019: Declutter Your Life and Reawaken Your Brilliance with Julie Coraccio of Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

#00:00:35-1# Neil: Hello everybody, its Neil Ball here thank you so much for joining me today on The Entrepreneur Way. The Entrepreneur Way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mindset, the committment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Julie Coraccio. But before I do, I have got a little bit of trivia for you. Thomas Pinchon said, if they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers. The Entrepreneurs Way asks the right questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Julie, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:22-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I am, thank you for having me Neil.

#00:01:23-4# Neil: Its a pleasure Julie. Julie Coratio is an award winning professional organiser and lifestyle coach who supports people in de-cluttering all areas of life. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic to create the life they choose, deserve and desire. She is the host of the successful self-help podcast clearing the clutter inside and out. She lives in Rayleigh, North Carolina, with her husband Tony and their rescued black cats, Joey and Antonio. When not at the beck and call of her cats, she enjoys hiking, baking, reading, playing cards and bubble baths and supporting environmental and animal causes. Julie, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to know more about what you do and who you are?

#00:02:17-2# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Absolutely. I am very passionate about helping people clear the clutter on the inside and out. When alot of people talk about clearing clutter, getting organised, they tend to focus just on the physical. But I found through my work, that whatever is going on on the inside, is most definately reflected on the outside. And when you are able to clear your clutter, that allows you to concentrate on whats important. And when you are concentrating on whats important then you can live a life full of joy and fulfillment, and that really gets me excited, because when we are coming from joy and fulfillment, we share our guests with the world. Wouldn’t it be this amazing world to have all these people who were happy and doing what they love? You know society would look completely different than it does now, and I love it because no client is the same, and so that keeps me on my toes, and I get to support people in  variety of ways, and I started my business, because I was in a really awful job and I thought, well what could I do that I would enjoy but I could also be good with? and as I thought about it, I thought organisation because when I am organised and don’t have a cluttered life, then I can focus and do what I choose to do.

#00:03:31-7# Neil: Ok, Julie could you just talk a little bit more about what you do because I am fascinated with what you do, so can you talk about the benefits for somebody on a personal level of what you do and then also on a business level of what you do?

#00:03:46-5# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Sure so I help people clear clutter and get organised through professional organising, and even though that is the physical part, all the other stuff comes up as well and so I will give you an example, oh here is a good story for a personal something to help a client. So I do that also through physical organising and life-coaching and I have also created a de-clutter your life course and I have organising videos that people are really motivated and do-it-yourselfers, I have products to help them. So I was working with someone, and we had a stack probably two or three feet high of paper, and I said, ‘ok whats going on here?’ and she said, ‘those are articles that I am going to send to people’, you know if you see something in the newspaper, magazine, and made a clipping? and I said, ‘ok well how long have we had this stack?’ two to three years. So as we talked more, because I believe because we all have the answers inside, and so I view my job as to support you into figuring out whats going on, and to be able to release it. And so as we talked, she made the connection, she said, ‘I’m afraid if I don’t send people notes and clippings that they are not going to love me anymore.’ As soon as she was able to voice that, and have that crystal clear realisation, we were able to re-cycle the entire stack because she knew that wasn’t true, people were not going to stop loving her if she didn’t send them something in the mail every so often. And so its about digging deeper and finding out what is important. And so thats just again, even though thats a personal thing, that affects you in business, because if you have cleared the clutter in your home, its going to get you out on the door on time. But heres an example from a business perspective, so I was asked by someone, they said, ‘will you fill in for me, I am unable to do this speech.’ So I was like, absolutely, so I contacted the person and its interesting because you sometimes can’t tell via email what the person is feeling and sometimes that can cause problems because you mis-judged that. So she said, ‘absolutely not, I already found a replacement, because she double booked me’ and so I ended up contacting her and saying, ‘hey you know theres something that we can work on here, because she didn’t have a system, she didn’t have a counter system, that was disorganised and full of clutter, so she double booked herself. Now the reality is that woman will probably never hire her, and probably never ask her to speak again, and I can tell you numerous stories when people have been disorganised and have a desk where they can’t find anything, and they lose business as a result.

#00:06:25-0# Neil: So its a mental and a physical de-cluttering that you are doing isn’t it really?

#00:06:28-6# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well I would also say that its, emotional, what I consider spiritual and energetic so say you have a client that makes you feel guilty, I’m a firm believer, you are allowed to fire clients. If someone is impossible, why work with them? Life is too short, thats trusting ok if I take a stand for myself and I put good boundaries and I’m not saying ‘do the wrong by the client’ but I’m just saying there are some people you are not meant to work with, and are just really tough and always want to get you at a discount. Let those people go, but if you feel guilty, oh my gosh, that to me is emotional clutter. Oh should I have said this, I can’t believe I released that, that client and that was five months ago. Then that clutters your brain, and spiritual clutter, an example would be comparing yourself to someone. ‘Oh she’s a better organiser than I am because she’s been on tv’ doesn’t make her better. She’s just different, and so instead of wasting your time comparing yourself to someone else, what about yourself can you improve? And then finally an example of energetic clutter, sometimes people say, ‘well I don’t understand that.’ If you have ever been in a room after an intense fight, you can literally feel the tension in the air, after the fight. And so thats what I mean by energetic clutter, does it feel good to come into your office? I’ve worked with clients who the space wasn’t inspiring, it was dark. We need to change the physical space, get the energy going so you want to be in that room.

#00:08:02-4# Neil: I understand, thats great. So what do you enjoy most about what you do Julie?

#00:08:09-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: What do I enjoy most? I believe that I love working with a variety of different people, I love when I wake up in the morning, that each day is going to be different, because that also keeps me sharp but I enjoy it. When I work with someone and they have improved a relationship with their spouse, its helped them become more productive at business. They now have piece of mind, and are less stressed, thats a win/win.

#00:08:33-1# Neil: Mmmm so as you speak about this, its personal development isn’t it? In a way but focusing on clutter?

#00:08:40-8# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Yes, I believe so.

#00:08:42-7# Neil: Right ok, thats really interesting so what is it that drives you?

#00:08:49-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well I would say ultimately, if we are looking at the bigger picture, I wanna live in a better world. You know I don’t want to see people sad, I don’t want to see people hungry, and when others thrive, we all do, and as I mentioned earlier, if we are all expressing our joy and whats bringing us happiness, think about what every day would be like. How amazing would that be? And you know my other motivation is of course to give my cats a better life, but those are the main motivations.

#00:09:15-9# Neil: Mmm a noble cause. And how do you relax when you are not working in your business? I mean obviously you touched on that in the intro,

#00:09:25-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I love to hike, my husband and I do hiking every week and we learned yesterday that 30 degrees was our cut off point, that we can’t hike below 30 degrees but that is something that I really enjoy. I love to bake, I’m learning to cook better, we’ve been on no sugar and no gluten for about three weeks now and I am going to take that a step further and do the whole 30, so thats been really enjoyable because I am learning to bake with almond flour and stevia and expanding all that. And we love to play games, and as you mentioned my bio, my time to relax is in the bubble bath. I have a bubble bath just about every day, that just chills me out and brings me back to centre and something that I couldn’t live without.

#00:10:11-5# Neil: Fantastic and do you have any entrepreneur role models?

#00:10:18-7# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: You know I don’t pick role models based on if they are entrepreneur or not. Because I have considered with life-style coaching, I’m always looking to be a better person, so my role models have been two coaches that I have worked with, one is Lisa Transendance-Brown who was here in Rahleigh and is now in Hawaii, and is just really wonderful and Elizabeth Tuttel who is here in Rahleigh. And they are what I would call, for me they are mentors, they are spiritual coaches, it involves everything but working with them is very intense, but its helped me become a better person, and because I have become a better person, it has allowed my business to do better because when I am at a 110% thats reflected in everything I do.

#00:10:59-7# Neil: Mmmm and do you still use coaches now?

#00:11:01-0# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Yes.

#00:11:02-1# Neil: You do, and how do you think that helps you?

#00:11:06-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I think its always beneficial to have and if you don’t have a coach, find a good friend to have a different perspective, to have someone to bounce ideas from and if I am being an idiot, I want to hear about it. And they can say hey you know, stop, lets take a moment, have a deep breath, lets talk about this, can you see how this action might be perceived and so its extremely valuable.

#00:11:30-5# Neil: And so the coach and you see are something where you sort of exploring your own ideas rather than somebody giving you ideas would you say? or do these people give you ideas as well to sort things out if you have got something to talk about.

#00:11:43-0# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh yes and again its about I want to be the best that I can be, and I can’t be that, I need people who have that outside perspective to help me and its always beneficial, and the one thing that is really awesome I want to say is, its very important to be authentic and so if I learned something from them, I make it my own. ‘Oh you know I really like that but how can I put the Julie twist on it.’ so that its mine, I’m not copying from someone, I want it to come from me,

#00:12:13-8# Neil: So presumably you combine that with something else, or some other idea you have got, is that the way you do that?

#00:12:18-6# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Mmm hmm

#00:12:20-4# Neil: Julie can we talk about the time before you were an entrepreneur? and the difficulties you had to overcome when you started your business?

#00:12:30-3# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well I would say the first thing I was in, I am grateful for this everyday. I was in a horrible job, it was literally the worst job I had ever been in my adult life and I had been working since I was 14. But I’ve learned to have gratitude from that because if it hadn’t of been so horrible, I don’t know if I would have had the guts to start my own business. You know I applaud anyone who is an entrepreneur, who is out there doing it, because its not easy, and my attitude at the time was you know what, it can’t be any worse than I’m doing now. I was fortunate that my business, and at the time I was just doing professional organising before I expanded to coaching and creating products. But I had relatively low start up costs, I wasn’t a brick and mortar place, and so what I did is I knew fairly early on that I was going to quit this job, but I said, I am going to be smart about it, and so I planned, so for instance I got my website up, I did my LLC and all those types of things while I was still at my job. The biggest challenge I found early on was getting clients, in my particular area there are lot of professional organisers, and it was important to find my niche which I did fairly early in my business. But that is something I did not know prior to starting the business and getting out there. And I learned, just because you have a website up, doesn’t mean that people are going to call.

#00:13:48-1# Neil: No, you do have to get traffic to it don’t you? and its like having a shop, if you could have a shop in the middle of a field, no-one knows its there, no-one is going to come to it so yeh you have got to market it. Did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:14:02-6# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I didn’t, I was exhausted from the job I was in, and so again really that removed all fear and doubt. Now that isn’t to say I didn’t have fears and doubts later on but not at the very beginning.

#00:14:14-0# Neil: Ok and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:14:17-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I would say the biggest mistake was I didn’t hire people when I should have. When you are an entrepreneur, especially I’m a solopreneur, I might expand, I haven’t decided on that but right now its me, so I have to wear hats. I have to be the marketer, I have to be the social media person, I have to be the finance person, and so you have got to do all these things and sometimes when you are starting off, there are budget constraints. I mean you need to be realistic. But I think wisdom allows you to know, when you need to hire someone. I recently had my website re-done and it was worth every dime to have someone who knows design do it. I could have never visualised what they did. And the other mistake that I made, is I also would have started networking for my business before I quit my job. People do business with people they like.

#00:15:05-6# Neil: Yeh absolutely, so your outsource of design of your website, is there anything else you outsource?

#00:15:13-7# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I’m in the process of working on an e-commerce plan and so I will be outsourcing that and also a little bit of some marketing help as well.

#00:15:22-2# Neil: Ok because its obviously, you can’t know everything ultimately when you run a business so its obviously good to get other people’s skills involved. Julie what are some of the things you did before you started your business that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who haven’t yet taken the step of the entrepreneur’s way, or the first step of it.

#00:15:42-4# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I would consider myself a very interesting mix of type A and spirituality, I can be very left-brain, I can be very right-brain, but I am a firm believer in following your intuition, and honouring what your soul chooses to do. I did as much stuff as possible before launching my business, meaning quiting the job, having that income, but trusting my gut. I think that is, you will never go wrong with that. The other thing I would say, and I tell my clients this all the time, to keep from feeling overwhelmed, break it down into manageable steps. Do one thing daily for your business, you won’t be overwhelmed but you will be moving towards that goal, and as I mentioned earlier before I quit, my website was up, my legal paperwork was registered, and I had joined the professional organisation. The national group to become a member of that, so there were things that I did, prior to doing that and then for some people they might not feel comfortable, until they have got a couple of clients, but at some point, you are going to have to make that jump, and quit the safety net and just go for it.

#00:16:48-0# Neil: Mmmm you sound like you are quite decisive and you took that step by the sounds of what you said up to now. So, but for some people its obviously difficult making that decision, because maybe they don’t want to let go or fear or something holds them back, I don’t know. But there is definately something that makes it difficult for some people. And yet, other people seem to find it quite easily happens which you have here. Julie, can we talk about the journey itself of when you became an entrepreneur? and can you talk about culture and the importance of culture in your business from the beginning? Which obvously as you develop your business, it will be something that you need to think about as well. So what are your thoughts on that?

#00:17:26-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: First of all I love that question. I was like, ‘hmm I’ve never been asked that before.’ So I really appreciated that, I would say yes. I think you need to set the tone of how you want your business to be. You cannot separate the personal from the professional, I think when you try to do that, that you do a diservice to yourself then thats going to cause you problems. When I first started my business, it was healing through organisation which right of the back, gives you a feel for my business, just based on the name alone. I was the first person in North Carolina to specialise in being green and doing eco-organisation. People told me I’d be dead in the water, I said ‘ugh no ones gonna hire you because of that.’ not only was it successful, but I also won awards for it because I was thinking differently and I honoured, ok this is who am as a person, I am passionate about the environment, I need to bring that into business. And my brother is also an entrepreneur, two out of three of us are. And in his business, so he has a brick and mortar business and I think he has about ten employees, they have a pool table, they have dishes of candy, the dogs jay jay and coco come to work. He works hard and expects it of his employees, but he also creates a fun environment and even if you aren’t a brick and mortar, you are like me, how you are in your culture, you are going to call in consultants that are like that. And you want people who are on the same page as you are, have the same energy as you are, even if they are not full time employees.

#00:18:53-9# Neil: Absolutely, in fact one thing you said there about advice from other people. I think that is something that people have to be careful of in business because there are lots of people who will give advice when they are not in a position to really advise you. And sometimes you can’t get advice because you might have a vision of something, of what you are trying to do that no one else has thought of or no one else has come across that you know. And you have just got to pursue your dream, you can’t let other people sort of try and steal that dream from you because its not their dream its your dream and you have got to just pursue it and thats interesting you say that so and thank you for that, and the next thing I want to know is knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out, would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:19:38-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I would have had any surprises then, but, its all good. I wish someone would have given me a hands up about networking. Now I know I mentioned earlier in the podcast that I should have started networking prior to quitting my job and being full time at my business. But I wish there was someone who would have mentored me in this, and said, ‘ok here’s what you need to look for, here are what the takers are, here are what the takers look like.’ You know many people would love to sell you their product but have no interest in yours, and I wouldn’t have wasted my time at certain networking events or joined some networking groups that I belong to. I remember going to something where ‘hey here’s this free talk, and at the end they wanted me to buy something that was a couple of thousand dollars coaching or whatever it was, I’m like ‘nah I’m not really my thing’ or you know I belong to a women’s networking group and they had a lot of mlm multi-level marketers and they are constantly pushing their product, and yet never buying the services of others so, your time is valuable. And I don’t care if you are first starting out, your time is valuable, and if someone is not going to pay you to speak then you have to have your website in their newsletter. You have to have a link on their website to your website. You can make it work, don’t think, that because you are new, that your time is less valuable. What you offer is valuable.

#00:21:01-8# Neil: You are talking about networking again there, so obviously thats very important to you, can you just tell us a little bit more about how you do networking at events?

#00:21:12-3# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh you know, a 100% I really have the left and right brain thing going on, but I believe your intuition is there for a reason, and you know you a few minutes ago mentioned sometimes you have this vision and you just have to listen to this and other people can offer you advice, thats when you really need to double down and be like, ‘ok. I have to trust this, I have to go for it’. I’ve done crazy things, I heard a couple of years ago, ok you need to well I was doing internet tv, but like you need to pitch this show to this person, I was like ‘ok’ So I did it. It was crazy, it was nuts, nothings come of it, but that doesn’t mean a year down the road, that something will come of it, especially the more nuttier it sounds, then I think you need to definately trust your intuition and I have gotton in trouble, when I have not followed it both personally and professionally. So, I am a firm believer in it,

#00:22:07-7# Neil: with networking, what I was really getting at was with networking, how do you when you go to these events, and you go to them, and obviously there are people there that are takers and there are people that are givers at networking events, as you mentioned before. And I was just curious, do you have a particular way of networking with people, is there anything you do thats unusual or different to the people who are the takers for example?

#00:22:33-8# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh great question. I would say first of all, the first thing you do is, that I have learned to do is I am very selective of where I go to network. Here in Raleigh where I live, there are tons of opportunities, so I look, ok do I know everyone there? Probably not going to go, ok new people, alot of people I don’t know. Whats around it is that whether its going to be casual and whether we are going to be talking, enjoying hor d’eouvres. Or is it a sit down lunch, what is it and then I try to get a sense, ok who are the types of people here, I found that, the people that I gel with best tend to have some type of spiritual view or some type of belief or open to it. You know they don’t discount it, you know I am thinking of another organiser at a talk, she’s great but she is corporate. Her clients and her specialty is working with corporations where I would be really unhappy in a suit working environment, thats not who I am. So I try to get a feel for the people ok lets look at their business whats the name of their business? What are they doing? so thats the first thing to really get rid of a lot of the waste and then when I go, I’m always happy ok, if I can meet 10 people, and have a decent conversation, then I will have succeeded, and you again as you do it, you listen to your intuiton. If someone is just me me me me me, I’m cutting that conversation off quickly and going to find someone else to network, and if I meet someone and have a good rapport, and then of course its always a really important follow up the next day. I’ve learned, I take notes on the back of a business card if they say something personal or they have a son thats 7 and a daughter thats 5 and pizzas are a favourite thing, then I might send ‘hey did you know about this awesome pizza place in North Raleigh?’ because people do business with people they like and when you can, you are listening and paying attention, and being authentic, people respond positively to that.

#00:24:29-8# Neil: Mmmm and do you introduce people you have met at different occasions to sort of do business together? do you do that type of thing as well?

#00:24:37-7# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh absolutely and I think, I come from, you know this has been my personal experience, I want to emphasise my personal experience. Alot of the organisers in this area, I feel are not on the same page as I am and see it more as a competition and thats not saying that we all have to make a living, but I think when you come from a place of ‘we all have our specialties’ theres enough work out there for everyone. Then you can honour that and make those connections and refer people. I love connecting people, because you know what, that eventually comes back to you, what you put out in life, you get back. It doesn’t matter what area it is.

#00:25:14-7# Neil: Ok thanks for that Julie. And just going back to your gut feeling again, how much does it actually influence your decisions in your business?

#00:25:23-8# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh 100% I am going to trust that over anything else, I mean I was just saying my big resolution for 2016 is listen to your intuition and follow it, I mean I can’t tell you and I should know by now, and you know I angered someone, they wanted me to do, they are releasing a book and they said, ‘I want you to offer a giveaway.’ And I said, ‘well are they going to come to my site, do they have to sign up?’ and they are like ‘no’ and I said, ‘yeh well thanks I’m not going to do it’, and they got upset, and I’m like when she first asked me, my intuition said, ‘don’t do this,’ but I said, ‘oh I’ll do it.’ But afterwards and then when I said, I was really honest and I said ‘I apologise I didn’t listen to my intuition, but this helps you it doesn’t help me if its not driving traffic to the site.’ So that is my big thing to not only hear it but to honour it.

#00:26:15-2# Neil: Life is made of constant change whether we like it or not, the only constant is change, or some people think it is, so Julie how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:26:26-7# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well I think you have to, especially if you are going to be going into business for yourself. If your industry implodes, whats your backup plan? You have to be able to adapt. Look at a business like blockbuster, now you are in the  UK, so Blockbuster was a video company here, there was a blockbuster on every corner. They are out of business and they didn’t change with the times, they didn’t get with live streaming, they didn’t do whatever and they went out of business. I love organising and de-cluttering, but I am not getting any younger, so I have created products around organising your life and de-cluttering your life and will continue to move in that direction. Not only does it allow me to support more people, but also what I do best, so you have to be able to change and adapt.

#00:27:06-4# Neil: Yeh and what has your favourite book on entrepreneurialism, business, personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:27:17-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Sure well this is very hard for me because Neil I love to read, but I am going to talk about the four agreements which is a book by Don Miguel Raoise. Its great advice for life, and as I said earlier, I don’t believe you can separate the professional from the personal. Its a very short read but very powerful. The second agreement, is don’t take anything personally, its not about you, what others do is about them, and how you react is all about you. When you put yourself out there, expect criticism, I do a pod cast, its also on YouTube. I’ve had people say, ‘your voice sucks, there are a lot of keyboard warriors out there, and people in the industry that might try to sabotage you, if we are going to be honest, so you have to be mentally prepared for that. You know someone, it was probably from the past couple of weeks said, ‘I hate your voice’ and I’m like ‘isn’t it great that we live in America where you can choose to listen to me or not.’ And I wasn’t like, in the past I would have been arrggghhh, but I was like, ‘you know what, I’m looking at the positive because I feel sorry for you because if your life consists of going on youtube or writing a negative podcast review, what kind of life do you have? and if you’re not out there giving it your all, making the world a better place, you know I feel sorry for you.’ But I chose, I said, ‘ok I’m not going to take this personally because whatevers going on’, not to say that I’m open to criticism or improving, you know I’d done a lot with the podcast someone said, ‘here’s some suggestions’, and I thought ‘you know what? those are really good and that is going to take it to the next level.’ But things like this, with people criticising you don’t become mirrored in that.

#00:28:57-7# Neil: So when you talked about someone criticising you there, were they your thoughts about it or did you actually respond?

#00:29:04-3# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I believe in responding to every oh absolutely, especially if someone criticises you,

#00:29:10-6# Neil: I always think to myself, I just wonder if thats lowering yourself to that level, thats the way I thought about it, in the past, I am curious to know why you think you should respond? Go on.

#00:29:20-0# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well because I consider it a negative comment, and I think if you don’t respond to negative comments, then you do yourself a disservice because ‘oh look they were afraid to respond to a negative comment’ and you know the thing I mentioned earlier, I was like, ‘we live in America, isn’t it great that we have the choice to’ thats not coming down to their level, thats trying in my view to raise them up. Ok you have a choice to listen to me, and then I laughed because they wrote at the end how, they wrote another comment ‘oh this was really great’ because they held on to the end and so my thing is, I was like ‘don’t take it personally, I’m not, but try to reflect at a higher level to someone,’ you know you made this choice to listen to it and you obviously listened to it enough to write a criticism, so but its in the past something like ‘oh no they don’t like me’ or they are a jerk and so I don’t do a combative response, but I think its a disservice if you don’t respond, and I respond to comments positive or negative.

#00:30:20-1# Neil: Mmmm interesting perspective. Everyone when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time when you may be doing other things. Such as driving or when you are at the gym, we have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing. To choose your free audio book go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up then you will qualify. Julie, can we now look a little bit into the future? and talk about a few things there? What one thing would you do with your business if knew you could not fail?  #00:30:57-1#

Interviewer:
#00:30:57-1# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well I am hopefully starting the process on that now and I would take all my products on a much wider scale. I’d want them in book stores, although honestly I have wavered on having them on Amazon, because I think that the mindset for people buying on amazon is cheap, discount, get a deal, and so I don’t want what I do to be de-valued. You know, January is get organised month, and so I am going to offer deals then or around spring and spring cleaning, but it goes away and so, I want to be mindful of not undercutting myself, that it felt like I was giving the house away but my goal really is bring product to larger scale.

#00:31:38-4# Neil: Mmm its interesting you say that about amazon, why do you feel that? I mean surely can’t you decide what price you are going to sell the product on there at?

#00:31:48-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Well because I think that Amazon has set itself up to be the cheapest person in the world, the cheapest place to buy things, thats how I view it, you are always going to get it a bargain, look Amazon has the cheapest price and theres a recent thing with people who are authors, you know I have created a workbook you know for people who are bestsellers, and whether or not they are going to sell on Amazon because, the price is undercut so much and then there was a big issue and people can google this to get more details but they felt like they had to come down to Amazon’s prices, they have written the book and they are losing money as a result of it. And if they weren’t to count on Amazon’s prices, then Amazon would not put their book on the site, so thats to me a little bit too much power and control there. And so thats just my view at the moment, because don’t want to be thought of as the cheap person and the discount thing, I want you to support you and to help you change your life, but you need to invest in that because everything just because its cheap doesn’t mean its good.

#00:32:51-1# Neil: Its interesting to hear your perspective on that, because a lot of people are tempted and lured by Amazon aren’t they? Just because of the sheer size of it so its quite a bold move to take that perspective on it, but we can understand why you say that. So Julie what skill if you were excellent at it, would help you the most to double your business?

#00:33:12-2# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: I’m pretty good with STO and social media, but PR and marketing most definately is where I need to get support or learn more. My podcast has been very successful nationally, but I would like my products in the podcasts to get to that next level and thats what my big goal is for this year.

#00:33:29-2# Neil: Ok. and in five years from now, if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:33:42-5# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Then I looked at clutter and organising from a different perspective, and was thinking outside the box, that my products were high quality and supported people in de-cluttering and getting organised.

#00:33:54-6# Neil: Ok we are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us. So what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:34:02-6# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: We have nothing to fear but fear itself. I used to be deathly afraid of public speaking, I couldn’t get up and say my name and my business, and so now I get paid to speak, so that was a huge deal for me. The other thing I mentioned earlier, when I started my business and was doing eco organisation when no one else was, people were like ugh you have just shot yourself in the foot, you are never going to have any business and I thought ‘well I just have to do it, its who I am.’

#00:34:30-8# Neil: Do you have any favourite online resources that you can share that would be useful to us?

#00:34:36-5# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: What you mean besides re-awakenyourbrilliance.com?

#00:34:39-1# Neil: Well if there is anything else? Ha ha ha

#00:34:41-8# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Ha come on we have to have some humour .. have some fun here. I like tor and thats TOR which lets you surf the web anonymously. Now if you are a technical person, you are probably going to say to me, theres nothing thats 100% anonymous, but I like to use that. And here in America we have score which retired business people help new business owners and they have a website and they have chapters all over the country. And so when I was starting my business, I met with some people and I met with someone who did marketing and so they offer their time and services, and its free and so thats a great resource if you are just starting out in your business.

#00:35:20-3# Neil: Thanks for that. And what is your best advice to other entrepreneurs?

#00:35:26-7# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Be authentic. You can’t be who you aren’t and people will know that, even if they can’t articulate it, they will just think ‘oh somethings off and I’m just not feeling that with that person.’ So you can fool people for a while, but you know if you are just taking other people’s stuff and not being authentic and making your own, people will do that. Another thing I would say is don’t hijack other people’s stuff. There are always ideas out there, but make them your own, if you just cut and paste from people, people will know. And I have just had it happen to me and since starting my business, I have seen a lot of competition, and I believe we can all find our niche and work together and be our best.

#00:36:06-5# Neil: Ok.

#00:36:09-9# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Oh I have one more thing, be open. Be open to other ideas, again we have talked about how I believe coming from your intuition, listening to your guidance but someone might say something like one of the motivating factors for me becoming green in my organising was I had just started my business and I was networking and I was having a one-on-one with someone and the first thing she says when I sit down is, ‘I hate organisers’ now I could have immediately shut her down, left the meeting, but I said ‘well why is that? lets talk about it.’ because I was genuinely curious and she said ‘oh they are so wasteful,’ and I am like ‘oh no here is how you can be green’ and it was in that conversation I had I went home and I went ‘hey I am gonna do green, thats who I am, its great, and I am gonna do it because I listen.’ I was open to it, I didn’t shut it down, immediately because it was not what I thought I should be.

#00:37:00-6# Neil: Mmmm thats quite useful then wasn’t it, that criticism actually gave you a nice little niche. By the sounds of it, everyone if you did not manage to get a note of Julie’s favourite resources or her favourite book you can find the links on Julie’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Julie or Julie Coraccio in the search box. Julie, is there anything else you would like to add about your business?

#00:37:29-2# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Just please you can find out more information at reawakenyourbrilliance.com I have lots of products to support you, to get you de-cluttered in organising your life and I am cheering you on, I want you to go for it, I want to hear your story, how you let go of clutter, and you are living a joyful and fulfilling life.

#00:37:45-2# Neil: Thank you Julie, its really been an honour having you on here, you have brought some great ideas about things I had never even thought about before and you have given us some great insight into being an entrepreneur and applying it in your business. So thank you very much Julie.

#00:37:58-6# Julie Coraccio, Reawaken Your Brilliance & Clearing the Clutter Inside & Out: Thank you for having me Neil, and everyone just go for it, you can do it, be your entrepreneur.

Neil: Great Julie thanks.