price" is actually an opening position. What started as a casual conversation turned into a working framework — the two negotiation muscles most people never build, and the one filter that tells you which one to...
Action + Ignoring: The Two-Skill Operating System Behind Fast Execution
This episode started with a client of mine watching me sell out four in-person workshops in three days and asking — completely seriously — how the heck I take action so fast. Her honest answer was that she'd need six to eight business months to put together something similar. So I broke down what's actually happening, and it's not what most people think. Fast execution isn't about being braver, more energetic, or wired differently. It's a two-part skill: action (doing the next thing in front of you) and ignoring (refusing to entertain the other 17 problems at the same time).
What I brought home from the 17th DI mastermind
I just got back from three days in New Haven at the 17th Digital Insiders mastermind — 40 entrepreneurs in one room, and somehow these events keep getting better than the last one. In this episode I walk you through the keynote from Michael Roderick on aspirational vs. excellence buyers, the member shares from Emily Green on $15 paid workshops, Amber Housley on the 34 webinars it took before hers converted, Aryeh Sheinbein on a deeply personal credit card story, and Brittany Long on delivering a full done-for-you funnel in 60 minutes using Claude. From there I get into my halftime report on what's still wo...
