Hello everybody, and welcome to season four of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I am so happy to be back here in this medium with you and excited for what we have in front of us. Heads up, this is a purely informational episode. I'm going to give a rundown of who I am. I'm going to talk about what we've done historically on on, if I'm honest, and I'm going to give a teaser as to what we've got for season four. So please feel free to skip but for anyone who wants to learn a little more context before listening to the episodes, I'm very happy to have you here for any new listeners. Hi, I'm Julia, thrilled to have you. It's been quite a journey over the last few years that we've we've had this podcast, and so let me kick off with some context on who I am. I am a former racing champion who spent over 20 years in motorsports. I am from New York City. I'm a very proud New Yorker. And while I was building my racing career over my 20s, primarily, I also started building up a keynote speaking career, and that launched after I gave a TEDx talk called Can Nice Girls Win (Races)? It was so cool to be on stage. It was so cool to make people laugh. So was able to turn that into a parallel career. With my racing, I had huge dreams of becoming the next Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson, and unfortunately, it didn't quite work out for me that way, that being said, I was able to race in so many different series, I was able to win, have championships, work with incredible people, race all over the world, and it was really special to be able to dedicate so much of my life to that. But all good things come to an end, and a few years ago, I did recognize that it was it was time to step back from active driving, and this was a very challenging decision. I'll get into it more in a little bit. But in that period of switching from focusing on racing to what was next, I decided to start a podcast. I wanted to listen to the feedback that I was getting from my audience members when I would give keynotes that they wanted more material. They wanted some follow up. And so I thought this was a really cool way to dive into subjects, do some research, share my perspective, and give some actionable tips to people who wanted it. So that's how the podcast started. Built it up. I also started working on the corporate side of NASCAR, on the strategy and innovation team, which it is interesting to be a 30 something year old woman joining corporate for the first time. There are a lot of lessons to learn, and one of those lessons is balancing a full time job with everything else that you do. So because of all that, at the end of season three, which was the end of 2024 I decided to put a pause on the podcast, and there have been a few big things that have happened since then. The first big thing was that, as I mentioned, it was really challenging to step away from racing, and I found that I had to be very intentional about how I was redefining my purpose and identity, because for so long I had been Julia the race car driver, and it didn't really fit anymore if you weren't pursuing that again. And I knew it was going to be challenging, but I was deeply unprepared for how much grieving I would do, how bitter I would be, and how long it would take for me to get over it and to move on and to feel more positive about life in general, and and I talked about this in real time a little bit in the in this, if I'm honest, episodes 11 and 42 tap into it a little bit, but it was, it was quite a journey. I'm very happy to say I'm on the other side of it now. And I think for anyone who hasn't had that kind of big thing professionally, I think the best way to describe it is that it's kind of like a breakup, a really gnarly breakup, where where you still love each other, like there's nothing really wrong, but you know, it's no longer serving you, and that's really challenging. And I could have chased the racing dream forever, but knew it wasn't great for that, not the best decision for future Julia. Future Julia and Ben. So Ben is my husband, and there were a lot of lot of reasons that went into stepping away, but it's been really great since then, I was reminded that there's a lot of other cool stuff in life, and have continued to develop with NASCAR on the corporate side. Have continued my keynote speaking, and I adore, I adore getting on stage. It's just so so cool, and it's a really fun especially in this day and age where everything is so digital, to have that in person interaction with a large group of people where we're all kind of sharing that moment at the same time is really special. And so thank you to all my clients who trust me with their audiences. But the most important development since season three, and the one that's most personally impactful is Drum roll, please. I moved back to New York with my husband after 10 years of living in Charlotte, North Carolina. It had been so long since I had been a New Yorker, and I am so happy to be back. I am so happy to feel like I belong in the place that I'm living. Charlotte was wonderful. It served a really good professional purpose. It was great. I met Ben, I made incredible lifelong friendships, and learned so much, but I didn't truly feel. Comfortable and like I belonged. So it's great to be back in my hometown. It's great to feel the vibrancy of the city, to meet people, and it's just really good for my soul. And it was a big lift to get here. It took a lot of planning and diligence and discipline and acknowledging that our home size is significantly smaller than what we had in Charlotte, but that's okay, because we were in New York, and now that I'm in New York, I also have a lot more access to really great studio space and podcast so shout out to fringe studios, who have provided a wonderful setting to be able to have these conversations and share these stories with you. So that's a whirlwind tour of who I am and where we've been. So now to give you some context on if I'm honest, because Season Four is definitely going to be different than the previous seasons. Season One was largely solo episodes, and again, this was a continuation of my keynote speaking. It was a way to share my thoughts on a variety of different topics, things like internal dialogs and asking for what you want. That was my first episode. I talked about how Taylor Swift taught me to know my value. That was the third episode. I also talked about thriving for through rejection, if, if you're a freelancer, if you are building something, if you're needing other people's support, if you're trying to get funding, like you know that rejection is a big part of the process. So that was episode six. I also talk about external validation, and I realized that I loved external validation, and I put a lot of weight in it and learning that that's not necessarily the most effective way to be true to yourself and to build so that was episode 14, seasons two and three, and the end of season one also started incorporating some really cool guests. We had marketing executive and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Bozoma St. John and Boz is incredible. She lifts everyone up who she's around, and she's so open and vulnerable. It was an incredible conversation. That was episode 24 we also talked with Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt's naturals, and she sold her company to Unilever. And that was an incredible episode. Episode 25 we have the almost 30 co founder and host of the podcast, Lindsey Simcik, who was episode 33 I also also took time to talk about things that were just really interesting to me, like Luke Combs take on Fast Car. Fast Car was one of my favorite songs growing up, and I thought he was so respectful in how he covered it. And it was such a big cultural moment for a lot of a lot of reasons. So that was episode 34 and then I also talk about things like regret and self forgiveness, because I think that's something that's easier said than done. I talk with some of my guests about regret in the season. It's just such a potent, potent feeling. So that was episode 40 and season four, as I mentioned, is going to be a little different. I wanted to root my conversations in a bit more of a theme, and was thinking about what I find most interesting and what I think is so cool about different people and different perspectives. And so we're going to be exploring how people build really cool things, and we're talking services, businesses, lifestyles, companies, products, whatever it might be, we're going to be guest forward and guest focused, and we're going to have really candid conversations about grit and resilience and just what it really takes to build something meaningful. And I think it's really special that we get to now have these conversations in person, because I think that you can pick up on little things, little body language things, little facial movements, you can have those really, really intense conversations that are a little harder to accomplish on virtual so I'm personally really excited to be able to do this in person. And I think that by having also personal anecdotes, it gives listeners something to really latch on to because we're going to talk about how they built, what they were building, what the pathways were like, what the what the nuts and bolts were like, everything about from feelings to pragmatic things, is just there's a lot that goes into building. And some of these guests I know personally. So thank you to my friends who have come on the pod and some I cold emailed. Thank you to all of those guests who graciously opened my email and agreed to join us, and I'm really looking forward to all of the guests to give you a little sampling. We will have people like sports media executives. We'll have corporate directors, musical artists, Emmy Award winning TV producers, quantum physicists and so many more cool people. And we're all having honest conversations and talking about the lessons that we've learned. So for a little housekeeping to close out, episodes come out every Tuesday. It would be great if you can subscribe on iHeart, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcast, and that way you can have the episodes right when they drop. I would love it if you could leave a review and rate the podcast and share episodes with people who you think might enjoy them, and to close out, and because I love a corny racing pun, and I will never apologize for that, it's time to buckle up for honest takes on ambition setbacks and the resilience behind long term success. This is If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer.