Stop Looking for a Coach. Find a Mentor.

What I learned at IBM about choosing who you learn from

For the last 15 years, this industry has been all about business coaches.

But with the new era upon us, we aren’t looking to be told what to do so much as we want to see the evidence of what is possible.

For me, it is about mentorship vs coaching. It started 30 years ago at IBM.

I was 28 years old when I started at IBM. As part of the Next Gen Program I received a mentor — a very senior level mentor. Some of the mentors I had were phenomenal. Other ones showed me what I didn’t want. Who I didn’t want to be.

I had one female mentor who had one child, and she had that one child in a boarding school. I think he hit his head, something serious happened to him, and she wasn’t there. And as she was telling me these stories, I knew that’s not what I wanted. I hadn’t even had children yet.

I never really found the perfect mentor at IBM. I don’t think there were many women doing it the way I wanted to do it. It’s one of the reasons I left.

When I went into the entrepreneurial world, I had the same challenge. Everywhere I looked I saw people who did not have children, which is very different when you have three children and you’re trying to build a business. Or I’d find the boss babes — female empowerment, but not the kind I thrived in. Building her empire and all that. That’s not me.

I also wanted a mentor who wanted what I wanted.

Who wanted simplicity. Who wasn’t doing this to make millions and millions of dollars for the sake of making millions and millions of dollars — but doing this because she felt driven by a mission, by a deeper purpose, divinely given to her.

When I did find that mentor, for the most part I haven’t left her side. I’ve been working with her since 2020.

I had a little bit of a gap where I got sucked back into the online business coach world and got sold a bill of goods probably nine times in different directions that didn’t work. How to grow on social, the quiz funnels, the evergreen funnels, the blah blah blah. And then I made my way back.

I don’t call her my coach, I call her my mentor.

To me, a mentor is the person living the life, the values, the relationships. Has the financial success and is full of integrity. Walks the walk.

If you’ve been following me, we talk about the new era leader. The new era leader is the embodied leader — not the leader who makes a ton of money because they figured out a system, a solution, a framework, a method. It is the person who is embodied.

That is hard to find. So when you do, you stay with them.

And my mentor is right next to me. It’s not a hierarchy. She’s not above me. Yesterday we masterminded together about my mission.

My mission has been the same for six years — to ignite women into their own inner rebellion. To become their highest versions of themselves, especially in the second half of life — and helping others do the same. That mission hasn’t changed. But I need to mastermind on the ways to get it out into the world in a bigger way.

She also has a consistent, mission driven business — that is so important to me. We talked about our missions compounding over time.

And she doesn’t have a massive team. I don’t want a massive team. I want a team of rock stars. Full stop. Self-led, self-motivated intrapreneurs — not employees. That’s what she is building as well. That’s hard. Not easy.

I hear often in the online space the debate on do you really need to invest in a coach. I have seen people with very strong opinions that the coaching industry is corrupt and no one really needs a coach. Those people have been typically burned by bad coaches. Or they had unrealistic expectations on a good coach.

I prefer the word mentor. A mentor is embodied.

I’m making a six-figure investment in mentorship and that is having a huge return. I had an almost seven-figure launch in January and an over seven-figure launch in May. I will say the ROI is quite good.

If you want something big, massive, beautiful, incredible, extraordinary — my word of the year is extraordinary — you have to invest. You’ve got to be with the people who have what you desire.

Don’t invest in rooms or mentors who are not living the life you desire.

It’s not about the how-to from that mentor. You’re not coming to a mentor to say, tell me how to do this step by step by step. No. It’s about being in the energy of another human who has results in their life that you desire to have for yourself.

That’s how you choose mentors.

And most of what I get from my relationship with her is not even in the one-on-one. It’s in the mastermind. It’s in the things she shares with us as a group and what the group shares with each other. There is something to being in room with people who are working towards similar dreams with similar values.

I’m doing that for my clients. We have over 900 clients around the world in over 30 countries, and I show up every single day and do a daily podcast — The Daily Frequency — to be of service and in frequency and in energy with all of those women. Not as a coach. As a mentor.

Mentorship can be 1:1 or it can be in a group. You can also have mentors that are no longer living and ones that you never meet.

It is about knowing what you truly want and finding mentors who already have it.

We were never meant to do great things alone.

xo, Julie