Dare to Become

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Julie Cropp Gareleck – Dare to Become

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Looking back for inspiration, then wrote book.
04:14 In search of culture, founded Junction Creative.
06:33 Quit job due to manager’s demeaning behavior.
09:40 Experienced in business, marketing, and strategy operations.
13:10 18 months: No employees, $1M revenue, overnight.
16:51 Adaptable and experienced designer excelling in digital era.
21:46 AI-generated marketing content lacked completeness, needed education.
24:19 AI as tool: do we need it everywhere?
27:01 AI takeover led to inaccuracies, health problems.
32:09 I’ve evolved, grown smarter, continually learning, adapting.
36:14 Ensured best food, coffee; created positive experiences.
37:52 Understanding and appreciating employees’ individual paths fosters loyalty.
42:01 Paused growth to focus on health and family.
45:50 Writing always my passion; book inspires others.
47:56 Last-minute photo ended up on book cover.
51:36 Traditional publishing doesn’t offer authors full control.

Podcast Transcription:

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:00:00]:
But I had to learn how to be a CEO and a mom 6 years into my journey, and boy was that a wake up call. And I while I could foresee that there was going to have to be a shift, I didn’t anticipate the impact that those struggles would have.

James Kademan [00:00:20]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found On the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls on call extraordinary answering service, as well as the Bold Business Book. And today, we’re welcoming slash preparing to learn from Julie Cropp Gareleck. I hope I said that last name okay. I’m trying.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:00:48]:
No. It’s okay. It’s great.

James Kademan [00:00:51]:
Author of Dare to Become, which is somewhat exciting, from the corner booth to the corner office. So, Julie, how are you doing today?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:00:58]:
I’m doing well. I’m glad to be here.

James Kademan [00:01:00]:
Yeah. We’re glad to have you. So let’s start with the book. What’s what was going through your head when you decided you should write a book?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:01:07]:
Absolutely. I mean, I think to some degree, I’ve always wanted to write a book, just never really fig didn’t know what it was going to be about, and I had reached 13 years in business. I had achieved some milestones that I’d set for myself, and I really found myself in a place where I was asking a lot of questions around what’s next. What’s the next milestone? What do I do now? And I was looking for inspiration, and I flipped through journals that I’d written from the time I was 16 years old until now. I’m in my mid forties, so lots of years to cover. But I started reading through journals. And in the process of looking back over the course of my career, I I really found inspiration in kind of revisiting my 20 year old fearless self, and, you know, reliving some of the things that I had overcome, some of the successes that I’d had. And that’s really where, I found my voice and I found the words to write dare to become.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:02:05]:
Nice.

James Kademan [00:02:05]:
She’s in 13 years in business. Now you’ve had a few businesses. Is that right? Or have a few businesses?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:02:11]:
So we celebrated so Junction Creative, which is by digital marketing agency, we celebrated 15 years this past spring. Congrats. My book. Thank you. Yes. Very exciting. And I also am invested in other businesses just as On investor or an owner, but I’ve done that for the last 20 years as well.

James Kademan [00:02:29]:
Very nice. So what was your first business? The first what Call dare to Call first real business. Maybe not just lemonade stand or anything like that.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:02:37]:
Yeah. So I would say first real business would be or at least I would say real. I mean, I started a consulting business years before I started Junction Creative. I did it very briefly and realized that I needed to get more experience, before I could really figure out what I was gonna offer and how it was gonna be different. So Junction Creative is the business that I started 15 years ago, and she’s my labor of love. I’ve worked on her for for a long time, but that’s that’s the first real business.

James Kademan [00:03:08]:
Alright. And what made you start it’s a marketing agency. Right?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:03:12]:
Yes. We are a full service digital marketing agency, so we work with small to midsize clients. We work with the Fortune 1,000, and I like to tell folks we combine, you know, traditional business consulting with that of an advertising agency. So we do the smart thinking, but we’re also really great at the branding and design.

James Kademan [00:03:29]:
Very cool. So what made you start that?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:03:32]:
Yeah. So, you know, really, it was, my experience that I’d had. So I started my career working in Philadelphia. I worked in the entrepreneurship space, working at an entrepreneurship institute and then a venture capital firm. So I was working with companies already on, you know, trying to find companies that had really great products or services. They had some scalability to them. And when I moved to Atlanta, when I met my husband who I’ve been with for 18 years, the I realized that the venture capital climate in Atlanta at that time was not as sophisticated as it was in the northeast. So I really pivoted my career and started working as a strategist for interactive ad agencies at the time.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:04:14]:
And so I was working on a lot of strategies, for, you know, big clients, big brands, and this was really before, you know, digital grew up. Right? I mean, I remember Twitter launching when I one of those agencies. So, and it was just through some experiences that that I’ve had there. I couldn’t really quite find a culture or an environment that aligned with the type of environment I wanted to be part of. And I really just said to myself, you know what? Like, there’s a way to do this transparently and and still be really, creative, but maybe add a little bit more business measurement to it. And so that’s really how Junction Creative was born where that intersection between, you know, creative and execution On strategy and execution.

James Kademan [00:05:00]:
I was just gonna ask you where the name came from. Yeah. So that’s more or less it. That’s the Junction part.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:05:05]:
Exactly. Yep.

James Kademan [00:05:07]:
Alright. Very cool. And when you first started, was it you or did you have business partners?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:05:13]:
So when I first started Junction, at the time, there were a couple of coworkers that, we had kinda joined together and decided that we wanted to go down this path. But, you know, as I’m sure you know with starting a business, you’re not walking with your salaries. You’re not walking with your comfort of, you know, getting that paycheck every 2 weeks. And so I was kind of the last woman standing, and I really was committed to, launching it. So it’s been just me as the, you know, sole owner of Junction since then.

James Kademan [00:05:48]:
Wow. Okay. So you said you’ve been married a while, and Junction’s been going on a while. Which came

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:05:56]:
first? I so I was married just recently. I think I was married less than a year when I decided to to start the business. And, you know, my decision to start my business is not necessarily one I would advocate, but I, had had a rough experience at work and and didn’t mean to, but quit my job. And You didn’t mean to? Me too. I mean, it wasn’t my intent. So I had gone back into the office after having had an illness. I was actually recovering from the swine flu. So I don’t know if you remember that before

James Kademan [00:06:31]:
Yeah. Way back when. Yeah.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:06:33]:
Yeah. And, you know, at the time, my my manager was, you know, really, you know, kind of berating me in emails and and telling me that, you know, I needed to work and, you know, I, you know, I really wasn’t sick and and all of these things. And it was just more of a culture of just demeaning and, you know, really just kind of, you know, picking on me because I, you know, happen to get sick. And, when I went in, when I went back to work after having been out for 4 days, you know, I I kinda turned the corner. I went into his office, and I I literally just it just this moment came over over me where I thought, you know what? I’m not doing this. Like, I’m not I’m this just isn’t this isn’t right, and I I put in my notice, that day. And so while I don’t advocate that you walk in and you quit your job, I will say my husband was incredibly supportive. He is an entrepreneur himself and has been for longer than I have.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:07:31]:
So he, you know, said to me, well, what are you gonna do? And I said, you know, I really think it’s time for me to start my own business, and that’s exactly what I did.

James Kademan [00:07:41]:
That is awesome. I was just gonna ask you, what did your spouse say your year into the marriage? And you’re like, funny story. I’m gonna go down this entrepreneurial path. Sorry about the health insurance.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:07:52]:
Right. Call, you know what’s interesting. You know? So I feel very fortunate because he was a business owner and he understood. I mean, he watched me go through some of these work environments that I was On. And even he was incredulous On going, this doesn’t happen in business. Like, it doesn’t. It shouldn’t, and it does. And so when I when I quit, I don’t think he ever questioned, was I capable of doing it? I do think, obviously, you know, he wanted to be supportive.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:08:21]:
He even offered to fund it, and I said no. And I really wanted to start my business on my own efforts and really prove to myself that I could do it.

James Kademan [00:08:31]:
Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. So you quit the job. Hey, man. I’m out of here. You start your own gig.

James Kademan [00:08:38]:
Tell me about day 1 when you’re on your own.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:08:41]:
Day 1 is so sobering. I mean, it is, it’s exciting. Right? I set up an office at my house. I had my little corner, you know, desk and and all my computer and my shelves and everything. And I really because of my background having worked in the entrepreneurship space, I knew how to write a business plan. I I immediately got to work in in writing down all of the things I needed to do. Right? So business plan, marketing plan. What was I gonna sell? Like like Who who paid? Right? Like, what am I gonna do? You know, how to set up a bank account.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:09:14]:
I really just put together this extremely long list knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to get through it in a day, And I really just kept adding to that list until I knocked all of those things off, to really get the business up and going.

James Kademan [00:09:30]:
Alright. So day 1 was actually trying to figure out what the business is, let alone waiting for the phone to ring with somebody on the other end with money to give you or anything like that.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:09:40]:
Exactly. I mean, I had this experience. Right? Like, I’d I’d been in the work, you know, place for for more than a decade. I grew up in a family business, so I had a lot of experience understanding how to operate a business. I had experience in marketing. I had experience as a strategist. And so it really was, you know, again, kind of figuring out really what those intersections would be and how I could add value. Right? Because I think a lot of times when folks start businesses, you know, you say, oh, Call, they can sell this widget.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:10:11]:
I’ll go sell this widget. Right? But, you know, when it gets into the service space, you really have to be able to deliver value over and above the next guy. Because in digital marketing or in marketing in general, I compete with thousands of agencies every day, and we all sell similar services, but it really comes down to how am I gonna be able to add more value.

James Kademan [00:10:34]:
Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. So I have Call answering service, and our competition, I joke with people, is business owners, nephew, niece, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. It’s their whatever relation that they have within James reach that they can just say, here’s the phone. Answer it. Mhmm. And it’s funny because those people, it’s probably not their dream to answer phones for whatever business they’re answering for Right. Or asks to answer for.

James Kademan [00:11:01]:
And they’re certainly not trained on customer service or unlikely that they’re trained on customer service.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:11:06]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:11:06]:
And they’re probably tolerable at best, but it’s still the lowest hanging fruit for this business owner. So that’s what we compete with, which is kinda funny because from a marketing business side, you’re competing with the nephews, the nieces, the spouse. Hey. Just put something together. Why don’t you just put me together a logo or something like that?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:11:26]:
No. So

James Kademan [00:11:27]:
Yeah. Put in the basement with a computer. Right?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:11:30]:
Oh, even now. I mean, you, I mean, you probably wouldn’t be shocked. I mean, you understand how this space works. But, I mean, literally, there are times where I’m competing and they’ll say, yeah. Well, like, you know, this guy works in his basement. It’s On guy. And then I have to almost justify that for 15 years, we’ve been a team of people. We have established processes.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:11:47]:
We have established protocols. You know, we’re a legitimate company. You know, we’ve had we’ve worked with, you know, 500 clients. It’s just but it’s funny how I still compete against the the person that just graduated from college that understands what Instagram is. Right? It’s so it’s difficult. It’s difficult.

James Kademan [00:12:09]:
Fair. Fair. It’s funny. Like, they’re interested in hiring the hobbyist rather than Yes. The actual business.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:12:15]:
Exactly.

James Kademan [00:12:15]:
Because they can save money on paper, kind of, maybe. But in the real world, we both know that’s not the case.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:12:21]:
It’s not. Yeah. Exactly.

James Kademan [00:12:23]:
Interesting. Tell me, you have employees now. Right?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:12:26]:
I do. Yes. Mhmm.

James Kademan [00:12:27]:
Alright. How many employees do you have now?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:12:29]:
So we have 10 full time employees, and then we have a handful of what I call floaters. So people that we pull in for strategies that maybe require somebody that has 40 years of experience or 30 years of experience in a specific industry. But we are still growing. But but by design, we are a boutique agency. I never, aspired to have 50 employees, and build, you know, an agency that that was that large. So, definitely more of a boutique agency.

James Kademan [00:12:57]:
No. I get that. The rules of the game and employees change at 50. So Yes. Yes. Number I think a lot

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:13:03]:
of these numbers are next.

James Kademan [00:13:05]:
We’ll work up just to that. But Yes. Tell us about your first hire. That’d be fun or interesting.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:13:10]:
Yeah. So so crazy enough. So I was in business for just under, like, probably 18 months. And at that time, I had 2 contractors who were helping me, with some of the web development, side of things. I had a designer that was helping me, you know, put together pitch decks and things like that. In month 18, I, was networking with a former, colleague who I worked with and was introduced to a stakeholder at a fortune 1,000 company and went from 0 On revenue to a1000000 On revenue literally overnight, and I had no employees. So

James Kademan [00:13:46]:
Oh.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:13:48]:
So I literally, signed a big On, and I hired, a director of operations was my first hire because, one of the things I knew we needed with this account was we needed process, and I knew that without it, we would fail. So that was my very first hire. And then, of course, I built out a team with designers, user experience, strategist, website developers, you know, to build out the team, but I really did go from 0 to 15 overnight.

James Kademan [00:14:18]:
Nice. So that sounds risky because you’re throwing all the chips in there essentially with On very large client where they went away. You have a bad day. A lot of mid twenties would have a bad day.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:14:28]:
Yeah. It was it was my biggest fear. I mean, for the 3 years that they were a client, I woke up every morning going, okay. They represent 80% of our revenue. So if I lose them, we’re in trouble. And, that’s exactly what happened 3 years in. Their new CEO, you’ll recognize the company. Yahoo is the company, and Marissa Mayer at the time came in as the CEO and said, hey.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:14:51]:
We’re gonna pull all of our agency spend and start doing it with internal employees. We’re bringing everybody back into the workforce inside of our offices as opposed to remote work. And, because I was so generous when we negotiated the contract, I gave them a 90 day out, where most agencies yeah. So it’s kinda my fault. But that being said, I mean, when it happened, it was my biggest fear. And it when it happened, I literally just put my nose down and spent the next 90 days replacing the revenue, which I did.

James Kademan [00:15:26]:
Yeah. In the end, 90 days is not the end of the world. No. I mean, that’s that’s some runway. It’s short runway, but it’s not the end of the world.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:15:33]:
But I hustled. Yeah. I hustled for that 90 days.

James Kademan [00:15:37]:
Fair. So tell me, how did your employees react when they heard the news?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:15:42]:
They were nervous. Right? I mean, they knew how large this client was. I think they were concerned, I’m sure. But they also saw that I was literally, like, calling everybody I knew. I was networking. We were marketing. We were sponsoring events. I was doing all of the things to bring clients into the mix.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:16:03]:
And because I was able to bring them in over the 90 days, it gave them a lot of confidence just knowing that, you know, their jobs really weren’t at risk.

James Kademan [00:16:13]:
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s very cool. Yeah. Tell me about the design thing On hiring a person that does design. Because that is a subject thing, that I imagine it’s tough to just interview someone and say, hey. You know? What’s your biggest strength, biggest weakness? Some cheesy little question there. But now you gotta figure out how they do with design and working with the different platforms that you work with.

James Kademan [00:16:35]:
How do you find someone that fits well in that box?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:16:38]:
Yeah. So I’ve been so fortunate. So Julie, who has been, the head of our design team actually since day 1. So she was one of the early employees that I had. She’s been with me for 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. She has been.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:16:51]:
She’s amazing. And and I will say what’s interesting is what I will say about her design is because her design skills grew up in a On digital world. She did a ton of packaging. She did a ton of, like, static design work As digital started to become the mainstay 15 years ago, right, when everything became digital, she was able to adapt her designs and her design approach, to to capture those platforms. So it is though hard to find. Right? Like, when we’ve had to hire other design folks, it’s hard to run them through, like, a test project to see if their design is any good. But I I definitely look for people that have been in this space for longer than 10 years because they will have had experience doing billboard, doing, you know, interactive screens, not necessarily, you know, video that’s, you know, on social. So I I definitely look for someone that has more years behind them from a design perspective.

James Kademan [00:17:52]:
Fair. Totally fair. Tell me about I mean, we’re talking 10, 15, 20 years. The Internet marketing, it’s all changed quite a bit. The platforms that exist, the platforms that are popular, the demographics that are on any given platform. Yeah. How have you evolved or your business evolved with those different evolutions of the Internet?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:18:12]:
Yeah. We’ve had to. Right? It’s forced us to evolve. I will say, you know, when we started, like I said, social, meta, what’s now what was Facebook, right, before Instagram became popular, we were, you know, building content and, you know, building creative for those platforms. But then over the years we really had to evolve. Right? And as as digital became transparent from, an analytics perspective, we had to really understand all of the platforms, how the algorithms work. Right. And, and how to balance the execution.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:18:44]:
So, you know, a lot of clients will come to us and say, I On spend $10,000 a month on this platform. And we have to explain to them that it is an algorithm. Right? And you can’t just go throw more money at it and get a better success metric that it’s really an iterative process. And so I will say our James constantly training. We’re retraining on the same platform. Right? When new versions come out, certainly now with AI, I mean, it’s just it’s forcing us to stay on our toes in terms of what’s relevant. But I would say for our clients, it’s really difficult because they might just be starting. And if they’re just now starting in 2024 on digital, they’re already behind.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:19:27]:
Right? So they’ve got so much ground that they have to cover, that sometimes they don’t understand why it can take a year for things to really start, you know, generating revenue and generating leads.

James Kademan [00:19:39]:
Yeah. Marketing is an interesting game Mhmm. Because it’s an investment.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:19:44]:
Yes.

James Kademan [00:19:44]:
And typically James quite a bit of cash to get going, and you don’t know if that was a good investment until that money is long gone. Yes. So when you hope that’s a really good investment, and a lot of the times, I would dare even say 80% of the time, I guess, in my experience, it’s been less than great. But there’s a 10, 20% where you’re like, yes. Let’s do more of that.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:20:10]:
It is. And and you’re right. I mean and I will say this. So, you know, our approach to digital, Call know, some agencies are the big idea, right? Like what’s the big idea that we’re On get. It’s gonna go viral and it’s gonna be huge. I mean, big ideas are great, but it’s that consistency and execution. That’s really what generates those results. And so, unlike some agencies, we’re not a set it and forget it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:20:31]:
So when we’re doing a campaign or we’re launching creative, we’re actually monitoring that on a daily or every other day because we’re gonna see based on the metrics if something’s wrong, and you can notice that, like, right away. You don’t have to wait 30 days to see if it’s not working. But I think the hardest part of our job is educating clients that, again, right, that we understand that you’re spending a lot of money, but you do have to play the game. If you wanna rank in Google, if you wanna, you know, have an Instagram post that goes viral, you have to play the James. And and it’s not a quick game either.

James Kademan [00:21:08]:
No. No. Yeah. The 10 year overnight success. Right?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:21:12]:
Right. Right.

James Kademan [00:21:13]:
Oh, that’s funny. Tell me, you alluded to it a little bit. AI, let’s chat about that. That seems to be the buzzword now. Yes. I feel like it’s just like dotcom was in 2001.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:21:22]:
I know. Right? Can you believe this went out on? Ugh, gosh. But yeah. No. AI is, you know, I would say if you listen to the news and you read the by lines, everyone says AI is taking over everything. What I will honestly tell you is that AI is super cool. Right? We’re still learning what value it can add. What I will say is that in our space, you can tell if something is being generated by AI.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:21:46]:
Right? They use words that we would never use in marketing. The research is not complete, and so just because AI tells you so doesn’t make it true. So we are having to educate, clients on how to use it and how to use it the right way. I’ll give you a great case, case study. I had a client who was putting together their about us, right, their paragraph about their firm, and they didn’t wanna hire us to write the content because they thought we were too expensive to help them put it together. And they bragged, oh, I’m just gonna throw this into AI and look at what it came out with. Put it on their website. They were promoting their company.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:22:26]:
And so just to kinda see, I pulled the paragraph, and I ran it through AI, and it turns out that they plagiarized the NCAA.

James Kademan [00:22:36]:
Oh, no.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:22:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. So so I warned folks and I warned listeners that, hey. If you’re gonna use AI, use it responsibly and just know that it’s still new and it’s still learning, and we’re probably years away from it being 100% accurate to you know, from a pure content perspective.

James Kademan [00:22:58]:
Yeah. I mean, you dig right in there in the whole trademark copyright thing that I don’t have a good answer for it, but I feel like the question is not being asked as much as it should. Mhmm. Or, just really quick example, I was at a baseball game, my son’s baseball game, and there’s a daughter of some kid or a daughter of some parent that has kids like ball. And she’s bored to tears because little league, whatever. And I don’t know. She’s 5, 6, something like this. Big Taylor Swift fan.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:29]:
And

James Kademan [00:23:29]:
we started talking about pancakes. I was just joking with her. And we started using chat GPT to write a Taylor Swift song about pancakes.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:36]:
Right. Right.

James Kademan [00:23:37]:
And it came out, and it was pretty good.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:40]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:23:40]:
And for a second, I thought, if I was a songwriter, I’d be a little worried. But then I thought, where is chat GPT getting the information

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:51]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:23:51]:
Come up with these lyrics? That’s

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:53]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:23:54]:
Directly plagiarizing. Plagiarizing from 100 or 1000 of different places.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:23:58]:
Correct.

James Kademan [00:23:59]:
But still, they didn’t pay for that content.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:24:01]:
Correct.

James Kademan [00:24:02]:
Yeah. So that’s a I don’t know how to solve that. I don’t but I feel like someone, with more power than me should raise their hand and say, hey. Funny story. A lot of people are making a lot of money off of other people’s stuff. Most people aren’t being compensated. We gotta fix that.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:24:19]:
Well, of course. And and think of it this way too. Right? Because every major platform, like Google’s coming out with it. Like, they’re all they all have their AI, and I look at it and go, well, I remember, you know, starting my career when Google had 14 items on the Google On the Google search engine. Right? Like, I mean, let’s just be honest. So, you know, back then, you couldn’t plagiarize against someone unless you directly copied it off their brochure or an early website that they had. And to your point of what you just said is that they are getting that from somewhere. And so while it can be a tool, you know, is it a tool that we have to use for everything?

James Kademan [00:24:53]:
No. Certainly not.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:24:55]:
Right? I mean, so I mean, I not that I’m saying that I’m not into AI because everyone looks at me and rolls their eyes because they think I’m just old, but I I do like it because it can sometimes help with prompts or with keywords and things like that. But but Call, we don’t as a general rule On our agency, we don’t use that as the foundation. We use it as a tool to help us be more competitive with the content that we’re creating. But, boy, I mean, it can really give you some some interesting, queries.

James Kademan [00:25:27]:
Yeah. It’s it’s one of those things where I feel like the promise that is being made Mhmm. Is not a 100%. We’ll call it 85%, maybe. Mhmm. Something like that. I think of the in the call answering world, I remember seeing the article about the chatbot that gave a wrong answer Right. To the customer.

James Kademan [00:25:47]:
Yeah. But the customer didn’t know it was the wrong answer because Call was a chatbot on this company’s website. Why would they think it was a wrong answer?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:25:54]:
Right.

James Kademan [00:25:54]:
And so whatever it was, it snowballed from there, and the company is like, oh, that was AI. That that wasn’t really us. Like, you can’t really separate yourself from that. You’re the one that put on your website trusting that it would do the right thing. It didn’t do the right thing, so there you go.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:26:09]:
And think about the control that you don’t have, especially in your your industry. Right? I mean, you are frontline customer service. You are the ones that are providing the answers. You’re you’re on the frontline. And so if there’s a bot that’s giving false information, that’s gonna come back on you, and you you don’t have the control over it. And so I do think that that’s where it becomes a slippery slope of, you know, how valuable is it valuable that it can give you, hey. Here’s the contact information or, hey. We’re closed.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:26:38]:
Call us back tomorrow. Yes. But I’ve seen, you know, even as of late, you know, apps that are using AI to, provide I don’t know if you saw this, but they’re providing therapists to people that are looking for mental health resources, and they had they came out with this this app that was essentially a therapist AI bot. And

James Kademan [00:26:58]:
the taking chances?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:27:01]:
Oh, no. It was. And what happened was when the doctors who started the app were managing the data and they were managing the prompts, they did not have any issues with information. As soon as a company took over and started running their own scripts, it was generating content via AI that was inaccurate, and it was also, creating health problems for individuals. And so, you know, of course, it changed the trajectory of their business, but it just goes to show you that without those controls and without somebody who is mining the data and making sure that it the AI is working properly, it’s not gonna be a 100% effective.

James Kademan [00:27:43]:
Yeah. It’s interesting. You gotta keep it in this little sandbox. Yeah. Yeah. This is the information that you can access or learn or or offer answers from, but not the rest of the Internet because good golly. That’s a mess.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:27:57]:
Yes. Exactly. You said it best. It’s a mess.

James Kademan [00:28:00]:
I just I think of, business that I had a long time ago. We had changed we’d moved every few years. Right? Different office, whatever. And I started out working from home. Yeah.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:28:12]:
So

James Kademan [00:28:13]:
we had our home address on the Internet, and it didn’t matter how many times I changed it on Google. An old address would show up or someone would say this is permanently closed because we weren’t we hadn’t been in that office for 7 years. And it was just it was a constant mess, and I joked with people. I’m like, this is like fighting with God. Yes. They have the number that we can call and say, like, hey. Maybe put right information up. Right? We wouldn’t put the wrong information on our website.

James Kademan [00:28:38]:
We put the right information. Just use that. Yeah. Somewhere, Google was pulling in information Yeah. From some distant website that we don’t know.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:28:47]:
Oh, exactly. And then the the fact that they give us agencies too, like, they’ll give us a number or they’ll give us a form that we can submit the information to. But, like, clients don’t even understand too that, like, it took us for one client. It took us 6 months to recover access to his Google My Business profile. Wow. And it was because he didn’t remember who set it up. He changed his email. To your point, the location of the business changed.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:29:13]:
I mean, it was just this this now we figured it out. We did get it, but it took 6 months. I mean, it was a nightmare.

James Kademan [00:29:20]:
Wow. Yeah. I remember getting, man, I don’t know if it was yellow bucket or some yellow pages type company. And I feel like as yellow pages were dwindling, they were clawing at whatever they could find. Yeah. And they came to me, and they’re like, hey. We will fix all this for the monthly nut of whatever it was. Let’s say Yeah.

James Kademan [00:29:37]:
$100 a month, something like that. I’m like, oh, that’s cool. But once it’s fixed, isn’t it just fixed? And they’re like, no. No. If you stop paying, it goes back to what it was. And I’m like, oh, that’s extortion.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:29:49]:
That is extortion. That’s crazy.

James Kademan [00:29:52]:
Yeah. That was not great. So we didn’t do that. But, anyway, it’s interesting how some of the stuff is still a little bit wild west even for 2024.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:30:02]:
It is. Well and, again, if you I mean and I look at the people who’ve set things up and how things have changed over the years. So if you set an account up on Meta 15 years ago for your business, everything’s changed. Now there’s business manager. There’s all these different suites. And and so if you aren’t keeping on top of it and you aren’t paying attention and you and you aren’t the person who set it up, it’s a nightmare to manage. I mean, it’s

James Kademan [00:30:26]:
It’s so funny that you say that because I was just in meta this morning

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:30:30]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:30:30]:
Trying to add a user to one of our business accounts, and I was like, okay. This is I don’t know if they’re a $1,000,000,000,000 company, multibillions at least, 100 of 1,000,000,000. I feel like they should have a user experience person that says, hey. Let’s make this user friendly. Instead, it makes Craigslist look decorative.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:30:50]:
A 100%. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:30:51]:
Oh my gosh. This isn’t a so then I had to do a web search. Like, how do you add a user and all this kind of stuff? Like, I shouldn’t have to do that.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:31:00]:
No. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. And that’s actually funny because, in our agency, we have a lot of process documents, for our internal team when they’re learning or or when we are managing clients. And so we have literally a step by step for virtually every type of thing. Resetting, adding, Like, because, I mean, you have to distill it down and sometimes those lists are 12, you know, 12 deep that you have to follow just to get one piece of data updated. So and we’re always updating those lists.

James Kademan [00:31:30]:
Oh my gosh. I remember we were I mean, this is years ago. We had ads on face I think it was Facebook at the time. And I remember it was such a huge pain that I was just like, you know what? We’ll mark it a different way. It’s just not worth the headache. I really don’t want money going towards them, so let’s just nix it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:31:48]:
Yeah. Oh, no.

James Kademan [00:31:49]:
Walk away from that. Choose a different medium. There’s millions of options out there.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:31:53]:
Yeah. For sure.

James Kademan [00:31:55]:
So run with that. Tell me your business over the course of time. How have you evolved as a business owner?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:32:02]:
Oh, gosh. I mean, I’m still evolving. I’m a work in progress, I like to say. Yeah.

James Kademan [00:32:06]:
Yeah. We are. It’s all good. Safe place here. We’re good.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:32:09]:
I would say, you know, I would say I’ve I’ve grown up. Right? Like, if you think of, even when I started my business, I I had experience behind me. I had worked for my family’s business. I understood certain components, but I do think that as a naturally curious person, I just continue to learn more. I think, you know, as the business grew up, I had to grow up in terms of how do you manage the finances and, you know, I had to show you know, I I took courses on how to manage the money, and I, you know, made sure to pay attention to profitability and usability and and are our resources, you know, fully allocated? Right? So I would say I’ve evolved and gotten a lot smarter. I think that some of the challenges that I faced definitely helped me to grow up, right, to toughen up, and, you know, I, you know, continue to try to learn how to be, more relatable to the younger generations, right, because I’m a gen xer, and the way I grew up was very different. I drank from a water hose and played outside for 12 hours a day. Right? And so I didn’t come into the workforce with any expectation about what a job should give me.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:33:25]:
I was just really excited to, like, enter and and learn. And and I do think that newer generations learn differently. Right? Like, they grew up on technology. They want things faster. They want, you know, you know, the quick steps to get there. And so I feel like I’m still working on that, and I think I’m still kinda refining that, but definitely a work in progress.

James Kademan [00:33:49]:
And so I get it. I’m right there with you. Jen Calls well. Yes. It’s funny because I was putting together interview questions, to Kademan employee to our business. Yes. And one of the questions I wrote that I did not ask, but I want to so bad is what do you believe the world owes you? Because I feel like you and I would say that’s up to us. I mean, we got to

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:34:13]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:34:14]:
And earn it. And there’s some people that I have interviewed before where I think that they’d be like, oh, I got that list right here.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:34:21]:
Uh-huh. It is. It is.

James Kademan [00:34:24]:
I never asked it. So for fear of what the answer would be, but I feel like maybe that would be a quick way to choose. Do I hear this person, or do I just let them be somebody else’s problem?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:34:35]:
No. Exactly. Well and I think for me too, like, you know, maybe it’s also too because and I’m sure you’re come from this perspective too. You’ve built and sold companies. Right? Like, we know how hard it is every day. We know how hard it is to earn every dollar. And so when we go to hire individuals to join the team, we’re hoping, right, that they see value in joining the organization and that they wanna contribute to it. And a lot of times when I’m doing the interview process, I’ll get a lot of, well, this is what I want.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:35:05]:
This is the type of environment and the flexibility that I need, and I get a list of what I On. And those are not necessarily the folks that end up making it to the final, interview cycle because they don’t ask the question of what can I do for the organization to take it into the next direction? And so I do think that it’s just, it’s not necessarily their fault that they think that way, but it’s just a difference in the generations and their approach to work or a work environment.

James Kademan [00:35:36]:
Yeah. They’ve been I don’t I guess I don’t know what it is. I feel like there’s a lot of people that want to start on the top rung. This is realizing that it’s a ladder that you have to climb.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:35:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not that it’s not that easy. I mean, I remember, you know, in my early career when I worked in Philadelphia, I, had a great job, had a great mentor. What a great experience that was, but I was still the person that they asked to make coffee for every board meeting. I had to make sure that I had the creamer that people liked, the sugar that people wanted. And, you know, as a 20 something young person, I could have looked at that and been like, it’s because I’m a female, and they’re just ass.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:36:14]:
I’m basically the assistant. But I I took that, and I I ended up making sure we always had the best food for the meetings, the best coffee. And that actually opened up a lot of conversations because people were like, oh my gosh, Julie. You really know how to, you know, set the experience, and you know how to make this a really positive day for all of us. We’re gonna be in a room for 10 hours. And so but today, if I were to ask an employee to prepare coffee for a meeting, I I’m fearful for what I might get. So I still make it. I still take the trash out.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:36:44]:
You know? Like, lead by example, I guess.

James Kademan [00:36:48]:
Yeah. I get it. It’s so interesting that you say that because there’s I guess, either the work ethic, it sounds like you do as well where anything that you do, you just do it the best you can.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:36:57]:
Correct.

James Kademan [00:36:58]:
And there’s some people that are like, unless I believe that this is a job that’s gonna save the world, I don’t feel like I even need to do it, let alone be asked to do it. Correct. So, yeah, interesting dynamic. Very interesting dynamic. But that said, there’s some people of all generations that I found that have that are good or have a higher level of work ethic, which I imagine you have as well.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:37:21]:
Well, absolutely. And I think, like, you would probably agree too. So, you know, we’re also 2 business owners. Right? We also probably have a very different approach to our like, we have this innate desire to build and grow things. And and so we can expect all of our employees to want those same things. Right? So, you know, I don’t necessarily need a team of people who want my job or or wanna own my agents. Right? Like, do you know what I mean? To a point, no. To a point.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:37:52]:
But but you know what I’m saying? Like, I I can’t expect them to want the things that I want for myself, and so I do think that’s where kind of growing as a business owner and growing in my business is understanding and appreciating the paths that everyone wants to follow. And and, you know, we’ve I’ve been very lucky. I have many of my employees who have been with me for years years. And and I think that that’s a testament to the fact that they have found something that they, like and that they can get behind and but but they also get some flexibility, because I’ve given them that, right, in terms of the structure and the culture.

James Kademan [00:38:32]:
That’s cool. That’s cool. Tell me, I wanna talk a little bit about your office space pandemic. Are people working from home? Are they in the office?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:38:40]:
No. So we have a we’ve we’ve had a physical office. So I will say during the pandemic, obviously, we all get the same call to action to shut shutter the doors, you know, and go home, and we did. We worked remotely for, I believe it was 6 weeks. And then the day that they said that we were able to go back into the office if we could socially distance, we did. So with what we do, we could work from home. Right? I will say that post COVID, we do all work from home on Wednesday. So it’s work from home Wednesdays.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:39:12]:
I’d love to get us to 2 days a week, but I do think that in order to get to that place, we have to make sure that everybody is comfortable operating in a home environment. Right? You know, I know I can sit at my desk for 8 hours and go to the bathroom and grab food, but for a lot of folks, it’s really hard to have a discipline to stay focused on business when other things are happening at home, whether it’s kids or laundry or, you know, the cable guy shows up. It it’s just it can be more difficult.

James Kademan [00:39:40]:
Yeah. I get it. Totally understand. Tell me, what have been some of the challenges through challenges in your business since you started that you didn’t necessarily anticipate?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:39:50]:
Oh, wow. That’s good. Well, we’ve talked about, losing a large client, right, 3 years On, so that was definitely a big one. I would say one challenge I could have never anticipated, you know, I was in business. I started when I was 30. My husband and I were starting a family and met with a lot of infertility struggles for 5 years. And so, during that time though, I was still running the company and I was still responsible for all of those same things, and so was very fortunate. I have twin daughters, who will be 9 oh, 10.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:40:25]:
Actually, it’d be 10 in December, but, but I had to learn how to be a CEO and a mom 6 years into my journey. And, boy, was that a wake up call. And I, while I could foresee that there was going to have to be a shift, I didn’t anticipate the impact that those struggles would have, just on just, you know, you know, making sure that, you know, physically, I was fine, you know, during that time period, but also still being able to grow the business.

James Kademan [00:40:57]:
Fair. You know what’s interesting? I didn’t realize that we had this in common. Yeah. We my wife and I ran into the same thing. I have a 10 year old son now, but it was 5 years of dinking around with, fertility clinics and that whole

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:41:11]:
It’s horrible. I mean,

James Kademan [00:41:12]:
it’s awful. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:41:15]:
For me I mean, I will say this. I mean, I think for for and you guys probably fall On this category as well is that, you know, my husband and I were business owners. If there was something we want, we built it. If we there’s something we we needed, we would go get it. If we, you know, we really were in control, and I you know, that whole experience was devastating from the standpoint that it was completely outside of our capability, and we had to really trust in specialists and doctors that knew what they were doing. And and it was a 5 year journey. And then even once I was pregnant with the girls, there were so many restrictions. And so I actually had to make the decision to downsize my team.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:42:01]:
I made I did I I made the decision to, operate with some of the retainer based clients that we had had for years, and I could not focus on big growth. And, while, again, having children is my greatest gift, they are my greatest gifts. But I will say it was very difficult for me mentally to shift from growth, go for it to we’re just gonna operate status quo. We’re gonna keep our body healthy, our mental you know, we’re gonna keep ourselves healthy for the next 9 months and just focus on that. And so I look back now, and I remember how difficult that was having to, you know, let some of those employees go. It still kind of hurts to this day because I never would have let them go if not for the reality that I needed to scale back in order to to to really focus on my health for that for that period of time. And I’m happy to say that, you know, after they came and after I learned how to juggle both, I did build the business back dollar by dollar and got back up to the levels that I had been at previously. So, I mean, I got back there.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:43:13]:
And so in hindsight, I wish I would have given myself a little bit more grace, through that process because that was a really tough time.

James Kademan [00:43:20]:
No. I get it. I get it. It’s tough to even think about. Right? We’re talking 15 years ago. Yeah. Well, 15 to 10 or whatever.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:43:26]:
Yep.

James Kademan [00:43:27]:
But yeah. Yeah. It’s a tough I don’t for me, it’s kinda like the pandemic where you think Call, oh, yeah. That was the thing. Yeah. I forgot about that. I probably intentionally ignore that. It out.

James Kademan [00:43:39]:
Yes. Yeah. Interesting. What have been some of the successes or the good things that you didn’t necessarily anticipate when you started?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:43:47]:
Oh, so there’s been so many great things. I mean, I would say, you know, I’m incredibly humbled by, my team and the people that have joined Junction and have really poured their heart and soul into their jobs and really, like, been great stewards for this vision I had. And so I’m so thankful for that. And and I don’t think that, you know, it’s not that you think about it once. I I do think about it every day. Like, I’m very grateful that people have trusted me and have trusted and invested in my business and and put their careers into my business. So that’s sort of something that I think of often as, you know, it just strikes me, right, as as something I’m really grateful for. And then, you know, certainly, I just think over the years, I’ve gotten to work with so many incredible entrepreneurs, so many incredible business owners, that are really innovative, you know, and and making waves in their industry.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:44:43]:
And so I think that as you as I was building the business, I was also building these relationships with people who are still in my life today, even though they may not still be a client after 15 years, but there are definitely some clients who have been with us for a very long time, and we’ve watched their businesses grow. And and that feels good to be part of that as well.

James Kademan [00:45:04]:
Nice. Very cool. I know we don’t have a ton of time left, but I wanna ask you about your book, dare to become. You mentioned briefly why you why you wrote it. What was the I guess, tell me about the goal. Was it more a personal thing, or is it more spread it out to the world? Is it a marketing tool? Tell me a little bit about why.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:45:24]:
Yeah. So, you know, look. I’m a I’m the original journalism communication major of the nineties. Right? I, always wanted to be a reporter. I, you know, always wanted to write a book. I just didn’t know what I wanted to write. So I actually still really appreciate journalism and and, how hard it is to write a book, and and so I love everything about it. So I would say that was one thing.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:45:50]:
So I’ve always sort of been a writer. That’s always been my thing. Right? Writing content, journaling, that’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do. But then certainly, you know, when I started to sit down and write this book, it kind of took on a life of its own, and and this story unfolded for me. And so I do On to use this book really as, a tool. I, you know, I want to share my journey with other folks, and if I can inspire 1 person or change a perception or give somebody the motivation that they need to go be exceptional at what they’re they wanna be, then I’ve done my job. I will still, you know, be consulting. I definitely am lined up for some speaking engagements, but this is not, you know, a book to sell, a program or anything like that, but it really is part of my platform and and wanting to continue to help other businesses build and scale, you know, in their industries.

James Kademan [00:46:49]:
Very cool. Very cool. Tell me about the cover. What made you decide on that picture?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:46:56]:
Funny story. So my publisher had said to me, hey. Put together some book cover options. Send them over to me. Let me take a look. So I had our design team put together some really great, what I thought, were really great, book covers, very compelling creative, very exciting. And he was very polite, and he said, you know, Julie, these are, you know, beautiful. Right? But we either sell a concept or we sell you, and those are your options.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:47:26]:
So you don’t have a concept because the book is not here’s a program and here’s how you replicate it. Right? I mean, the book is really a prescriptive bio. It walks through my journey. He’s like, so we’re gonna sell you. And this was one of the pictures we had done at a photo shoot, that I had had, that same year, and I remember, picking out this outfit. I had had a stylist pick out all these other outfits that weren’t me. They didn’t represent who I was. And so at 4 o’clock in the morning, I woke up and went, I’ve got it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:47:56]:
It’s in my closet. And I pulled together this shirt, these pants, these shoes, these were all things I owned. And I put them on and he looked at me and he said, I’ve got the shot. And so it was the last shot of the day. And, when we took the photo, I felt confident and I felt secure. And so we put on the book cover, and my publisher was like, well, that’s how you put a picture on the cover. So he was very happy with with that. But it was just kinda haphazard how that picture came to be on the cover, because I had we had put together a ton of other options that had a really cute chair and some different fonts, but that’s how I ended up on the cover.

James Kademan [00:48:35]:
That is cool. No. It’s very it’s very confident.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:48:38]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:48:38]:
It’s very, yeah. I guess this one anytime you see an image like that that’s so simple but powerful. Yeah. You’re just like, oh, what do we got here? You’re better. Yeah. And then the name of the book, it’s just yeah. Simple.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:48:54]:
Yes. Here

James Kademan [00:48:55]:
it On. It’s cool. It’s cool. What have been some of the or what has been some of the feedback that you’ve gotten from the book?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:49:01]:
We’ve gotten some great feedback so far. We’ve gotten some, book reviewers, that have published some amazing reviews. And, you know, they’ve said that it really is almost as if they were having a conversation walking beside me as they were reading the story. And, they’ve also, you know, said that it was unlike other books that they’ve written because it wasn’t a how to. It wasn’t a step by step, but it was really it was more so inspirational, but yet also with some, you know, crumbs of of tips or insights. Like, hey. These are these are the three things you’re gonna run into, and you’ve gotta be mindful of these. So there still was a takeaway even though it wasn’t instructional.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:49:42]:
So I’m very I’m very happy so far. I’m sure other reviews will roll in here as we get closer to print, but so far so good.

James Kademan [00:49:50]:
Yeah. Oh, I do apologize. So it’s not, it’s not printed yet?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:49:54]:
It will be on shelves on September 3rd. It is available for presale virtually anywhere online. But, yeah, we are physically on shelves September 3rd.

James Kademan [00:50:03]:
Oh, very cool. I have to apologize. I didn’t realize that. That No. That’s okay. Brains. Why couldn’t find it? Okay. Got it.

James Kademan [00:50:09]:
That’ll do it. That’ll do it. That is super cool. Tell me just really quick. You have a publisher. How did you choose your publisher?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:50:19]:
Oh, gosh. Well, I would like to say I chose them. So as as I’m sure you know, going through the publishing process is very difficult. Right? So you get a lot of noes, and I was so humbled by all of the noes that I did get. I wasn’t loud enough. I wasn’t well known enough. I didn’t have a 1,000,000 followers on Instagram. So I went through a ton of nos and a friend, a dear friend, and colleague of mine had introduced me to my publisher.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:50:44]:
And, when I wrote the book, I was working with an incredible book coach, Rick Wolf, who is one of the best in publishing. And, he said, oh, you you worked with Rick? And I said, I did. He is like, ah. He’s like, I’ll read your book. Let me let me take a look, and then he said he would publish it. And so, it really, speaks to the industry and how, you know, if you’re really good at what you do people will pay attention, and it took me a long time to find someone who said yes, but I did. And I’m very excited, to say that publisher is willing to publish my book.

James Kademan [00:51:22]:
That is incredible. Yeah. That is incredible.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:51:25]:
Yeah. I’m a

James Kademan [00:51:26]:
little I don’t even know if I should say embarrassed, but when I published my book, I just self published because my sister is a writer, and she was telling me all the things, the agents, and all that kind of stuff.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:51:36]:
Well, but self publishing, I must well, but what I’ve learned, right, is that, you know, publishing is a beautiful industry, but it is not designed for authors to have control over the destiny of their book. Right? So I for me, I wanted a traditional publisher because I felt like I wanted the industry to validate that this was On fact a book that was of value. You know, but, you know, if I were to publish future books, or when I publish future books, will I do things a little differently? Probably. Right? Because I said I say this to my husband all the time. I should have trusted enough in myself, in my own capability, likely as you did when you self published. Your book has gone on to be, you know, a big success. And I think that, you know, when you when you trust yourself and you trust what you know you’re capable of, you know, you don’t always have to have, you know, that to rely on. So I think if you’ve published a book, regardless of how you’ve published it, it’s still an incredible feat.

James Kademan [00:52:36]:
Fair. Fair. Yeah. Congratulations on your book. It’s a big deal. Thank you. It’s impressive. I imagine you hear from people the same way that I hear from people when you tell them you wrote a book.

James Kademan [00:52:46]:
They’re like, oh, yeah. I meant to write a book. Or I thought about writing a book or I started a book or just something Yeah. And they never actually completed it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:52:55]:
Yeah. I’ve heard that. I’ve also like, people sort of, like, don’t know what to say either because, I mean, it is kind of a foreign thing. And I I guess because I’ve always wanted to write On. I just assume everybody else wants to write one. Right? Like, that you know? And a lot of people are like, yeah. I don’t understand. Like, why? Like, what? Like, I don’t get it.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:53:15]:
You know? And, but you know what? We can’t all be authors. So

James Kademan [00:53:19]:
No. Fair. Fair. Everybody’s got their skills. It’s all good.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:53:22]:
Yeah.

James Kademan [00:53:23]:
All good. Well, Julie, thank you so much for being on the show.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:53:26]:
Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. This has been a great conversation, and I really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

James Kademan [00:53:32]:
Yeah. Anytime. Where can people find you?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:53:35]:
Yeah. Absolutely. They can find me on my website, which is www.juliecroppgorillic.com. That is my website. And if you’re looking for the book, like I said, you can Google the name Dare to Become, and you can buy it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any of your local bookshops. We’re available online. And on 3rd, we’ll be on shelves.

James Kademan [00:53:53]:
September 3, 2024. Yes. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Julie.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:53:59]:
Yes. Thank you.

James Kademan [00:54:00]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at CallsOnCall.com. And, of course, the Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, keep the algorithm happy, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those that may need a little bit of inspiration from someone like Julie. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Julie Cropp Gareleck. Hopefully, Julie, I apologize if I messed it up, but tell me if I did okay.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:54:50]:
You did just fine.

James Kademan [00:54:51]:
Alright. Author of Dare to Become from the corner booth to the corner office. And, Julie, what about your, the Junction Creative? Is there a website for that?

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:55:01]:
Yeah. Absolutely. It’s www.junction-creative.com.

James Kademan [00:55:06]:
I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Julie Cropp Gareleck [00:55:09]:
Thank you.

James Kademan [00:55:10]:
Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.