128. Julie Marty Pearson: Empowering Women to Tell Their Stories Through Podcasting

Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic. The show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity. Yeah, we're not here to play it safe. I'm Cinthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action. And I'm Michelle Walters, coach and Hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum. Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul and make bold moves in your life. We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love relationships and self expansion. We're connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So buckle up. We're doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time.

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ff with, what inspired you in: 2022

So I took my first course about podcasting in 2021 like many of us, made some shifts in my life and my career post COVID. And so I was learning a lot about having my own coaching business and, you know, marketing and all the things. And so I had taken a course, and I was really interested in it,

nspire me, motivate me. So in: 2022

Tell us, Julie, what is the story of your pet? Your pet, not not everyone else's pet, but your pet. So I've always been an animal lover. When I was little, I was the girl who wanted to play with the dogs and the cats, not the babies. That was just always who I was and

but also I had animals I really had special, strong bonds with. So one of the story of my own pets I often tell is my childhood dog champ, he I got to so around sixth, seventh grade, I was sick and ended up missing almost a whole year of school. And so it was very lonely. I didn't get to go out with my friends and all those things because I just had no energy. So that's when my.

Has decided to finally give in to me and allow me to get a puppy.

So I got to pick champ out of a litter. My sister paid $5 for me to adopt him,

and he really became my therapy dog. You know, we didn't call it that back then, but, um, he, I got to, you know, I was with him every day, him growing up as a puppy, and my at the time, we also had a golden retriever who really mothered him. And so it was just a really great, I mean, obviously we bonded a lot, and I didn't realize then, but, you know, being sick, teenage, hood, high school, college, all the transitions, he was really that one steady focus support I always had. Now, my parents were very supportive, too. But we all know pets are different, that bond is different. He always seemed to know when I wasn't feeling well and he'd either be sitting at the end of my bed, you know. So it was just a bond that

I didn't realize how impactful it was until I started reflecting back on it, you know, and I really special story again, why I love stories and talking about pets. So I lived at home with my parents through college to save money. And then when I was moving away out of town to go to graduate school, we still had champ. He was still there. He was probably about 12. And so I arrive in, actually, Alameda is where I moved to, and I'm unloading my things in my new apartment. And I opened a box, and there is this tennis ball right behind me was in one of the boxes, so without me even realizing it at some point, packing up my stuff, champ dropped one of his precious tennis balls into my box, got packed up, and it wasn't till I opened it that I realized it was there, and it has now come with me over the 20 years since then. So I always tell that story, because I think it's important to people to realize how much our pets impact us, but how much we impact them, and how important it is to give them everything we can for the best life.

I love that it's like he didn't want you to forget about him, and this was his way of ensuring that you knew that he was still with you. Yes, it was just one of those moments where you're like, Wait, why is what? Oh,

and the sad part is that about actually, I don't even maybe six months, maybe less, we actually had to put champ to sleep. So I always feel like he got me through until he knew I was off onto my life, and it was okay for him. He had epilepsy since he was about one, so he'd been on medication, and so that started wreaking havoc, but we didn't really start to see it until I left. So luckily, I got to go home, and I got to be with him when he went to sleep. And that was just full circle for me to be able to, like, give back to him after everything he'd done for me. I love that. I have a question for you.

This is a beautiful story. And as a mystic, I believe in science, symbology, things like that. And so the way I'm looking at it is from the woo, woo perspective champ is actually taking you through and he's guided through you to this podcast, right? Oh, I love that, yeah. So I, I would love to hear about that transition. What would cause you to decide, you know, this is the story is complete, and now I'm on to a new story, right?

That's a good question. You know, I'm as I reflect a lot more back on decisions I've made and things that have happened in my life, and I totally agree we end up where we're supposed to be, but for different reasons than we may realize. So I mentioned I moved to Alameda and less than six weeks after I moved there, new place. Didn't know anyone going to grad school. 911 happened. So that was another big moment in my life. I ended up leaving that doctoral program at the end of the first year, going moving back home, getting a job, and that, you know, shifted my world, and I think a lot of it was because, you know, we all know that experience we had changed our life. And so being alone and not knowing anyone you know, we crave what we know. And so I think when I started to think about podcasting and I wasn't being inspired, I realized his story meant something, and I could share it. And through this whole process of podcasting and storytelling, I've realized that our stories not only may help someone else, but they actually help us process whatever we've been through, whether it's grief or change or loss of something. And so that's kind of been where these little pieces.

Of my history of kind of I realize, have gotten me to hear because it's allowing me, over the last few years, to process a lot of things I never, either didn't even think about it in the way I've thought about it, or spoken, you know, out to people about it. And the same is is true for my new podcast. Is I've talked about things I've never, you know spoken about publicly, other than just a friend here or there. So I totally agree. I feel like this whole process has allowed me to be myself more authentically, but it's also getting me into rooms and community and places that I'm supposed to be in. So I really agree. Fabulous. Yeah.

I mean, I can be Woo, but I'm not. I'm also a Virgo, and I'm very logical, and I like things planned out, and I need to know all the options, but I see how those two can still go together. And even with my logical brain, you know, the universe sometimes says and that's not where you want to be, or that's not where where you where you're needed. I really think that the world is beginning to recognize that our 100% of the time materialistic explanations for things doesn't actually explain everything. And there are these things that happen that are too weird, too synchronous, too inexplicable to be anything except, you know, something that is coming from an invisible force of some kind or some other. But we can spend forever about that. What I we can come back to that. I had a question. I want to know you've interviewed lots and lots of people about their pets. What was one of the craziest animals that you that someone talked about as their pet on your show, and what, what was that story about?

That's a good question. I'm trying to think, I mean, I know most people have dogs and cats, but yeah, probably there was someone with a very obscure animal as a pet. And I want to know what that one was. It's actually funny, because it's actually one of my own stories that's probably and there's two. Well, first preface with, you know, our fur family, my husband and I, we don't have human kids. We only have fur kids, and I also sometimes say scaly kids, because so we currently have three cats, two tortoises, a scorpion, and honestly, I don't even know how many tarantulas at this point that is my husband's, and he keeps those in his room.

So

I am something myself who is open to all types of animals. And I have had people talk about horses, donkeys, things like that. But one of the best episodes, episodes I had, I was actually interviewing a couple, because they have this great business around pets. And I said something, they say, Wait, what did you say? And I said, Oh, we have a possum. And they were like a possum. So that's a kind of a crazy, funny story I've told couple years ago. My husband is a carpenter, but he works for one of our school districts, and he got a call from a custodian, hey, there's something in the cabinet. It was a baby possum. They have no idea how it got in there, not near any kind of area where it would have just roamed in. And so he was afraid they were gonna hurt it. So he said, Here, I'll take it. And so he comes home and not me, not knowing, puts it in a big brown box and brings it into me. It was close to my birthday at the time, so he was like, happy birthday. And I'm like, Oh my god. What'd you do? Like, did you give me a kitten? I open it and it's a baby possum.

Wow. William, the possum stayed with us for about nine months. My husband is all about research when it comes to animals. So he learned what foods are best for him, what they need to grow, and he built the as a carpenter, he built this crazy cage for him, but he got to the point, once he was full grown, he was restless being inside. So then he built him an outside house in our yard. And in the morning I would hear them walking and him talking to William, they were having their morning stroll. And unfortunately, one morning he went out to feed him and he was gone. We didn't find him anywhere. He just, I guess, decided it was time for him to move on and find other possums. So that's a that's a story I like to say that really shows people the fact that when I say I'm an animal lover, I mean it, and it's not just like, you know, fluffy kit kittens and puppies. We really love animals, and anytime we can help one or rescue one, we we do. It's a way better story that I could have ever imagined. Julie, what a great story. And it was so funny, because I remember my guests, they just kept saying, Well, what do you mean? You have a possum in your dining room? It was just and we laughed, and it was just fun. And I always say, the one thing I learned about Possum is they're great. They they eat all the bugs and things we don't want.

What, and two, they're a lot like cats. And so as a certified cat lady, you know, we love William.

So um, as having a possum, they're nocturnal, right? So did, um,

did it affect your, you know, talking about fur babies, did it affect your lifestyle in any way, shape or form, since you had a baby that was an, you know, nocturnal. Well, since we I've always had cats now as as as an adult, and they can be fairly nocturnal. We've had those that, you know, 3am you hearing them bouncing off the walls, and you're like, What are you doing? But I will say, you know, when he was small and growing, it didn't we. It didn't really affect us, because my husband had built this, like, four story condo. He taught him to use a litter box in it. He fed him, he gave him things to climb on. I mean, the whole thing, um, but it, what that close to when we moved him outside was that I, my husband is a sound sleeper, and he goes to bed very early because he leaves at 530 for work. Well, I'd be shutting down watching TV, and then I'd hear all the well, it was William getting restless. It was night time. He didn't have as much space now because he was full grown, and so definitely that's when I would be like, you gotta put him outside. You got to create something, because he's not happy, and he's not making me happy, right? So, yeah, for sure, that was an interesting experience as he got older, like what he needed and what he wanted, and it was just, I love it. I'm, you know, a learner. I love learning new things. And it was just an amazing experience for us to learn about possums and see that, you know, we'd never forced him to, like, let us pick him up, or anything like that, but when he was we feed him or doing things, he'd let us pet him. And he was definitely not aggressive. He was confined in a cage so that our animals wouldn't, you know, interact with him, and they would just come along and sniff him or watch him for a little while, so it was really fun to kind of watch that interaction too. But definitely once he got older, and I don't know, maybe he was even ready to mate or something, that's when he started making making it himself known in the middle of the night

you've been listening toMind Power Meets Mystic with me. Michelle Walters and my co host, Cinthia Varkevisser, we want to tell you about a special gig the two of us have going on. It's called Mind Power Meets Mystic, the project, and it starts off on a zoom call with Cinthia. Cinthia tell everybody what they can expect. So for the first half of our session, you will be with me, and Michelle will be very quietly in the background preparing to do her work. What we will do is that we will talk about the one thing that you either want to amp up or that you want to release. And through the intuitive work, I help you get boil it down to its essence, and then give you an RX of three practical things to do to set you on your way. And then Michelle magically appears. What is it that you do that Michelle, I have been listening in but not participating in the first half of the call. I have an excellent idea of what Cinthia means when she says something, and I have an excellent idea of quickly getting to what my client is all about and his or her individual strengths, I turn all of this into a 20 to 30 minute hypnosis session on the second half of the call, which, when we're done, I strip off and send you as an mp three that you can listen to over and over again. You also will have Cinthia three point recommendations and the recording of the Zoom call. It is a fantastic one hour offering a great gift for yourself or for someone you don't know what to get such insights, and we've gotten such great reviews. So if you're interested, send me or Cinthia an email. You'll find our contact information in the show notes, and we'll tell you how to get started. So you found your way from your pet podcast to your new podcast. What inspired the addition of, I mean, Cinthia and I, I don't want to say it's terrible, but it's a lot of work to make a podcast and having a second podcast, it doesn't get a whole lot of draft off of the first one, like, it's, it's a lot of, right? It's a lot more. It's almost double the work, right? Essentially, yeah, and so, So what inspired you to create a second podcast?

So about a year and a half ago, maybe a little less, I attended for the first time, podfest, which is the annual podcasting conference,

and I really hadn't done anything like that before. You know, everything was virtual at that point in that world for me. So I got to meet all these people I knew from zoom.

Home and all these other amazing people, and it was that moment where I thought, like, maybe this is where I should be focused. Like, yeah, I can career coach and help you with your resume. But again, I wasn't passionate about it. What didn't excite me. So it was attending that and then a month or two later, I got to go to Podcast Movement in person. I got a free ticket, which was great. So those experiences kind of made me realize not only how important community is to me and how important it's been for me finding those people as I started my business and I started podcasting, and I realized there aren't enough communities like that for women and that nothing wrong with male hosted shows. I love my larger community with everyone included. But as women, we often talk about different things than what men talk about, and we talk about things differently than men talk about them. Right? Me, interviewing a woman versus a man, no matter what we're talking about, is a little different. And so it was through those experiences and connecting in person and remembering what that felt like that I decided to shift my coaching to podcasting as well as start a second podcast. I will agree, podcasting is a lot of work. It is not easy, even if you set yourself up with automation, it still takes work. So I launched and then kind of paused that, because I think I taken on too much at the time, and I was also still finding myself in in the world of podcasting as a coach now, and so that's where podcast, your story now, came from, and I am relaunching it. It's very soon. I have lots of interviews, and I'm really focusing on women's voices and women's stories and how important it is to share those, to help others, to help yourself, but also just community. I've realized that more and more of how important community is to all of us, no matter what it is for and so that side of it, I created the women's podcaster party, and I do free networking monthly for people to just come, and it's for everyone. Even if you've never podcasted, you've never been a guest, come and learn, because there are ways we can tap into that without having to be a podcaster yourself. So that was kind of the evolution over the last year and a half, and ever since I shifted, it's just kind of been like new opportunity, new thing, new people, you know? And so I've really had over and over signs that are reinforcing I made the right decision and the right shift of where, where I wanted to be, and also where, I think, where I needed to be to be able to support other people.

That's awesome. That's awesome. All generated from kind of a visit to podcast, festivals, in person. Cinthia and I have yet to make it to one. We keep saying we're going to make it to one. We have not yet made it to one. But, you know, I think that just means that there's more coming up for us. Cinthia, right? Well, actually, so let's say we're your clients, because you have so much you know, information for all of us out here who want to do a podcast, or they're not really

ready to, they're not exactly sure what their voices are. Do you have a couple of tips and tricks so that we can you know all those people can make their way towards you? Absolutely. So one thing I always tell people when I meet them, and they kind of have these questions, is one, have you ever been a guest on a podcast? And if they haven't, my first thing, I tell them, find a podcast to be a guest on, and it doesn't even have to be related to your business or what you want to podcast about. The first time I was a guest, it was on a show a guy in the in the UK, talked about favorite movies, and we literally spoke for an hour about my favorite movies, and I loved it, and it was so much fun. I'm like, oh my god, this is so great. It was like the connection and the interaction and the sharing passions that made me realize, yes, I like podcasting. So try it, because it's not for everybody. Not everybody vibes in this way, or wants to sit in a mic and talk about themselves, or you know what I mean. So I always tell people, start there, test it out, see how it feels, see if you even like it, and then from there, I think that starting a podcast can be an overwhelming process.

There are so many options, right? That's what I love about podcasting, is you can do whatever you want, solo, CO, host, group, live, recorded, edited, highly edited. I mean, you know, YouTube, not YouTube, whatever that the starting can be hard because you feel like you have to make so many decisions. So I really tell people to start with your Why. Why do you want to have a podcast? What is it going to do for.

You, your business, your side hustle, whatever that is. Because I get a lot of people that are further down the line of starting, but they haven't really figured that out. And if you haven't the rest of it's not really going to work. Yeah, you can launch. But is it actually doing what you want it to do? Is it about visibility? Is it about speaking? Is it about you know, what you know, using it as a platform to advocate for something like you guys said. Story of My pet isn't really about my business in terms of topic, but it's my passion, and I want to keep it going, because I'm all about advocating and educating, but also it's my proof that I know how to podcast, and it's been out this long, it is a top 5% podcast, which I'm very proud of, because it's still very small in terms of downloads and all of that. So the two things I always tell people, have you guessed it, if not start and two, think about your why, and talk through that with someone, because that's really going to help you move to the next step.

Beautiful, beautiful information. Thank you. Excellent, excellent. So tell us, Julie,

When are your podcaster parties? Are you? Is that something you do every month? Or how do people get involved if they want to get involved in the podcaster parties? Yes, so you can go to my website, Julie Marty pearson.com,

but the women's podcaster party, I have two events every month. It does shift because of, you know, various reasons. But yeah, I have a link that I shared with you both that will be in the show notes. And I already have March and April scheduled, and I'll be adding more. So I'm really trying to make it as a regular place for people to come in, meet new people. But I'm also doing a featured speaker, some topic around podcasting.

In February, we talked about email marketing for your guests, and how to build a good funnel for, you know, having great guests. Next month we're talking about live streaming. Another month, we're going to talk about podcast websites. So I'm trying to not only give space to network and collaborate, but to give some hot tips from different people I've met in the podcasting industry. Because the thing is, it doesn't help anyone to hold on to this information to myself. I want people to learn and grow, so I'm trying to make that a big part of that community, too. And I would welcome anyone to sign up for one of our upcoming events.

Outstanding. Well, I've been to one, but it was a couple of months ago, and it sounds like they've gotten even better. So thank you, Julie, is there anything else you want to share with our guests before we wrap up? Yeah, I would love to share. I have monthly master classes as well. I offer free classes on how to be an awesome podcast guest, as well as how to be a storyteller that tells compelling stories, and I frame that really in any way, whether it's telling a compelling story in email or blog or podcasting or speaking. I've learned a lot myself throughout the last few years, and I'm just trying to help other people get set up for success in using their own stories as a part of that so beautiful. Free every month. Check them out. There are different times and days depending on the month. But welcome anyone to join me for those great well. Thank you for being our guest today. Julie Marty Pearson on mind power meets mystic. It's Michelle and Cinthia signing off. Thank you.

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