The Truth Behind Happily Ever After with Julie Morey

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Latinx in power. Today, we'll be breaking down the truth behind Happily Ever After. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Julie Moray in the EO Fire Studios. Julie is a social worker, mom, and entrepreneur, inspiring others by sharing her journey from divorce to choosing single motherhood to pursuit of financial freedom. Today, a foundation will talk about the Happily Ever After belief, the quest for happiness through travel, single motherhood as a choice, KDP, TEDx and oh so much more and a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Julie and our sponsors the next wave your chief AI officer hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lance is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented the next NextWave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business.

1:10Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. NetSuite by Oracle brings accounting, finance, inventory, and HR into one proven platform, helping you reduce costs everywhere. Backed by popular demands, NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program for a few more weeks. Head to netsuite.com slash fire. Julie, say what's up to Fire Nation. and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. All right. Well, what's up, Fire Nation? I'm so excited to be here. I think we are starting to change a little bit more and understanding a little bit more about what it takes to be successful.

1:51But I think that people are still struggling with that idea of balance, of balancing mental health and play and downtime with that working hard, that it's not about the grind, right? Like we remember the four-hour work week, but it's more about having that balance and that's gonna lead us to our success. And Fire Nation, what's also gonna lead us to our success is understanding the truth behind happily ever after. And that's what we're talking about here today because a lot of people grow up with the happily ever after belief. So can you tell us more about this, Julie? I don't know if anyone else remembers, but in the playground, so-and-so and so-and-so sitting in a tree.

2:31First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. And we grew up with that. We grew up with Disney and Cinderella. I remember going to see Cinderella when I was six. And it was very much indoctrinated to me, now I'm 47, that you grew up, you got married, you met your Prince Charming, and you rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. And then when that doesn't happen, I think we become disillusioned. and we don't know where to go from there. And sometimes we get stuck. Fire Nation, we're here to get you unstuck when it comes to that because we're living in the real life.

3:05And it's actually kind of funny is that real life is crazy sometimes. I mean, we are almost talking a decade to the day from the last time Julie was on Entrepreneurs on Fire. It was back in 2014. Obviously it's 2024 now. So that is just crazy to see what can happen when you just have a couple people going through life, doing their thing, connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting, and here we are talking about the truth behind Happily Ever After. Because listen, we have life happen to us. You said you're 47, I'm 45, I'm in that same age group. I have friends who graduated college, they got married almost right away, half of them, exactly half of them actually, are divorced now and they're onto that next leg and they're dating and they're doing the dating apps and they're sharing kids, etc.

3:54I was on the other spectrum where I actually waited until I was 43 years old to get married. It's just how it happened. I was with somebody for 12 years and then married her, Kate, my business partner, my life partner. But we didn't marry until I was 43. So I'm definitely starting a lot later in life in that marriage side of things. So I want to talk about divorce. I want to talk about the quest for happiness through travel because you're experienced in both of these. So tell us more. You know, when I was on Entrepreneur on Fire 10 years ago, I had just written my book, Travel, Sex and Trainwrecks, and I just gotten divorced.

4:30And I was trying to find my happily ever after through travel. I was trying to figure out what does my life look like now that this whole idea that I had is is different. because my parents at this point had been married almost 60 years. So I really thought that that was the path. And so I had to come back and reevaluate and say, well, how do I find happiness outside of having a partner or marriage or those kind of things? How do I find happiness with myself and who I am? And so I took off traveling and I had this amazing adventure. I mean, I backpacked for six or seven months through eight or nine countries in Southeast Asia.

5:10and it really did help me heal from my divorce and figure out who I was. And that was amazing. And I think that travel is just one of those things that if you're ever trying to figure something out, go take a trip. You're going to learn something about yourself. You're going to learn something about the world. You're going to meet amazing people. You're going to change your perspective. You're going to grow and get a level of depth that you may not have had if you stay at home. So yeah, definitely, I think that you can find a lot of answers through travel. But ultimately, you're going to find the answers within yourself, which also kind of comes through travel.

5:44Now, I actually don't remember, but I wonder if I brought it up 10 years ago, because it's definitely something that comes up in my mind right now is that, you know, for me, back in 2007, 2008, I was in law school in Rhode Island. And, you know, I just wasn't happy. I was very actually depressed in a certain number of areas, kind of struggling with PTSD from my service in the army and my deployment to Iraq for 13 months and everything that went along with that. And I needed to divorce law school. It was just obvious to me that I needed to break away from it because I was unhappy and I was not getting any happier.

6:22And I was walking in this small town in Rhode Island called Bristol, and I went by this cute little bookstore. And what was sitting there in the glass display case, but it was that great book, Eat, Pray, Love. And I just, for some reason was drawn to it. And I walked in and I picked up the book and I kind of like paged through it. And I was like, I don't know why, but I'm just going to get this book. And I bought it. And of course, like it was just like one of those impulse buys, but I went home and over the next like week or so, I read that book thoroughly. And guess what? A week after that, I'd gone on some random travel form.

7:00I don't remember which one it was. I found two guys that had already planned a trip for the next month in India, and they were going to be spending four months in India and Nepal. They had the whole trip planned. They were just looking for one or two people to join them to kind of add to the group. I jumped on that trip. I met them in New Delhi a month later, literally dropped out of law school, met them in New Delhi, and I just traveled with them for four months in India and Nepal. And it was really, the reason why I looked to India was because of that book and it ended up being a really incredible journey with struggles.

7:34You know, there's a lot of bad times, there's a lot of good times, and there's a lot of times in between, boring and exciting and everything you can imagine. I mean, it was a four-plus-month adventure. But I think that that travel for me was really interesting and I really took a lot of things away from that. So I think it's really interesting finding issue when you are saying to yourself, hey, whatever is in my life right now that's not working, maybe I just need to get away. I need to just go somewhere new, have new experiences. And if that's an opportunity, I know Julie's done it. I know I've done it.

8:07And I think we're both in better places as a result. So let's now move on to single motherhood as a choice. Tell us more about that. once I had come back, you know, from traveling and, you know, I always say my book, travel, sex and train wrecks, it was kind of based a little bit on eat, pray, love, but it's the non PG version. Um, because I definitely, I, you know, I would just got divorced and I was single and I was figuring out who I was. Um, and India is such a great country cause there's no halfways in India. Like you don't come back from India and be like, yeah, it was okay. Like you either, you know, you're like either you love it or you hate it, but there is strong emotions there because it is such a vibrant country.

8:45And so I came back from this trip and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out who I was. And I came to the point where it was 39. And I honestly had kind of thought like, okay, well, you know, I'm going to get divorced. I'm going to travel. I'll meet somebody. I'll get remarried. Like that's how it's going to go. And online dating, um, that is a whole nother topic. It just never worked for me. And so I found myself at 39, still single, but I wanted a child. Like I knew that my life would not be complete if I didn't have a child in it. And so I started looking around and I found this movement called single moms by choice.

9:21And it's an entire movement. There's over 6 million just in the U S of these women. And we have chosen to have a child on our own, either with, through a sperm donor, like I did or through adoption. But we had a child knowing that there was no partner, that it was just going to be us. and I think more and more women are choosing this route as we're becoming more independent we have good careers we have jobs we have family support we have all of the things to raise a child on our own and we're not going to get married just to have a partner to have a kid with right we we see that we want more and so I looked at that and I thought well a single mom by choice that's the take.

10:01And so now 10 years after my first interview, I have an amazing six and a half year old daughter and she is my travel buddy. Well, we just got back from a month in Dominican Republic. She, we got stuck in Thailand during the pandemic together. So yeah, it's been the best choice I ever made. And I feel like that also was me choosing to create my own happily ever after instead of saying, Oh gosh, this is so sad. I'm 39. I haven't met anybody. I'm not going to have to have a kid. That's not going to happen. I'm not going to have that dream fulfilled. I said, how do I make this happen? And I did. I love that.

10:35Fire Nation, what we have found over 4 ,396 episodes of Entrepreneurs on Fire, successful people, happy people, they take action. And all those actions aren't always the best results. There's failures, there's struggles, there's obstacles, there's challenges. But action is action. And that can cause reaction and adjustment and pivots and learning. And that's really exciting that we live in a world that you can do just that. And we have so much more to talk about around this topic and more when we get back from thinking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now.

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14:18Julie, we're back and I want to talk about three letters, KDP. So what is KDP? And tell us more about starting a KDP business for financial freedom. You know, when I wrote my book, Travel, Sex, and Trainwrecks, I had grand visions of this becoming a bestseller and taking off and making my fortune. That did not happen. But it did affect a lot of people in a positive way, but I also had to look at how do I support myself financially? And I work full-time as a school social worker, but my sister started getting into journals with KDP a few years ago. And she's managed to make her own passive income from that.

14:57And she actually lives in Portugal in Braga with her kids and just does journals and t-shirts with KDP. I am still scaling up, but I do make, I make enough every month to cover all of my travel and all the trips that I do. I just started sponsoring with Stoner Gump, who is on TikTok and we created a cookbook and we've seen a lot of financial success from that. So being able to look around again, now that I have my daughter and say, okay, I, I have a good job, but it's still tying me to that nine to five, so to speak. And my ultimate goal is to world school and travel with my daughter. So how do I get to that point of financial freedom?

15:37And I think, you know, going back to that idea of what do you believe about becoming successful? Sometimes we get stuck on this idea that we just have to follow one thing. That's what we're passionate about. And we follow that. And that's what we go towards. But there's a lot of different ways to become successful. So I'm still working on, you know, coaching and working with other moms who want to become single moms by choice. I have a goal to land a TEDx talk. I love speaking, but I'm also doing KDP because that makes me good money. And it allows me the freedom to travel with my daughter. Now, let's talk more about that TEDx journey.

16:13Now, your passion project that landed you this idea, this opportunity, and a TEDx stage. So tell us that story. I think that we are still operating with some very outdated stereotypes in our society about single parenthood. I think there's still a lot of people out there that think, oh, the success of a child is dependent on the number of parents, which if you take a step back and you just look at that, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Like why would something as arbitrary as the number of parents determine the success of a child? And there's lots and lots more research coming out now that's showing that really it has to do with the type of home environment, the support, the love, the lack of conflict.

16:54Those are the kinds of things that determine the success of a child. And so I am really passionate about spreading that message and saying, hey, look, single parenthood is changed and we need to stop operating with this outdated idea. And we need to look at what really makes a family because we have so many different families now. I mean, it's not just single moms, there's single dads, you know, there's, there's same sex couples, there's step families, there's so many different models of family. And I want us to start looking and seeing all of those as just as successful as the nuclear family.

17:27I'm not saying we need to replace the nuclear family, but we need to acknowledge that there are other successful models. And I also feel like the single mom by choice movement, it's important to show that it's successful, that I I don't want any woman who wants to have a child to miss out on that because I can't imagine my life without my daughter. So I have this passion to get on the TEDx stage and be like, hey, look, here's the information. Here's the research. Here's a real life experience. Like, let's start looking at things from a different perspective. And I'm really passionate about that.

17:59And I also hope that it would launch my speaking career because I'm passionate about speaking. Like, I love being on the stage. Now, you did say new perspective. So let's bring it home. What is your new perspective on happily ever after? I think my new perspective on happily ever after is that you are in charge of your happily ever after. You know what you said earlier, John, about like you realized you weren't happy in law school. And so you went and you changed your whole trajectory and you left law school. And I think sometimes we get stuck in this idea of, oh, but I started this. I have to finish it.

18:31You know, and I have pivoted so many times because I've looked at, oh, this is working or this isn't working. and so I think that perspective on happily ever after is constantly evaluating like never every single day like don't ever get in that rut where you're just going through each day but you're actually constantly looking at designing your life the way you want it to every single day be like is is this working for me is this not working what do I need to do differently do I need to make a huge change do I need to make a small change but never letting life just passively pass us by. We are in charge of our happily ever after.

19:08We can't hope that somebody else is going to ride in on their white horse. We're in charge of it and we can create it. So I think that's my new perspective is that sense of we have that power. Fire Nation, there's so much fire there. I can't even get over it. I mean, number one, the sunk cost fallacy. That is so real for so many people, do you realize how many unhappy lawyers, doctors, nurses, fill in the blank, individuals there are that started something like that long-term schooling or whatever that might be? And they knew from day one or day 100 that they did not want to continue on this lifetime journey, but they did because they made this silly assumption that because they had gotten into the school or accrued X dollars in student loans or debt, that they had to keep going forward.

20:00And now, fast forward 10 years, 20 years, 40 years, they're just looking back at a unhappy and unfulfilled life. And again, that's not everybody, but that is unfortunately some people because they bought into that sunk cost fallacy. Every single day is a brand new day for you to make a brand new decision. Don't let past mistakes and past decisions dictate every day of your future. And I love that Steve Jobs would say, hey, I would look in the mirror and I would ask myself, am I happy with the path that I'm on? He would do that every single day. And guess what? Not every day the answer would be yes.

20:33But he would say, if more days than not over the course of a couple weeks, my answer was, no, I'm not happy with the path that I'm on, then he would make a change. And he would adjust his path. And so that's something to think about. Because not every day is going to be an amazing day. Not every day you're going to feel great. We're going to be on an emotional roller coaster. We are human beings. But you have to keep your finger on the pulse, Fire Nation, and overall, is the majority of your days, four days a week, five days a week, are you feeling like you're on the right path? And I love that phrase you use, Julie, never let life passively pass us by.

21:11That's powerful. End with a bang, Julie. What is the one key takeaway you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today? How can our listeners connect with you? What is your call to action? And then we'll say goodbye. Connecting with me the best way right now is on Instagram. I'm still working on developing my website. And I would say the, oh, and then of course you can also look up my book. It's under my name, Julie Maury on Amazon. Travel Sex and Train Wrecks is on there along with my really funky adult coloring books. I've got the Boozy Unicorn. I've got the Salty Mermaid and I've got Chicks Gone Wild, which are really fun, campy adult coloring books that are part of my KDP empire.

21:52But my takeaway, I would say is take that time to look at your life and see if you need to pivot. And if you don't, great. But live your life fully, passionately, all out, creating what you want. Create your life, your happily ever after. Fire Nation, powerful stuff. Because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with jm and jld today so keep up the heat for links to everything we talked about visit eofire.com type julie in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up and julie thank you for sharing your truth your knowledge your value with fire nation for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side sounds great thank you hey fire nation a huge thank you to our sponsors and julie for sponsoring today's episode and fire nation are you ready to rock your very own podcast check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free.

22:49freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there or on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

23:24NetSuite by Oracle brings accounting, finance, inventory, and HR into one proven platform, helping you reduce costs everywhere. Backed by popular demands, NetSuite has extended its one-of-a-kind flexible financing program. for a few more weeks, head to netsuite.com slash fire.