Advice Worth Paying Forward with Julie Bernard

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with my friend Julie Bernard. Julie is a career CMO and e- Commerce Executive at some storied brands and retailers like Saks and Macy's. Julie is now an independent board member and advisor and fractional CXO. She and I served together on a board that was a lot of fun, although very, very difficult about 10 years ago. Julie, it's great to see you.

Julie Bernard: Hey Matt, it's great to be here. Thank you so much.

Matt Blumberg: All right. I have one question for you today, which is I would love to hear the three best pieces of advice you've ever gotten through your career, because you have a tremendous network of tremendous mentors, and sort of the three pieces of advice that you like to pay forward to the CEOs that you advise.

Julie Bernard: Sure. Well, I love that it's one question and you're framing me with three pieces of advice, and, of course, there are so many moments of impact that any of us have had yet there are three, and the first one that will come up is the one that always jumps into my mind first. It's a mantra that I hope I live by that was shared with me about 15 years ago in delivering a presentation to a bunch of executives and it didn't go as well as I had expected. I thought the work was perfect. I thought the recommendation was perfect. I was really married to the whole thing. And when I went with a client afterwards, I was a management consulting at the time, she said to me, " Don't worry about it." She said, " The answers are great, the proposal is great. We're just going to tweak it. We heard them, we're going to adapt. We have resilience, we're going to go through. We have new facts to incorporate, but champions adjust. And we're champs and we're going to adjust, so don't worry about it." Sure enough, we made the adjustments and we move forward and the new proposal just three weeks later was accepted. And so I think it's such a beautiful thing. I always attributed it to this woman, Ann McDonald, I don't mind mentioning it, and her colleague Tim Teran, but I have since learned it was Billie Jean King that first said, champions adjust and pressure is a privilege, but it is a mantra that I live by and I like to share with others all the time to try to help us move forward.

Matt Blumberg: It's great because no one loves to get the criticism. You just put all this work into something, it's perfect, and it's not perfect, but champions adjust.

Julie Bernard: Yes. All right, number two. The reflective model that is often used yet not often stated yet. I don't know if everyone always uses it, but the model of what, so what, now what. Now we spend a lot of time in corporate America. We spend a lot of time in business talking, reporting on the what happened. I don't think we give ourselves the gift of carving out time to have the critical thinking moment to say, so what does it mean? And the courage to say, now what do I do with it? And so I always say, the work isn't done if you simply come to me reporting on the what happened. The work is only done when you've done the assessment of, so what does it mean and now what do I do with it? What, so what, now what or else the work isn't yet done.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. I feel like this may be unfair, but I'm going to run with it anyway. I feel like frequently it's the marketing team that is the most guilty of that. They go long on the what. This many blog posts and this many podcast episodes and this many of this and this many of that, reporting on activity as opposed to impact. And in fact, there is a lot of impact and there are a lot of insights. So I think anyone that's reporting on what should always report on the other two things, otherwise why bother?

Julie Bernard: Absolutely. And then, of course, we have to measure the now what. So if we actually took the action, how was it too? So it does, of course, as always, it comes full circle and you have that loop.

Matt Blumberg: Okay, so champions adjust. What, so what, now what? And number three.

Julie Bernard: Hydrate the network. A beautiful gift given to me over a glass of wine at a cocktail party, at an industry event by an executive coach named Val Wright. And she shared that great advice in the context of another conversation. And she said, you've had so many successes as you started out with inaudible in my career. And she said, " But you tend to be very inward facing. You're so driven for achievement. You have such high responsibility to deliver on what you say you're going to do, that you're not taking the time out for you to be hydrating the network with intention externally for your benefit and without apology." And many other elements and angles to that conversation and it went on for a couple of hours after that, yet it was just a really great moment that has stayed with me forever this idea of hydrating the network. And for professional growth, for personal growth, for all the different reasons, but it's really pretty terrific advice.

Matt Blumberg: Great. I always tell people to attend their network like a garden. And in fact, if you're doing that, you're hydrating it.

Julie Bernard: You're hydrating the network.

Matt Blumberg: All three of these pieces of advice are great. They're great reminders to anyone who's listening to this. I'm sure this is going to spark someone thinking like, oh yeah, I need to blank today. But they're all really well phrased, which I would expect from a marketer as well. But so champions adjust, what, so what, now what, and hydrate your network. Julie Bernard. Thank you so much. Good to see you.

Julie Bernard: Great. Thanks, Matt.