Podcast Episode 97 - Behind the scenes with Julia Jones
Interview with Julia Jones
Newborn Mothers founding director and lead educator, Julia Jones, gets behind the microphone as the guest of her own podcast! This episode is guest-hosted by Dusk Liney, the business manager at Newborn Mothers, inviting Julia to reflect on 2023 and the year of leading Newborn Mothers. In this episode, Julia shares the behind-the-scenes of creating the postpartum education and care professional training, starting a new mastermind and transitioning from a sole trader to a company. At the core of this conversation, we explore overcoming resistance, leading with grace, and building a business where you can care for others AND yourself.
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About Julia
Julia Jones is the founding director of Newborn Mothers, a world-leading postpartum professional training organisation. Julia is a postpartum educator, a maternal care business mentor and a best-selling author.
Over the last ten years, Julia has trained over 1500 postpartum professionals in over 60 countries and mentored postpartum professional leaders in creating six-figure businesses and cultural change.
Julia is known for her new paradigm for postpartum transformation and cultural change, as well as for disrupting the maternal care industry to establish postpartum professionals as a recognised career.
We explore the following questions:
Where were you at this time last year in Newborn Mothers?
What was the personal journey of internal resistance like for you?
What was the first action that you took to level up your business?
How did you go about the decision to pre-sell the course and create it after people had bought it?
How do you hold that tension between ambition and this life of calm and joy that you want to live?
What were your working hours last year and what have they been this year? How do you choose when it's a maintenance phase and a growth phase?
Why did you start the Newborn Mothers Mastermind? What has that experience been like for you?
Why did you transition from a sole trader to a company? Why did you decide to bury yourself in paperwork to do that this year?
What are you most proud of this year? What are you most thankful for in your business?
Additional resources we spoke about:
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Transcript
Dusk Liney:
Hi, and welcome to the Newborn Mothers Podcast. Today's guest is Julia Jones, the CEO and founder of Newborn Mothers. My name is Dusk. I am the business manager at Newborn Mothers, and I will be interviewing Julia today on the year that has been and the behind-the-scenes of what it's been like to run her business this year. Welcome, Julia.
Julia Jones:
Thank you, Dusk. That just made me really nervous.
Where were you at this time last year in Newborn Mothers?
Dusk Liney:
I like that. So today's episode is an opportunity just to hear from you. You are always the one interviewing others, but we want to shine the spotlight on you today, particularly around what it is like to run a business at this level, in maternal care. To sneak behind the scenes and see the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. I'd like to start by getting a sense of where were you at this time last year?
Julia Jones:
I've known for many years that at some point I would want to take the next leap in my business. For many years I've been comfortably earning around $300,000 to $400,000 a year. I've had a very small team. I've worked very few and flexible hours, and it's been lovely, but I've always had in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘I know at some point I am going to want to take the next leap’. This year, 2023 was the year to do that. But I also felt as so many people do when they start or grow a business, so much resistance to that, so much. I've known for years what I've needed to do, and yet at some point you just have to do it. I just had to decide this is it, I'm going for it.
Actually Dusk, I think you were a bit the catalyst for that because I knew I needed a business manager. I knew I needed to upgrade the course, and I knew that I needed to become a company and have employees rather than just contractors. I knew all these things that had to happen. But I think that the thing that finally made me take the leap was actually I was meeting with my Facebook ad manager, Miranda, who also does a little bit of woo-woo energy goal-setting type work. She was the one who said to me one time, I was saying, "I want to do all these things, but I need a business manager." She's like, "Well, why don't you just put it out there? You never know if the perfect person is just there, just try it." So very informally, without doing really a big position description or advertising far and wide, I just sent an email out to my list, think I put it on my social pages, and I was like, let's just see what happens and Dusk, you arrived. Then I was like, "Okay, we're doing it. This is it. We're on the rollercoaster.”
What was the personal journey of internal resistance like for you?
Dusk Liney:
Amazing. Amazing. I guess having that operational resource support was there, that external person that could be part of the implementation. I remember actually in an interview, you're like, "I just need a right-hand woman." I was like, "Well, I just want to be the right-hand woman." It was this perfect fusion. So you knew that you had the operational support to put things in place, but what about that internal resistance of nervousness? What was that like for you? The personal journey?
Julia Jones:
It's very physical. I think the older I get, the more I realize, and it's not complicated, is it? But when you're sick, sometimes you have a tummy ache because you're actually worried or you have a headache because you're nervous or you feel nauseous because you're scared. It was a very physical experience. My philosophy to approaching these things is to take action. I feel like the best way to overcome fear is to actually take the action. The more I dwell on those bodily sensations, the less likely I would actually be to overcome them. My biggest two strategies early on, one was moving my body, dancing, running around, not running. I don't run run, but what I mean is just being silly and star jumps and jumping around, using up my energy, going for swims, going for walks, mostly dancing.
Anytime I'd feel that physical feeling, I literally had a few songs that I would put on and I'd just jump around the room, but then take action because if I waited till the feeling subsided until I didn't feel afraid before doing it, I just don't think I would ever take action. So instead I'm like, "All right, well take the action." Then I know that it's usually not as bad as I think it's going to be. Then the fear goes away because you've tested it. You're like, "Oh, there's actually no monsters in the dark. All these things I was worried about didn't actually happen. Maybe something did happen, but not all the things." Then I don't feel so afraid anymore. So I've always just had that approach to fear that if you're scared, then you take a step and see if that fear is real.
What was the first action that you took to level up your business?
Dusk Liney:
Absolutely. So then what was that first action that you took once you had your business manager, me, in place, what was the next action you took?
Julia Jones:
We committed to upgrading the course. For a long time I've been teaching a six-module postpartum education course alongside a six-module breastfeeding course, which is actually only four new modules because two of them were the same. I knew that I wanted the breastfeeding content to be included in the main course for everyone. I also knew we needed mental health module and a sleep module. I also knew I wanted to add something about advocacy and sustainability, that became the 12th and final module. That transition, committing to creating a 12-module world-leading educational resource on postpartum care when there really isn't anything else out there. It's not like I can look at what other people have done because it doesn't exist. So that's always been quite a hallmark of working in postpartum care. I'm sure lots of listeners feel that too. They're like, "When I started out as a postpartum doula, there was no one else in my town," or, "I really want to work in this area, but there's just no one else doing anything like what I want to see."
So having that vision and committing to creating that 12-module course, bringing on the new contractors, the educators, the new employee, which was you, and working with my amazing assistant, Frances, who's been with me for five years to upgrade that course. It's a bit scary because once I committed to it and I started selling it, I was on deadlines every week to actually create it, which was a big, long, and quite stressful time. I won't lie. I knew that I was heading in for a stressful time. I had cleared the decks. I told my husband, "This is what my work's going to look like. You need to do school pickup and drop off, and it's going to be a year where... and then after that year, we can shift gears again." Which now we're coming into that next stage. But it is a bit scary knowing like, all right, we're jumping on now, we're doing it, we're committing, and you can't really get off till it's done.
How did you go about the decision to pre-sell the course and create it after people had bought it?
Dusk Liney:
Yes. I really want you to just go over that process where you decided not to create the course and then sell it, but to pre-sell the course and create it after people had bought it. Because often we think, "Oh, I can't sell something that's not there yet." How did you go about that decision?
Julia Jones:
Well, it is a bit of a risk, and I know there's lots of business people who wouldn't actually recommend it. I also just know my own personality and that if I don't have a deadline, I won't finish it. So I know from 15 years of experience in business that if I said I was going to create a course and there was no external pressure to do that, I would just go to the beach. I'm naturally not a busy person, but I am a very ambitious person. So the only way those two things in me can be satisfied, the need to have big goals and huge ambition, but also the need to have actually quite a quiet and simple life. The only way I can make that work for me is to pre-sell.
I've always done that with everything that I've ever done. I pre-sold my recipe book. I pre-sold my first online course. I've always pre-sold everything that I've ever done. The only thing I didn't pre-sell was my second book, and that was actually only because it was a failed crowdfunding campaign. Because that crowdfunding campaign failed, it took me probably an extra year to finish that project, both financially and also because I then didn't have a deadline. That's what happens if I don't have that external pressure.
So I sold it and we just told everyone there was going to be a module every week and a break every three weeks starting on this date. We tried to get, I think the first three or so done ahead of time, and then we did try and stay a little bit ahead. But honestly, by the end of the 12 weeks, it was a mad panic every Monday to get the content out. I think you have to make sure that your team is okay with that as well, because it doesn't just put pressure on me, it puts pressure on you, Dusk, as well as Frances and our educators.
Also, I think letting go of some perfectionism really helps with that and letting go of any shame because sometimes we didn't actually meet our deadlines and we would just honestly say to our students, "Look, we're going to have one more rest week this week because we haven't finished our content. You're just going to have to wait one week for this module."
But overall, I think the modules were so good, and I was very confident because I've been working in postpartum for 15 years. I was very confident that the educational content was excellent. It was not available anywhere else in the world. Having that behind me made me feel like, "Well, look, if it's a week late, that's okay. I feel sorry. I feel bad about it, but I'm not going to spend energy on shame and guilt because we are all doing our best. We're all busy people with families and personal lives and sicknesses and things come up, and I know in my heart the work is good and I'm doing my best, and that's all you can ever do."
How do you hold that tension between ambition and this life of calm and joy that you want to live?
Dusk Liney:
Amazing. It was incredible to witness this grace that you had on yourself because my working history has been being in organizations where you go for gold and you make it happen at all costs, but I really respected how something might come up in your personal life and you'd say, "All right, everybody, we're changing the timeline because I'm prioritizing this." It felt very, very unique. I felt like it was a real example of bringing in the kind of leadership that we want to see in our political system, in our education system where you acknowledged and hold that tension between ambition and this life of calm and joy that you want to live.
Julia Jones:
It's an interesting one that ‘all costs’ is a good way to put it because I've always known that my business, I want to earn heaps of money. I want to make a massive impact. But the reason I want to do that is because I want to have a healthy, happy life. I want to spend time with my family. I want to have hobbies. I want to go on holidays. So that's why it's not at all costs because my ambitious goals don't mean that those things don't matter. That's not acceptable to me.
I started this business as a solo business being really kind to myself. I always say this to people, if you're self-employed you both the boss and you're the employee and are you a good boss to yourself? Because a lot of self-employed people don't give themselves superannuation, don't give themselves sick days, don't allow themselves enough breaks between clients. They're not good bosses to themselves.
If you think about it, you'd probably be a better boss to someone else than you would to yourself. But I'd had a lot of practice of being a solo business owner and having that idea of I'm going to be a good boss to myself. I'm going to be the boss to myself that I would want in a workplace. Then adding more people to that workplace, that was just a natural extension of saying, "It's okay to be sick. It's okay if your kids are sick. It's okay if your car's broken down or you've got an appointment or you're just pooped today. That's okay. We'll do it tomorrow." It was like the way that I've spent many years cultivating that attitude as a boss to myself. Then that just naturally extends to you and to Frances and everyone else as well.
Dusk Liney:
Absolutely. It feels very counter-cultural, and I am loving it. I love being able to take sick days because you're the one saying, "No, don't work through. Go lie down." Or on the first day of my menstrual cycle, being able to say, "Oh, I'm going to take a step back and use this part of my cycle to focus on this area of the business," and you're like, "Go for it. I can't wait to see what you notice." It gives so much flexibility and life to all of us as we build it together.
Julia Jones:
My belief is ultimately that that actually increases productivity as well, because we're doing the work that's aligned. I know that Dusk, when you're ticking off tasks, you just fire through them so fast. It's amazing to watch. But then sometimes there will be a few days when you've got a migraine and not much is happening, but I know that the day that you're back at your desk and you're ready, you'll work twice as fast. So there's no point actually trying to push through.
What were your working hours last year and what have they been this year? How do you choose when it's a maintenance phase and a growth phase?
Dusk Liney:
That's amazing. Coming back to your working hours, I think you mentioned earlier sometimes you work 10 hours a week. How do you decide? What was your working hours last year and what have they been this year and how do you choose when it's a maintenance phase and a growth phase?
Julia Jones:
A lot of it's just cyclical because starting a business is always a growth stage. For me, I'm in the third stage of my business. I started my business as a postpartum doula. I worked in people's homes, I cooked for them. I did massage, all the typical doula stuff. I ran mother circles. I did that for about five years. Then I launched online, and I did that for about 10 years. So it was getting very comfortable for me.
My kids were all a bit older, all in school. I think that's the other thing. It was when does my personal life allow for this? My husband got a different job that meant that he had a little bit more flexible hours. So I knew I was ready for the next big leap, the next growth stage, which is the new course, setting up as a company, having employees. I think how do you know when you're ready? I think it's just when you've got a little bit of a capacity to do it, but also you do just need that little nudge. Because to be honest, I could have done this at any point in the last few years. I've probably been quite comfortable for a few years, and I could have found the time, but you just also have to have some kind of little nudge that gets you started as well.
But then also I like to close those growth stages too. I know Dusk, in our business at the moment because I have been working more hours. I've been tracking my hours this year because I've been trying to work more than 30 hours rather than my usual 20 or even 10. That's just because we've had some big goals to achieve. But then I like to mark the end of that as well so that business doesn't become the long-term cultural norm in the workplace. So we're wrapping up for Christmas. We're all taking a good break over the summer holidays and looking at now just much more going back to those standard operating procedures - the maintenance, daily, weekly, monthly things that need to happen, saying no to all kinds of new projects and really deliberately just slowing down again.
Dusk Liney:
It's amazing that you can make that decision, knowing that if you stay in the growth stage, that's what leads to burnout.
Julia Jones:
There's no way you can do that forever. So it's okay to go, "Great, this is my six months," or, "This is my year, this is the stage that I'm in. It's hard. These are the extra supports I'm putting around myself to be able to do it, and there's an end to that as well."
Why did you start the Newborn Mothers Mastermind? What has that experience been like for you?
Dusk Liney:
Now, this is the sort of thing that you teach in the Mastermind, which was another element to the growth phase of this year, starting the Newborn Mother's Mastermind. Can you speak a little bit to what that experience has been like for you and why you even started a Mastermind?
Julia Jones:
I have run Masterminds in the past. Often the way I'll teach things is I'll start working one-on-one with people, and then after I've had enough experience, then I can figure out how to systemize it. I can say, "Okay, I'm getting the same questions, I'm repeating the same things. I'm always sharing those same resources or this same checklist." Then eventually that can become something that is not one-on-one, but is one to many. Again, from the beginning, I had one-on-one clients, and then I actually started teaching postnatal education to mums originally, not to professionals. Then that moved on to professionals.
It's the same with teaching business skills. I started out running a Mastermind where I was teaching not one-on-one, but one in a small group, but all live getting feedback, sharing my knowledge, people asking questions and teaching them how to start their postpartum business. That was my first Mastermind. Then I took six months off travel in 2021. It was meant to be in 2020, but we had to delay it for a year for obvious reasons. In 2020, I stopped doing that Mastermind because I was going to take a big break from work.
Then we restarted the Mastermind this time because I was ready to teach new... and then that's been systemized. So that's now the membership. What I used to teach people in those small groups is now turned into lessons, curriculum, modules, worksheets, because I've taught it enough times to enough people that I've managed to systemize it.
Now I'm in the process of systemizing how do you then scale to having a multiple six-figure business? Because I've been doing that myself for many years now, but I'm not still experienced with teaching it. I still don't know exactly what those steps are. So the first step for me learning how to teach it is teaching it to small groups. They can ask their questions. I can give feedback. We do this constant iterational process of improving and tweaking and figuring out what those pillars are. I don't know if I'll ever turn that into an actual systemized course. I'm not really sure where that will land, but it has been a great joy to make explicit the things that I've learned and do in my business. Having run a six-figure business for so many years, sometimes you even forget what they are when you've just been doing it for so long.
Actually Dusk, you've been quite helpful because you're like, "Oh, why do you do it like this?" Then I'm like, "Oh, I didn't even think to explain that to you, but this is the reason." That's what we're doing in the Mastermind, teaching people who have established businesses, who already have a website, they already know how to sell, they already have clients and they want to do something bigger. Usually both, they want to have a bigger impact on the world. They also want to make more money. So how do we then systemize those ideas and turn them into... The biggest reason for me to do that is being so rare in the world as a successful maternal care business, I just want more of that.
I want that to be a normal thing that people know is a real job, that they can go and have a real career that makes plenty of money, that they can make a difference and they can buy a home. That caring work isn't mutually exclusive of being cared for yourself, that you can actually do both. I don't think it's really fair to make people choose. You have to be an engineer and you can eat food and pay the bills, or you can work in a caring profession and be homeless. No, that's not acceptable to me. That's really what the Mastermind is about, is really demonstrating and teaching people that this is possible.
Why did you transition from a sole trader to a company? Why did you decide to bury yourself in paperwork to do that this year?
Dusk Liney:
Amazing. It's been incredible to see all of the things that you do in Newborn Mothers to just so open-handedly share that with the Masterminders. So that they too can build successful maternal care businesses that not only have an impact but make money, like you said.
The third thing that was big for you this year was transitioning from a sole trader to a company. Why on earth did you decide to bury yourself in paperwork to do that this year?
Julia Jones:
I'll be totally honest. It's not my favorite thing running a company, but because I had a tax problem, that's when you start a company. I was earning so much profit as a sole trader that I needed to find some better ways to manage my taxes. That's why you transition to being a company. So we now have a family trust and a company, and the company actually employs me as well now as my team, I now have two employees as well as... well, three including me and Frances, who is actually still a subcontractor, but that's just because she's overseas. So it's a slightly different arrangement that we have with her.
I would always say delay starting a company until you have a tax problem. Lots of people start companies earlier, but the amount of financial advice, legal advice, the time and the cost of that is a lot. So really only do it when you need to do it. Keep your business simple while you can.
That's been interesting learning to write employment contracts, understanding payroll, understanding what a family trust is and how I pay company tax as well as personal tax as well as employee taxes and superannuation. Like I said, not my favorite thing, but it is just part of growing up. It's part of going, "All right, I want my business to grow and these are the skills that I have to learn."
I'm quite a stubborn person. My husband's often like, "Why don't you just tell Dusk to do that? She's the business manager." I'm like, "No, because I like to understand it." Once I understand it, I'll be able to say, "Great Dusk, we've got a new employee. Here's how you can prepare the contracts," or whatever. Not that I plan to have more employees. I still want to keep things quite lean. But for now, I think all the way through in my business, I even started out doing a little bit of my own bookkeeping, not much, but just enough because I want to be able to look at my bookkeeping and understand what it means. I want to be able to look at my employment contracts and understand what they mean. Why is that line there? Why do we do it like this? After that, then yeah, I'll systemize it. I'll outsource it. During this growth year, it's been a big learning curve, I'm getting legal and financial advice, but I am doing the nuts and bolts of it myself.
Dusk Liney:
It's great to hear, I think, well, it's encouraging to hear, particularly for those of us that are still in those early years of running our own businesses, that no matter how big you get, there's always stuff that you're learning and you're growing into, even if it's huge amounts of paperwork and legal things.
What are you most proud of this year? What are you most thankful for in your business?
We have been going for a while. To bring this to a close, I have two questions, which you will be familiar with because we ask them at the end of our meetings when we remember and that is: What are you most proud of this year and what are you most thankful for in your business?
Julia Jones:
Well, most thankful for you, Dusk. It's funny because we do at dinner time every night, we often do what do you appreciate and what are you proud of? We do it at home as well. For a long time after I employed you, my kids would joke like, "Oh, mum's just going to say, 'Dusk,' again." Because it has been such a huge help having someone like you, not only for the project management side of things, but also because you have a nuanced understanding of maternal care. That's been really valuable as well, because I know that I could have hired someone who just did the project management side of things, and I've had people like that in my team in the past. But the real blessing is someone who can also really understand the context that we're working in, which is quite unique. So I really appreciate that.
What am I proud of? I'm just proud of doing it. Obviously, I delayed and procrastinated for years, but at some point I just decided to start. Once you get on that rollercoaster, you just can't get off until it's finished. So I'm glad I just got on it. Then once you get on it, well, the momentum just takes you along. You can't stop. You just have to keep pedaling. We started and now we're finished. I'm glad I did it even though it was honestly quite a stressful year. I always teach people really low-stress business stuff as much as I can, but I also acknowledge there are stages of life and stages of business that there just is going to be more stress. This has been one of them, and I'm proud we all got through it in one piece.
Dusk Liney:
Absolutely proud of what you created. The postpartum education and care professional training is just magnificent. The Masterminders, seeing them create their own vision and hopes for the world is so wonderful to see. Then to be part of this company where you've been able to hire me is just such a gift.
I often say how thankful I am for you as well in this work because it's amazing to be able to bring my skills into this passion for maternal care. Being able to be part of not just the impact in the family home and community, but also the impact of our culture. Really, you are part of shaping a society that values and honors mothers and caregivers, and that's incredible to be part of.
Julia Jones:
I'm going to add one more thing that I'm proud of. I'm proud that my business pays my mortgage. It's pretty amazing to be able to buy a house, but then also Antonia's been putting offers, my other employee, on houses at the moment too. So being able to give a payslip to other women working in maternal care so that they can also build better futures and more stability financially, I just think what a privilege that I'm able to do that. I think at the beginning of the year, it felt like a responsibility. I felt stressed about that. Now at this end of the year, I feel so blessed. I feel so lucky that I have the opportunity to not only do that for myself and my family, but to do that for other people too.
Dusk Liney:
Absolutely. I would say, yes, luck is always a factor, but I see your skills, your expertise, and how hard you work. I think luck only accounts for some of that because you've worked really hard to bring this into existence.
Julia Jones:
Maybe not hard, I worked really smart.
Dusk Liney:
Yes. You worked, consistent action. You worked with consistent action, which is awesome.
Julia Jones:
Consistent and imperfect action.
Dusk Liney:
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Julia Jones:
But not hard. We try not to do things the hard way.
Dusk Liney:
I like that. I like that. Beautiful.
Julia Jones:
Oh, thank you so much, Dusk.
Dusk Liney:
Beautiful. Thanks so much for getting behind the mic and sharing the behind-the-scenes of Newborn Mothers.
Julia Jones:
Thanks.
