Meet Julie Menden

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Julie Menden a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Julie , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Resilience has been a key foundation of my life over the last few years and really the foundation of how I strive to show up and a skill I help others to develop as well. I believe when you cultivate your resilience and your mental toughness, you not only just make it through the tough moments, but you come out stronger on the other side filled with the lessons, determination, and conviction to act on those lessons. Personally, in the last several years I have navigated a lot of things that that have tested me. My husband and I both run our own businesses and have encountered many really tough situations the last few years. In 2018 I got really sick and had to take time off of work, the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. They ended up finding that it was viral meningitis. That kicked off a series of progressive and sometimes debilitating health issues over the next few years with little to no clear answers on what was going on. During that time I had left my Corporate career and started my own business, and had a toddler at home. In the midst of this, in April of 2022 my husband, who also runs his own business, was told he has testicular cancer. We were grateful that it was caught early and it was able to be treated quickly. In August of that same year, we found out that my health issues were due to later stage Lymes disease. That journey has been filled with ups and downs as it can be a very difficult thing to treat. In August of 2024, I was told I had melanoma on my face. Melanoma being a very aggressive form of skin cancer, it needed to be treated quickly and would require multiple surgeries on my face. Running a business that has me in front of people a lot, as well as being a professional Speaker, this was definitely a tough reality to process. During all of this, we had even more things pop up that just felt like they kept trying to knock us down. However, some of the key things that we anchor into to develop our resilience is 1) gratitude and being so grateful for what we do have 2) Putting things into perspective-realizing that things could always be worse and that there are always opportunities that come from these struggles 3) Mental toughness-putting in the work to rewire my brain to see the gift and opportunity in even the toughest of moments. I had written a chapter in a book called “Change your thoughts, change your life” and I truly believe that what we choose to focus on, is where our attention goes. As a coach and a professional Speaker, I get to use the lessons from all of my experiences and help others to navigate these tough situations in their life and turn them into the opportunities to change their own or others lives.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am the CEO & Founder of a boutique leadership development firm located in Wisconsin. We offer leadership development programs, Executive & Leader coaching, group programs, assessments, and a variety of other services. We also offer Speaking coaching and mentorship for other entrepreneurs/small business owners wanting to do more Speaking to grow their business. I am also a Speaker and love getting the opportunity to motivate an audience, particularly around resilience and mindset, as well as communication and effective leadership skills. I am the host of the “It Starts With You” podcast helping people develop the self-trust, mindset, and skillset to achieve all of their biggest goals and dreams. I am on a mission to help people realize what they are truly capable of.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. Self-Trust: When I look back on all of the big pivotal moments and decisions I made that got me to here, it always came back to trusting myself in a situation. Trusting I had the answers within me, trusting myself to make the decision, trusting myself that no matter what happened I would figure it out. Developing your gift to trust yourself will take you where you need to go.

2. Resilience: With all of the ups & downs of everyday life, of running 2 businesses in our household, of all of our health issues and big life things that have happened, being resilient to get back up and keep going has been key. With this I’d couple it with a mental toughness of building the “mental muscles” to instead of seeing all the bad, focusing on “how else can we look at this?” When you change the way you look at, talk about, and feel about the things happening to you, they don’t seem quite so bad. What if, somehow, in some really hard to understand right-now way, it’s all working out for you?

3. Gratitude: This has been a pillar for me. For almost 6 years now I have a gratitude practice where I wake up every morning as part of my routine and write down 5 things I’m grateful for. Sometimes, it’s really easy and I could keep going. Sometimes, it’s really hard to even think of 1. But, the more you sit there and focus on what to be grateful for, the more things you start to find. It’s setting my intention and focus for the day to seek out more of that. Make this a practice in your life and see how it starts to change the way you see things.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

I think of this as more of a broad “who” because I truly don’t believe we need to figure it all out on our own. I’ve had so many amazing supporters, cheerleaders, and peers that I’ve surrounded myself with. I truly wouldn’t be here without putting myself in rooms with, in communities with, or in coaching containers with those that would cheer me on, push me, give me something to strive for, and be there when I just needed to vent. Surrounding myself with people who are also on a big mission, who have these big visions and zest for what they do, and are always trying to improve themselves, has been the motivation and support to show me that I can do it. I’m also so blessed to have an amazing husband on this journey with me who is continually working to improve himself as well and we can both support each other through the life and business challenges.

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