Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Julia German. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Julia, thanks for joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

The first thing it takes to be successful is understanding that you have to define “success” for yourself, before you get started. That may sound simple, but for most of us, that means examining how to balance financial goals with other personal priorities and finding a definition of “success” that considers these subjective parameters.

In my case, I knew I wanted to be an artist early enough to realize I needed to find a plan for financial stability that would ultimately buy me the time to focus on creative work. I went into a career in the law, trying to navigate a goal of saving money and making time along the way for creative pursuits and other of life’s priorities. When I felt that I had enough financial stability to allow me to leave my firm to start establishing my business as an artist, I knew there would be a long, slow growth period where I would have to rely on the capital I had saved. What I didn’t anticipate was how powerfully the conventional notion of financial income would continue to weigh on my mind as *the* measure of success into this transition.

I am close to one year into building my career as an artist. I have checked a lot of boxes that, if asked at the outset, I would have held up as measurements of success for this first year: I formed an entity, developed a brand, set up a website, learned to work with and maintain new tools, and developed new techniques for integrating bone, metal, and wood into my work. Most importantly, I am actually doing the work and creating art. I have finished several large-scale sculptures, each one pushing the limit of what I was able to imagine when I started, growing my skills and my portfolio. With all of this progress, I still struggle to remember that money is not today’s measurement of success.

Being successful in life, and in business, requires establishing a definition of “success” that you truly believe in, so that you can commit yourself to the practice of orienting yourself towards that north star in the face of and against the winds of a commercial economy that impatiently asks you to always think of the dollars made today.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a multidisciplinary artist, working under the name Burly Carving, whose evocative work celebrates the intricate beauty and resilience of nature. Through work in my youth as an arborist and sawyer, I became enamored with the color and depth presented by wood as a medium. Drawing inspiration from patterns, textures, and structures found in the natural world, my present work incorporates wood, bone, and steel to create pieces that connect the primal and the contemporary.

I carve sustainably sourced or salvaged wooden elements to reveal the flowing grain and delicate imperfections that tell the story of time. Bone, with its stark contrast, lends an ethereal and timeless quality, symbolizing both fragility and endurance. Steel introduces a modern industrial edge while reflecting the strength and interconnectedness inherent in nature’s designs.

Themes often explore transformation, decay, and renewal, highlighting the interplay between organic forms and geometric precision. I strive to create something evocative and beautiful that begs the viewer to look again. Whether crafting sculptures, furniture, or wall installations, as well as with other media, I used my work to contemplate the relationship between humanity and the natural world, evoking a sense of wonder and reverence for the patterns that connect all living things.

Each creation is a meditation on balance and harmony, a tactile exploration that transforms raw materials into soulful, expressive art. I love creating work from my own inspiration and working with clients to collaborate in the design and development of something new, bespoke, and reflective of a collective imagination.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

There are so many resources that have impacted my perspective. Most recently, I have enjoyed reading Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, together. One insight that comes to the surface in these works is a focus on collaborative in place of competitive structures.

Our economy assumes competition is the necessary, natural construct to guide our interactions. This thinking often forms the framework for our approach to personal life and business strategy. I feel this is an error at the heart of so much of the suffering experienced by our community, in particular our culture’s epidemics of isolation and anxiety. Kimmerer’s work describes the interconnected and collaborative ways in which the natural world works, including us humans. Gilbert references Kimmerer in her work, which delves into the relationships between people trying to live creative lives and the world around them, including their relationship to the source of creative inspiration. Both authors provide examples of the error in justifying competitive thinking by drawing from examples in the natural world, which cooperates and maintains interconnectedness in ways that go beyond our full understanding. If we accept that wellbeing in business, in health, and in individual lives is not a question of individuality but one of cooperation and collaboration, then we become powerfully open to the idea of being with and not against those in our community. I have found that this also leads to a generosity in my approach to my work, in how I share that work, and in how I maintain personal relationships. It has allowed me to make connections that will continue to change and strengthen my work.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson that I’ve had to unlearn is that there is a right way to “do” a career. Specifically in law school, but embedded everywhere in my education, was the message that you pick a lane and try to stay in it. Specialize. Pick a thing, make it your thing, be great at it. We see examples of this working for specialists at the top of their field everywhere we look.

And guess what? This approach works!

Still, having tried it, I’ve just never been wired that way. I tend to work at something, succeed in some measure, and then try to keep that skill set while I continue to grow in other directions. For example, my first “one thing” was singing. I grew up singing opera in Nashville and did pretty well at it, was a top chair for the combined Tennessee/Kentucky high soprano seat. But I met people on their way to Julliard and saw that we were being positioned always against one another. I wasn’t sure I would succeed at that level or that I wanted to make the art of music competitive. Another example is with sports. I started playing sports in high-school, and my college team my went to Nationals for several years. I found that I wanted athletics to sustain me physically and be a source of friendship, not be my “one thing.” To this day, I’ve found this remains true of running, climbing, and skiing as well.

In my work, I have been an arborist, a framing carpenter, and after law school I worked in numerous roles in the law, each described to me at some point as having its own lane: (non-profit work/public interest work, large D.C. litigation firm, clerking at my state’s Supreme Court, in-house counsel for a fortune 500 company). Perhaps that makes me seem inconsistent, but I don’t think that’s it.

As a result of this lane changing, I’ve been known to trim a friend’s trees, sing them Puccini, remodel their kitchen, start their company, defend their legal rights, and run to the project and back.

Is this a better way to live a life? Does it lead to greater success? Not necessarily. But it’s been interesting. I find that all of my experiences have been leading me forward in some non-linear, winding path of growth, and that I draw on all of it to connect to people. Not trying to be the best at any one thing frees me from any one identity and gives me wide permission to admire the accomplishments, talents, and skills of other people. What a wonderful freedom to bring to human interactions. Importantly, now, it all works to inform my art. Exercising curiosity, has helped me develop the ability to see with honesty, appreciate multifaceted subject matter, and to know that there is a story and a depth most places you look, if you look. It can be difficult to not have a simple identity to announce at a dinner party. Practicing law gave me credibility in the first moment of an introduction. But then, a lot of folks don’t like lawyers.

Unlearning that a career should be linear, that staying in one lane is the best way to establish success, has allowed me to learn that carefully accepting the risk of making big lane changes can allow for a rich, useful, and interesting life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.burlycarving.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burlycarving
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/burlycarving
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-german-b5343237/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BurlyCarving