Julien Smith on Building Breather and Practice

Intentional Performers with Brian Levenson

Julien Smith is the Co-Founder and CEO at Practice. Previously, he was also the Co-Founder of a company called Breather. Additionally, he was a New York Times Bestselling Author of 3 books. He is somebody who’s been a speaker and a writer. Creative would be the word I use to best sum up Julien.

Julien had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“One of the ways to have the biggest impact on the world is to work with a team of people that will care about a common purpose” (7:15).

“How much of a mercenary are you vs a missionary?” (8:15).

“I was a hard employee… I wanted a level of autonomy that I never earned” (11:35).

“I felt that I had a value in myself that I saw that was very difficult for me to show other people. I had to step completely out of the system” (13:00).

“People make everything happen. When it’s not people, it’s culture” (23:00).

“I’m more deliberate about people now than I ever was” (23:15).

“To be deliberate with the people that you work with has got to be the most valuable thing that you can possibly do at a startup, especially at the early stage” (24:15).

“The number one thing that I care about today is making sure the team is amazing and making sure the team is all aligned together” (26:00).

“I’ve been working to empower solo people for as long as I can think” (30:15).

“The challenge is to scale beyond your own thing” (41:15).

“There’s hundreds of coaches out there, but no one knows how to find them other than by referral” (43:10).

“I like the intimacy of the relationship in coaching” (44:00).

“CEOs have almost no opportunity to be their honest self, they’re always on. To be able to give them an opportunity to not be on… and to allow them to authentically be themselves is incredibly rewarding” (44:30).

“Coaching lets me step out of my own company, which is really rewarding” (44:50).

“No matter who you are or how you get it, you do need a connection to something greater than yourself” (50:45).

“As much as possible, I try to connect to things that are bigger than myself to remember that there’s a lot of stuff out there in the world” (51:10).

“I feel that you’ve got to know what you’re getting into” (54:25).

“To me, what venture really means is access to money and access to a really strong density of talent” (55:20).

“Venture brings together incredibly smart and talented people” (55:50).

“My identity was absolutely attached to being the CEO and Co-Founder of Breather, and to a degree it’s attached to Practice, but less so than the people who have done nothing before that at all” (58:00).

“Let’s build a business that will support the next 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 people like this” (59:15).

“I really believe that in 5-10 years we can be one of the most successful companies in the world. To do that right, from the very beginning, you have to have that intent” (1:00:45).

“One of the things that you’ve got to do when you get into venture-backed businesses, you have to know that you can build something for a customer that you love, and you have to know that you can do it for 10 years” (1:01:15).

Additionally, make sure to check out Julien on Twitter. You can also purchase any of Julien’s books (The Flinch, Trust Agents, the Impact Equation; Companies: Practice, Breather) anywhere where you normally buy books! If you want to learn more about Practice, feel free to give the website a look. I would also encourage you to check out the website for Peter Shallard, known as the Shrink for Entrepreneurs.

Thank you so much to Julien for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.