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

Julie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Please tell us about starting your own firm and if you’d do anything different knowing what you know now.

The process of starting your own business can feel daunting and overwhelming. It’s more digestible if you break it down in phases and take incremental steps in each phase . The first two steps I took were determining the branding and legal entity. For the brand name, I wanted it to represent the business ethos and be broad enough if I diversified into different categories. For example, if I named the business Jshen Consulting, it would feel misaligned if I later expanded into non-consulting areas. Another piece of advice I received was to always build your business as if you would exit or sell it one day — if the brand is attached to your name, it would be harder to transition because your business is tethered to you at the helm. After a few creative sessions, I landed on “Springstead” because it represented the momentum of spring forth with transformation while standing steadfast and rooted in your values. The next step I took was incorporating Springstead. If you’re a solo contractor or freelancer, you don’t have to set up a separate entity. But if you want to scale, build a team, bring on investors and protect your personal assets, it’s best to establish a legal entity for the business.

The main piece of advice for anyone thinking about starting their own consulting practice is to give yourself at least a 3 month runway to gain momentum and build your roster. Unless you walked into your business with a rolodex of clients or as the established authority in your category, it takes time to build your network and trust with the clients you’d like to work with.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the founder of Springstead, an advisory and consultancy practice that works with purpose driven founders, businesses and organizations to develop, launch and grow their initiatives. We partner with founders on strategy, business development and management, project execution and capital opportunities. I have 15+ years of experience incubating, developing and launching new businesses for startups and organizations like Conde Nast and HBO. I have scaled a digital media network to 75M annual downloads, a DTC business to 1M paying subscribers in Year 1, and negotiated deals and partnerships with an impact of >$200M. I am passionate about supporting female founders and facilitating an environment for them to flourish in.

The origin story of Springstead is that in 2021, I left the corporate world because like a lot of people at the time, I felt burnt out and that I needed a change. I took some time off and traveled with my husband. We snorkeled with turtles in the Bahamas, toured picturesque vineyards in Tuscany, marveled over Renaissance art in Florence, tried humorously strange foods in the Basque Country… and when it was time to come home, I felt ready, replenished and determined. ⁠With a clarity I had never experienced before, I knew I wanted to bring my experience and expertise of building businesses directly to female founders.⁠ Within 2 months, I developed the brand and design, incorporated and launched the website and our Instagram account.

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

I had to learn that being courageous is not the absence of fear, but recognizing that fear and persevering anyway. Growing up as the only child to immigrant parents, the things that my parents placed importance on – education and profession – became my dreams. It didn’t occur to me that I could dream bigger. While I excelled at building businesses for others, I never thought I could pave my own path, build my own business and be my own visionary. Yes, those things happened for other people, but I didn’t think they were in the realm of my possibilities.

Looking back, I realize that I was held back by the suspension of belief – I didn’t believe I could so I unconsciously made myself smaller. I pigeonholed myself into a single checkbox – I was a professional and therefore I couldn’t check the other boxes such as creative and entrepreneur. Now, I check as many boxes as I see fit because I can be all of those things and beyond; they do not have to be mutually exclusive of each other.

I know that I’ll never be rid of fear but that’s not the point of having courage or pushing forward. I can leverage that fear as an indicator to what I need to do and I can use it as a call-to-action for me to show up for myself.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My journey, both professionally and personally, has been one continuous pivot – I move through life by constantly evolving and iterating. As humans, I think we are always deducing, consciously and subconsciously, what is serving us and what isn’t. Like a sunflower leaning towards the sun, we pivot towards a path that brings us light and fulfillment. Professionally, I started as a consultant right out of college. From there, I pivoted to financial analysis, to strategic analysis, to business development and management, to digital strategy and strategic partnerships, to owning my own P&L, to eventually peeling off and starting my own business. Throughout each of these stages, I leaned towards the parts of my role that I really liked and shed other parts in order to gain new experience. Every step has led me to have the appropriate robust experience for what I am doing today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.springstead.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/springstead_co/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieshen/