Julia Gentry’s book is finally here! Dream – I Dare You is Julia’s dream come true. To her, holding the book, fresh straight out of the press, is something surreal, yet something that she felt has played out in her head so many times that each of those times could have been the true realization of her dream. As happy as Julia is for having one of her dreams achieved, she is even more passionate to help you get yours as well, hence the book. In this conversation with her husband, partner in crime and biggest cheerleader, Travis Gentry, Julia takes us to the whole journey of how the book came about in her mind and what we should expect to learn from it. Get your phones ready as you’re going to want to order your copy as soon as you finish this episode!

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Dare to Dream: An Interview with the Author

I am super excited to interview my cohost on her brand-new book that is actually in her hands. Just arrived fresh off the press. Now, it’s here.

I can flip through the pages. I can say, “On page 111, I talked about,” and “Let me look at my table of contents and see what’s chapter two.” It’s unreal.

Julia Gentry wrote a book. What’s it called?

Dream – I Dare You

Let’s dive right in.  

I’m so excited to be doing this. I told you this but I feel like I have been here a million times. It almost felt normal. I think sometimes people are like, “Can you just not even stand it?” There’s a part of me that was like, “For sure,” and then the other part of me was like, “I had played this moment out in my head many times,” but I would love to talk about this.

What is the full name of the book?

The full name is Dream – I Dare You. It’s a wake-up call to greater alignment in your faith, family, career, and community.

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Let’s start right there. Why did you name it that?  

I had some resistance to the name, to the title, especially the word Dream. It came to me at a time that I just know. I remember flopping in my lap. It was like a whisper from God, and I addressed with it forever. Just because of all of the biases I had about dreaming and even to me, it felt whimsical. It felt like, “Come on now, what about a harder name?” I had some ongoing titles that you and I have talked about that are like, “Pick Your Heart, Total Life Recall, Get it, Do Hard Things.” When the idea of dream landed, I was probably the first that was like, “God, no.” As I went on the journey, it became more and more obvious that it’s our biases, it’s our opinions, it’s our judgments, and it’s our preconceived notions that stop us from the benefit of dreaming and what it means. It felt like such a perfect title, especially with the no pun intended I dare you, there’s a little bit of that like it’s not what you think. It was so intricate to put together from the dream with I dare you and then the fact that it is a wake-up call, a greater alignment in every area of our life. The title even was something that was important to me. Once I stopped resisting and actually landed on it, it just brought everything in the book together.

With that, elaborate a little bit more. The preconceived notion on dream, when people hear dream, what is it? All the people that you coach and talk to, and when you speak, there could be like this dream of just going to what?  

I think it’s this idea of a pie in the sky approach to life like, “Julia, while you go dream, I’m going to go work and I’m going to make the money. I need to put food on the table, and we’ll talk about our dreams when we retire, when I have the money, when I do the thing, when I finished my career, when I have time.” For most people, it feels too surreal, too big of a concept, too ambiguous, and that’s not what dreaming is. It’s dreaming without action is no dream at all. As I spent these last couple of years, diving into the word, studying it, understanding it, and reading the Bible, I came up with my own definition of what it is. I feel it’s important for people to understand what it is so you can get the benefit of it. That’s why you’re missing the benefit of it. That’s why we’re settling for, “Okay, fine. Good enough.” That’s why we’re stuck going through the motions, we’re stuck in our comfort zones and we’re not seeing the manifestation of the things that we want most. We’re not clear on the things that we want most. We’re not shining the light on the issues around us.

Our lives are starting to look like everybody else’s and then you wonder. For us, this is where it started. Is there something more? There is if you have the courage to dream it. That’s why I’m like, “I dare you.” You’re going to have to have some courage because it’s going to look different than what your world looks like now, what you’re used to and your past. All of your biases, it’s going to blow your mind. That’s what this book is designed to do. It’s designed to blow people’s minds to get after their heart, to get after the thing that God put on the inside of them, to get after the real concept of what dreaming is. That’s what it is.

We’ve talked about this and we’ll get to how long this book has been in the process but what you’re saying is a dream is your purpose.

Can I read it out of the book? Turn to page 22, this is my definition of dreaming, which is, “Great and intense focus with deep absorption of thought in a different realm that brings about possibilities while considering the needs of those around you.” That whole concept is its great and intense focus, which means this is not a multitasking thing. This is not like I can do seventeen things at one time. This is past the phase of busy that’s one of the biggest arch enemies to dreaming. “I’m just so busy.” Bill Johnson says this all the time and I love it, it’s artificial significance. I’m going to fill my schedule with all the things, and then I lose focus of the thing. It’s great and intense focus with deep absorption of thought. This is a meditative state. This is a spiritual awakening. This is going so much deeper in a different realm. Not the one that I see, not the one that I’ve experienced, not the one of my past, not the one that I even could consider based upon the people around me, it’s in a totally different realm that brings about possibilities, which applies like it’s an active concept.

This is not just a concept, it is active. I need to bring it about while considering the needs of those around us. It’s a dad thing too, but I hear many of the moms in my circles say, “I have to almost put my dreams on the shelf because I’ve got to take care of my family.” You don’t understand that your family needs your dreams. Families need mommies and daddies who are on fire about the things that are important to them. They need to see that exemplified. When we just put our dreams on our shelf, it hurts. It’s the most selfish thing we could do. Dreaming is considering the needs of those around them and recognizing that the world is waiting for your dreams. It’s waiting for that. That’s what dreaming is.

Each dream is uniquely downloaded into everybody. Everybody has a dream.

That’s one of the things I wrote in here. That’s the best part about dreaming is it has no biases either. It doesn’t matter where you come from, how old you are, where you live and it doesn’t matter about your upbringing. I say this lightly, but it can’t care about those things. It cares about your potential. Your dreams are so connected to heaven and God, which sees a bigger picture anyways. It’s in a totally different realm. Dreams have no biases about all the things that we have biases about. If we could consider it a thing, it’s almost like sitting here and we would say, “You don’t understand my past and the dreams. I don’t care.” It’s like, “You don’t understand my upbringing, that I have zero money in the bank, the fact that I’m not competent in this area and the dream is almost like I don’t care.” It’s unbiased.

Sometimes we are the biggest dream killers. We did a show on that. You should go read that, and as far as doubting and overcoming that. It has a picture of a lion on it. Tell us how that came about and why a lion?  

The lion, has been such a powerful piece in my life. The first dedication of this book was to my best friend, Malori, who was killed in a car accident when I was sixteen years old. Her name was Malori Aslan Smith, and Aslan for most people know, it’s the lion in the Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan means vulpine. I remember the day that Mal died and I remember hitting my knees, and feeling like I would never get up again. I remember her parents standing in a room full of hundreds of people after their daughter died on a mission’s trip. They give us to call to arms of like, “Here’s Mal’s baton, “Shine brighter, make God’s love known and live the legacy that she’s living.” I remember watching, going, “How in the world are you supposed to do that?” I felt so called at that time.

For years I just wandered and wandered, wondering what the heck that meant and how you ever rebuild your life after feeling that amount of loss. You do, and I even wrote this in the book that, “People say time heals everything. Don’t say that to anyone because it doesn’t.” Time in of itself doesn’t heal anything. Healing heals. This book is so much of a healing journey for people too because part of dreaming means we have to give that pain purpose. Anyways, fast forward, you and I have kids, we named Aslan after her and the concept of being this vulpine.

It came time for the title of this book, I had a graphic designer helping and she had said, “Why don’t you go look at all the stock photos and let me know which ones you like?” Immediately I was like, “No, I don’t want a stock photo.” She was like, “Ninety-nine percent of authors, we pick and then we add things to it.” I was like, “No, I do not want a stock photo on this thing.” I looked and I looked, I spent days trying to figure out what this was. I remember I called you to bed one night, and I said to you and I had tears in my eyes because I knew that there was going to be something about the cover of this book that I wanted it to wake people up. I wanted it to unleash this awakening where even when someone saw the cover, they were like, “What is that?” That first initial, the light in you goes on. I crawled in the bed and I don’t know if you remember this, but I said, “Travis, how am I going to know?” You grabbed my hand and you said, “You’re going to know. You’ll just know.” In my head, I think many times someone hears that you’re like, “F you bro.”

“You’ll know when you need to know, let’s go to bed.”  

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That’s amazing but in my head, it’s like, “That’s something that someone says when he just wants you to be quiet and go to bed,” but it’s true. I knew the way that you said it, “You’re going to know,” but I wanted immediate answers. I want to know right now. I want to know yesterday. There was a little part of me that went, “He’s right,” and the other part of me that was like, “No, I don’t want that answer.” It was the next morning, I got up and I’m sitting outside with Aslan and she says to me, “Mommy, what are you doing today?” I said, “Baby, today’s my day of I’ve got to figure out what the cover of this book is going to look like.” She smiled at me and I said, “Daddy told me, I’m going to know.” She goes, “You already do know.” I say, “What do you mean?” She goes, “Mom, it’s your lion friend in heaven.” Instantly I saw it. It was all the colors of my dream. It was this fire color and it was this face of this lion. Have I not told you that?

No.

She says, ”It’s your lion friend in heaven.” I got chills and I saw it. Don’t google first. Don’t Google all of your answers. Sit with it for a while first then use Google to reinforce the thing that God showed you. I Googled it and I said, “A lion with a fire. That’s how I Google. I don’t Google sentences. It’s like, “A lion with a fire look,” or something like that. All of a sudden, it’s all these images and I landed on this lion that was breathtaking to people. It was different. It was not the exact lion that I wanted it. I sent it to my designer and she’s like, “No, that’s an artist. That’s not a graphic designer.” She goes, “Why didn’t you just reach out to the artist?” I come to find out her name is Maria Barry. She drew this lion and one time she took out her pencil. One time, this is not like multiple additions, is one line that she drew and she sent it to me. It was exactly to your point, “I’m going to know.” To Aslan’s point, it’s my lion friend in heaven. Here it is. It wraps around the whole entire book. It’s my lion friend in heaven.

I’m thinking about that it’s two dreams coming together. Her dream as an artist, that’s her passion. That’s her dream is to create art.  

It’s almost like three dreams. It was Malori’s dream. She wrote about this in her journal was she wanted to start a match, like be the match that lit a fire. She wanted to be the fire, and this is one of her last journal entries where she’s like, “God use me. I will be that fire. Light my match, I will be that fire.” She passed that baton on, and then here’s little Aslan, our Aslan that plays a role in reminding me, and then here’s Maria, who we’re going to do an episode with her, but her whole life, her dad told her she will never make a living being an artist. “There is no room for you to be an artist. That’s whimsical. That’s not realistic.” She said 25 years of her career in a corporate job until six years ago, she decided she couldn’t do it anymore. She’s been a full-time artist ever since. Here then, she puts her artwork out. She’s like, “I don’t even know if people know, and the fact that you found me.” She’s got this beautiful accent and all the things, but now her dream came true because my dream came true on top of Malori’s dream come true. It’s just your dreams.

Little does she know that her art now is on a book. It’s on its way to becoming a bestselling book.

Her name is in here. Had she not said yes. This is why dreams are powerful. People are waiting, even Malori. When I finally got my head around, I don’t get to decide that but the fact that in Malori’s death now more people know about God, more people have been ignited, more people have felt called to do something powerful. It doesn’t mean I would wish her here over all of that, but even in her death, that ripple effect, and then Maria decided to be an artist, and in me decided to be an author. People are waiting.

 

Who is this book for then? Who would you set it? You say this and we talked about it, but it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s not a dream, and you get this like motivation. It’s a deep book. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s to the point. It’s take action.

This book is not designed to make you feel good. It’s designed to make you be good. We say this all the time, “You’re going to have to wave the waters of lives, which are going to piss you off. It’s going to make you mad before it can set you free.” This book is for someone who like you and I, finds himself crawling into bed going, “Is there something more? I feel like I’m a born for more. I feel my eye should be shining. I feel like I should be alive. I don’t want okay. Finding good enough anymore. I want more meaning. I want more significance.” This book is written for people who feel that pull. It’s people who are sensitive to a message that’s, “I can’t keep doing what I’ve always done. If I want different results. I’m sick and tired of getting the results that I’m getting, and I’m willing.” That’s all boldness is. I think some of us think that boldness is this like, “At all costs, I wake up feeling courageous and on fire all the time.” The boldness is a willingness to say, “Yes.” It’s a willingness to go where you’ve never gone. It’s a willingness to prove your theories, inaccurate in your dreams, accurate. It’s the ability to trust God more than you trust the things around you. Boldness is that willingness to say yes. This is for people who are like, “I’m unwilling.”

Would you say that’s for someone that just graduated high school, college, someone that’s 60? I think dream’s a lot of people through the course of it, talking with and community, there are people from all ages. Dreams, most of the time, over a period of time and you buried them and you come up with excuses, “I’m too old.” Who would you say this is for and why? Why someone 18 to 60?

It’s funny because I had someone say, “You need to pick your avatar. You need to write this for that person.” I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. I’m like, “Why don’t I just get to pick another 35-year-old me? That’s different than the eighteen-year-old me, and that’ll be different than the 60-year-old me.” I honestly wrote this book with all of that in mind. I wrote it to the eighteen-year-old who’s like, “What do I do next?” All the way to the 60-year-old and it’s like, it’s too far gone. All the way to you and me of the world, I could say I’m so busy. I’m full, the plate is full and I’ve got kids. I’m wiping the butt, I’m trying to run a business and all the things. All the way to someone who can’t get out of bed because they’re depressed and they’re frustrated.

I wrote this with everybody in mind because all the things that we go through are sometimes so universal. The problem is when we make it just about us, we start to isolate, we retreat, and we start to blame, shame, and guilt ourselves and everybody else. I wrote this thinking, I hope that 17, 18, 19 years old get this stuff at that age. Just as much as if you’re 60 that you’re still just getting started all the way to even if you’re 35 and you feel like you’re being run by your life. You’re like, “Push the pause button to the person in bed. I know that you’re depressed. I know that you’re feeling completely anxious. Pick up the book.” That, I felt it would reach all of those quiet cries for help.

What I would say, knowing this book, what you’ve put into it, and what you’ve done over the years, this book is like a community book. It’s not one to read and forget about. It’s want to study and to be a part of other people that are reading it because questions come up and then, you could be isolated based off of what you’re saying like, “In this phase of my life, I’m the only one experiencing this or this happened to me.” It’s to go outside of that to understand I’m not the only one. There are people that have overcome whatever it may be. I want to throw that in for people that are reading. You can talk about this and what the intent behind the book is it’s not just buy it, read it, put it back on the shelf. What is your intent and passion behind not only the book but many of the things that you have coming out with it?  

It’s been cool because the thing that I encourage everybody in this book is, when you start, you’re not going to see the whole thing. In fact, you probably don’t need to because you’d say no. It’s going to be so much bigger. It takes so much more. This journey of this book was exactly that for me. I feel God’s been lighting up the next step as I go. There are some days that I’m like, “This is so irresponsible. Get your act together. You need to have a whole plan and the whole thing mapped out.” You’re like, “I’m so following right the steps. I’m so following God’s lead on this and what this has turned into.” I didn’t start with this. I get to write this within mind but even says in the Bible, “If 2 or 3 or more come together, there he is also.” I want this book read in a community, whether it’s just at home with your family or it’s in a book club with your friends, it’s a small group at church, it’s with your business associates, or a bunch of guys or girls that you come together and read this together. When you read it, that’s one area of learning. I created the workbook because I want you to go and not only read it once, I want you to do a workbook that caused you to reread some of the main points and then write about it. I ask questions a couple of different ways for a reason. There’s the journal, which are blank pages that then get you to take it even a step further to go.

Take it even further outside of even my own prompted questions and get back into with you. If you’re talking about it in a small group or with these people around, you’re activating all the parts that make you transform. “I’m thinking, I’m writing and I’m talking, acting.” This is not something to read before you go to bed. You’re not going to fall asleep. My hope is that people use this as a way to create more meaningful conversations, not just talking about the weather and the problems or why it’s not working or why we can’t chase the dreams, or we get stuck in even these conversational habits. It’s to bring this into your circle and start sharing your dreams with other people. You should not be drinking alone. You’re going to need other people. You’re going to need some support. You’re going to want some encouragement. You’re going to need people to challenge you. That was the idea of exactly what Malori said like, “Let’s start a fire and let’s watch this thing ripple in our families, in our careers, in our community, and all the things around us. Let’s light that match and then watch it explode.”

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What else are you working on that will be out?  

Right after this the workbook is we’re going through final edits, so that comes out. The journal, which is another piece of my heart. I’ve been journaling since I can remember how to write. You and I had sold everything and I still keep my journals. I have many journals. There’s a companion journal that goes along with it. We’re building out Dream Together, which is an online membership site. It’s like, “Read the book and.” That’s what we wanted this to be like, you read the book and. We’ve got a membership site where it’s going to be ongoing growth coaching. It’s going to be a forum where you get to talk about it. You get to ask clarifying questions. We’ve got our seven-week course that’s designed to go like, “I want to do this. I want you to ask these questions. Not only in the book, I want to be coached on this.” We’re creating multiple layers and different opportunities for people to get engaged.

You go to TheDreamFactoryAndCo.com to get more information specifically on that. There again, it’s our intent. It’s to get people engaged and whether it’s our community and getting connected with the Facebook page or like you said, the course or whatever but it’s also, get the book and do it with your spouse, or do it with your church, your small group, or your business partners. Understanding there are many businesses throughout the years that you’ve specifically helped coach and they’re dying inside. One partner is disconnected because they’re not fulfilling and living in their full potential, the dream and desires that they have. They’re just doing it for another dollar.  

That’s what this is. This is all the coaching that I’ve done through us, but I wrote everything in this book. I’m always huge in creating impact. I personally can only coach many people at a time. I can post a bunch on Facebook and social media but this is everything that I coach on in one place. This is not just about like, “What are you dreaming about?” It did not address why you’re stuck. That’s the first part of this it’s awakening awareness and addressing this is not just tell me what you want on life but tell me why you’re currently stuck and how to get unstuck. All the limiting beliefs that stop you and all the reasons and justification. This gets deep before it gives us direction. It’s important as you and I have learned in our marriage, when we’re running businesses, and working with other people the best part about marriage, church, businesses, and people, we all come with a lot of stuff and a lot of biases. You start to understand those. It makes it so much simpler. Not always easier, but simpler to engage. This book is designed to address all of the sticky points too.

That brings me to the next question of how long have you been working on this book?  

I don’t want to be asked that question. Since you only even started dating, I had been talking about wanting to write a book. I’ve always felt like that’s what I’m supposed to do, but I love communicating. I love writing. I feel like I’ve been writing on this like my story’s been unfolding since my first negative memory. Once I felt God told me to write this book was about 2018, you and I sold everything. We started traveling the country in an RV and it was because we had achieved, that idea of the American dream. We bought the house, we rebuilt out of our epic failures, $100,000 of debt. We rebuilt our lives. We bought the house, had the cars, and had the kids. There was still this turning for both of us like, “Is there something more?” That’s when we sold everything and started traveling the country. It was in the RV that we’ve been asking that question suddenly to God, “Is there something more? Where do you want me to be? What do you want me to be focused on?” It was that night that I felt like he said that, “It’s the book.” All logic. You’re like, “That makes no sense. If I write a book and I’m not an author, I don’t have a huge following, who’s going to read it?” All the things follow. That’s why they took me a while. I wrestled with it for a couple of months and I had that vision in the RV of what this was about.

I’m supposed to wake people up and it’s going to be called Dream. I saw fire colors. It was a couple of months later that I was going to the bathroom, doing lunch with a girlfriend. I walked into the bathroom and this elderly lady walks out and she bumps into me and I was a little bit of a challenger. She was like, “What the heck?” I was like, “You might as well say hi to someone you bump into.” I was like, “Hi, how are you doing?” She didn’t even look at me. She keeps walking, but she’s just living the dream. In my head I’m like, “I feel she should be living the dream.” She’s 70 years old. You should be living the dream like the whole concept of work, retire, live your dream so that I’ve got nothing to lose. I turned around and said, “Excuse me, can you explain to me why you’re not living in the dream?” She doesn’t turn around and all she says is, “Life.” Instantly, I thought, “If life is stopping this lady from living her dreams, what is the point of life? I surrender. I’ll write it.” That’s mindboggling to me. We would kill to have a life to live for you. Many people are hurting and dying that would kill for 10, 5, 15 more years to live life. It was like, “I’ll do it. I surrender.” That was probably a couple of years ago.

 

You’ve been on the journey of actually putting pen to paper like, “Now it’s a book, not just journaling. We’re going to put this in a book.” Do think through this process because it started to come together even more so like the beginning of 2020 and it’s taken longer than you thought. We’ve talked about that, the process too. In dreaming, in general, and your purpose where it’s a process and sometimes we want it tomorrow. It’s all or nothing. Typically, we live nothing because we stop before we even get started, knowing that it’s not easy. Living out your dream is not easy and it’s a process. It can take months or years or decades to accomplish but it came out like it started out to unfold right as COVID was disrupting everything.  

I think the funny thing about this is to be careful what you wish for. I have been saying, “I’ll make time for the book. We’ll make time for the book.” We were doing all the things. All my coaching clients fill my schedule, we have the kids we’re getting at. I look back, I’m like, “When was I going to have time to do this?” We’ve been talking about the show and the online courses. We’ve started this talk a million times. I remember at that time with COVID-19, it wiped out a lot of my clients for months.

Probably like a week.

Like a faucet that went off in industries. They’re amazing clients. They’re all up and running again. They’ve rebounded in ways. It’s amazing to watch, but that first couple of months and the domino was legit. It freed up all my space. It made me do the hard things and the things that were crazy vulnerable. Bobby, my editor said, “Julia, writing this book will be the loneliest, most vulnerable thing you will ever do.” Not to scare people away, but that’s what it feels like, doing your dream. It can feel so lonely some days and it can be extremely vulnerable most days. The goal of the dream though is not just the dream, it’s about who you become in the process.

When we achieve our dream, we need strength. The journey and every step along the way are designed not to break you, it’s designed to make you. When you start to hold that dream in your hand, you have the strength and capacity to sustain what it’s going to take. Even holding this book, Travis was like, “This is like when you have a baby and nine months pregnancy is off.” That whole, always horrible for me because I don’t feel that the whole time. Labor has its own mixed bag. The baby finally comes out, you sit there for a minute and you’re like, “I’m done. Thank God.” The nine months replays in your head and how sick you felt. The labor is crazy hard and you don’t think you can do it. You hold this baby and you’re like, “Finally, I’m done.” The baby starts crying and you’re like, “I’m just getting started.”

You are in another phase though. It’s so rewarding, and we’ve talked about it. If you put some pen to paper and then a week, two weeks later, it popped out and you have a book. The journey and the process, also, the disruption, setbacks, and detours of this have been perfect.

I love my editing team and my project management team. I get feisty. They have delays. There was a couple of times, you were like, “You might need to chill out and trust the process,” because I was like, “They’re not getting it back to me for 2, 3 weeks.” Travis would look at me, “Number one, do you want them to extend the grace?” I was like, “I don’t understand the question,” but then the beauty of that is that was kinds that gotten totally disrupt me. At one point he said, “You’re forgetting something.” This is what Bobby had edited and he needed extra time. You’re like, “Julia, it’s a blessing for whatever reason is happening for you.” I was like, “You’re forgetting something.” I’m like, “I’m not forgetting anything. I wrote the book, it’s done. I want to move on. I want it to be done.” I remember he was finally going, “Will you listen?” I was like, “Okay.” He goes, “You forgot me.”

Who is me?

Dreaming is going to be hard, but not dreaming is hard too. Choose that hard you want most. Share on X

God said that, “You forgot me.” I was like, “What does that mean?” He goes, “Why am I not in your book? Why am I not represented as such a huge part of it? I want people’s dreams more than they want their dreams. I am a dreamer. I am the Creator. I am the example of this.” It was convicting for me because it was as though originally this book was to make people feel a little bit comfortable. I mentioned God, but to feel comfortable. It was like, “No, this is supposed to help them understand who God is.” I want them to understand who God is not who they think He is. Not the disappointments of a pastor or a father, but the true God, who God really is and how much He loves us and how much He adores us. He’s a dreamer and He’s dreaming dreams that would blow our minds and that what He wants for us is even better than what we think we want for ourselves. It was a couple of weeks that I needed to sit with him and go, “God, what do you say?” I went back and I re-wrote so much that it even bothered my editor who was like, “JG, we went from 50,000 words to 75,000 words. You re-wrote this thing.” I was like, “I can’t not.”

It’s because of that setback, like the timeframe, and my whole point around that is sometimes you don’t understand until you’re through the process, why it truly is happening for you or what you need to learn. There’s something else waiting to happen to make it even that much better.

Looking back again, I try to use these in my moments where I get all jazzed up. I’ve had many moments, in those moments of pause, being still, of slowdown, extended grace, and mercy have been pivotal in this journey. Almost more pivotal than me just taking action, doing all the things, and checking things off my list. It’s those moments of pause, reflection, and space that have been exponentially pivotal in where we are now with this.

Give us a high level. For people that are reading, what’s a high-level? Walk us through the book, the journey of it. We’ve got the background, but obviously, we’re saying it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a book to study, to be around people, to be in the community. We’re supposed to be in community in general, people are. You’re not supposed to live solo and by yourself. Any big dream is accomplished with other people in the community around you, whether they’re supporting you or they’re a part of the dream too. Give us a start to finish a high level of the book.  

I appreciate you saying it that way because I did write that so people don’t get so disoriented. We talked about this, about that liminal space, the minute that we’re like, “What is going in my mind?” We can get disoriented. I create this roadmap of phase one or section one is all about creating awareness, which is we’re going to scratch the itch a little bit. We’re going to open up a few cans of worms. We’re going to look at all the reasons that we do what we do and why we do what we do, peel the layers and maybe we’ve been running from. It’s designed to create awareness. The second part of this is to help people build belief. We need to look at how to strengthen our areas of resistance, the limiting beliefs, and going, “What do I believe in? What do I stand for? What am I willing to just run after and run towards?” It’s designed to help you strengthen yourself as a person, strengthen the dreams and clarify them. The final section is all around taking action. It’s about putting this to movement and doing something with it. It all builds on itself. That’s the overarching arch if you will of awareness belief creation.

That’s a high level. What else would you want people to know about this journey or the book itself?  

The biggest thing that I would close with is you and people know this if you follow me at all, and we say this all the time is pick your heart. Dreams is going to be hard, but not dreaming is hard too. Putting your dreams on the shelf is hard and putting them front and center in your life is hard. Settling for, “Okay, fine and good enough,” is hard, and being unapologetic about what’s important to you is hard. It’s at some level of we can go look, it’s all going to be hard. I need to choose the hard that’s going to be most important to me. The one that is the thing that when it’s all said and done like, “What is most important to me?” I feel that this is an encouragement and an opportunity for people to go, “I know that it’s hard. I know that it’s going to be hard, but so is not doing it.” That’s hard too. If you could be intentional about picking the hard, then you wake up in a year, 5 years, 10 years, and you’re where you want to be as opposed to waiting. That saying that says, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago,” or “See for the truth the next best is today.” My hope is now.

 

Where can people buy this book?  

TheDreamFactoryAndCo.com is a great resource. We have links that you could buy the book there, but of course, it’s on Amazon. You can go to Amazon and buy it on Amazon.

Will it be in Audible form?

Yes.

Another process that you have to go through. It will be on Audible. You’re going to record that. I would challenge, encourage people to go get the book. Get connected to our community, TheDreamFactoryAndCo.com. We have social media platforms, Julia Gentry, @TheJuliaGentry on Instagram. Get connected or start a book club. Get your friends and family or your business partners and walk through this process and this journey. I know it will impact you so you can make a greater impact around you. Good job. As you said, it’s phase one. We’re on phase two and we don’t know how many phases there are. It’s a process and I’m excited that it’s here. We can tangibly touch it and people can order it. Great job sticking with it. I know it’s going to impact millions of people.  

Thank you.

I appreciate your time, Julia. Thank you for being on the show.

You’re the best interviewer I ever had.

First of many for you to be on. Thank you for joining us on the show. Until next time.

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