Julia Kline reveals the six sales wounds quietly driving your leadership behaviour ~ and the restorative justice framework that helps you fix it for good.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Leaders building teams / Coaches and consultants
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear framework for identifying the hidden wounds shaping how they sell and lead ~ plus a practical five-step process for addressing harm in their organizations responsibly.
Most business owners don't realize their leadership style is costing them ~ until it already has.
Julia Kline is a leadership coach, bestselling author, and keynote speaker who helps entrepreneurs and business owners heal the beliefs that make selling feel wrong. She created the Heal Your Sales Wounds™ system ~ six core wounds that shape how people handle money, power, and relationships in business. In this East Trade Winds session, Julia walks through each wound, with a deep focus on the power wound and how a lack of healing shows up in toxic leadership and workplace harm. She also shares a restorative justice framework for how communities and organizations can address that harm responsibly. This conversation is for business owners who want to lead and sell with real confidence, integrity, and self-awareness.
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Julia (00:05)
So I grew up with a couple of entrepreneurial parents and they started a a Chicago themed souvenir store called Accent Chicago when I was seven years old. If anybody's ever traveled through Chicago, you've probably been to Accent Chicago. and they they started their company before
souvenir stores are really such a big thing. And it was a beautiful gift store and it really had wonderful things. And they sat around talking about the business at the dinner table when I was a little kid. so entrepreneurship is just in my blood, you know, from the age of seven, sitting around the table talking about, you know, loans and employees and retailing and
leases and all the things. And so my very first business, as for a lot a lot of others, was a lemonade stand. And I actually built the lemonade stand myself out of some plywood that I found in my basement and set it up out on my front stoop and but wasn't doing very good business. And so I loaded up my my my lemonade stand onto my wagon and
Took it block down because a block down was where people walked to get to the beach. and so I thought, well, there's a lot more foot traffic there. And sure enough, it was great. So one of my first lessons about location, location, location when you're selling something. And came running home and I said, Mommy, mommy, mommy, guess what? I made $8.65 today. And she said, sweetheart, that's so good. I'm so proud of you. but that is your gross profit. I was like, I'm seven.
You're gonna charge me for lemons and sugar? Sure enough, she she absolutely was. and it just sort of kicked me off onto a a a whole lifetime of entrepreneurship and and business ownership. my my my very first career was as a Chicago public school teacher. I taught seventh and eighth grade social studies in the Chicago public schools, and I've often said that getting s 13 and 14-year-old inner city kids to care about ancient Rome was one of the biggest sales jobs I ever had.
but it's also where I learned that I'm very comfortable on stage. I'm a pretty good speaker. and so I I taught school a very different way than most teachers do. I was up there kind of performing. and while I was a school teacher, I actually became a Mary Kay consultant. So the door-to-door sales is something that I know well as well. I the very first time that I went out, I sat in my car.
I ex and I it was February in Chicago. And so I decided that I was gonna go try to sell door-to-door in downtown office buildings. So I and it was the middle of the winter, and so I'm like, well, I it'll be a dead giveaway if I'm walking around wearing a coat. So I went to a building that had an indoor parking garage right in the building and and I I had my my leather to me briefcase and I packed it up with some sample, you know, like fishing tackle boxes, but filled with like little bubbles of lipstick and
concealer and eyeshadow and what have you, and then some little packages of, you know, like three three eye three three eyeshadows or whatever that could sell. And I sat in my car and cried the very first time that I was contemplating what I was about to do. and then I was like, okay, here we go. And I went and I literally knocked on the doors of what were some of the biggest law firms and advertising agencies and PR firms in the world.
in these office buildings of downtown Chicago. And you know, and I had one sale to make. And anybody know who the one sale was? Anybody got another a thought who who's my one sale if I'm trying to get into an office building?
if I got past the receptionist, it was it was a lesson that I learned as a school teacher too. The two most important people in the building, a lot of people say, it's the principal. No, no. The most important people in the school is the receptionist and the engineer. th those two people run the school. So if I could charm my way past the receptionist.
you know, if I if I got somebody who would say, she would get on the the loudspeaker, get on the microphone and say, there's a Mary Kay lady here, you know, ca everybody's come come play with makeup in the conference room in 15 minutes, I would have a thousand dollar day. and and but I did get thrown out of buildings twice. And this was pre-9-11, so it was a very kind of different scenario then, but twice I got myself escorted out of buildings by you know, uniformed security guards.
But I kept doing it. You know, so talk about persistence, right? persistence is is what gets ya. So jumping forward a little bit,
I've been a a self-employed consultant for the last 20 years. And I often say that I'm just a hustler, but sometimes in some audiences, that's misunderstood, misperceived. but you know, just kind of following my nose, following my passion, doing the things that amuse me and which can, you know, keep food on the table and cat food in the bowl, right? and
along with the entrepreneurial you know business ventures, the coaching that I've provided to people. I've I've done all different kinds of consulting and coaching and selling and all the different ways that a person can sell, I have sold. I've also been on a path of profound personal transformation. and in it turns out, you know, that that
those who moved your cheese kinds of books, they sometimes ask you, what's the thing that you've been more committed to throughout your life? Or if you're trying to, you like, what am I gonna be when I grow up? Well think about what you've been passionate about throughout your life. It turns out the things that the thing that I've been the most devoted to throughout my entire adult life is my own growth, my own personal transformation, including a spiritual transformation. And and and so the the work that I've been
called into at this point is I I alluded to it in my brief introduction earlier, is to help people to awaken and stand in their own authentic personal power. And there's, you know, a few pieces to it. and I've you know spent thirty years developing and standing in my own authentic personal power and folks say, gosh, you know, I don't
30 years. I don't I don't how can you can you speed this up a little bit? How's this gonna go faster? we are in a period of skyrocketing, rapidly accelerating transformation on the planet. And we can see this in our in our material surroundings, right? We like how many things are we talking about this day as these days as a global population that things are unprecedented, right?
let's l forget about politics, but you know, unprecedented climate change, unprecedented technological changes. you know, well why why is it so surprising to think that we are also in a realm of unprecedented expansion and development of human consciousness? And so
twenty years ago, things like astrology and and numerology and what have you, Kabbalah, used to be very esoteric and nobody would talk about it, right? Now you see ar articles in People magazine about astrology, right? the kids today, not just kids, also people my age, our age. most of us on this call, it looks to me, are you know, not too many Gen Zers on this call. We're all Gen Xers and boomers. anyway.
So awakening to your own personal power is something that is available to all of us. And and and it the the the the work that I do is called Heal Your Sales Wounds. Heal Your Sales Wounds because ultimately the everything that we do when it comes to other human beings ultimately is sales, right? it's all persuasion.
It's all how do we get somebody on board with what we're up to. And there are six sources of external power that we sometimes fall prey to subjugating ourselves to. And when we subjugate our authentic personal power to external power sources, that's what I call a sales wound. So I'm gonna run through them very quickly. sales wound number one.
is the money wound. And the money wound, f the the the f the fundamental fear behind that is that money is in control of my life and I will certainly never be in control of my money. Salesman number two is the love and money wound. And this one says that love and money are intertwined in all of my most intimate relationships. So money is never just money and love is never just love. And I can never have all of the money that I want.
and all of the love that I want at the same time. I have to sacrifice one to get the other. Salesman number three is the power wound. And it's a little bit different in that the people who are suffering from the power wound are exerting harm on other people. Whereas with all the other wounds, the person who's being harmed is ourselves. And the power wound says that we live in this capitalist society where if I don't
hurt somebody else, I'm the one that's gonna get hurt. So I'm going to you know, I'm gonna go out here and figure out how this system works and make sure that I'm protected. And if I hurt other people in the process, well, what what else was I gonna do? I had to keep myself safe. Salesman number four is the anti-selling wound, which is a reaction to the power wound.
Which says, I do not want to be pushy, obnoxious and rude, so I am just not gonna do that. I am not gonna exert myself on other people. And that's all well and good. The problem is that of course if you take that stand to too much of an extent, you'll lose out. you know, people take advantage of you. you will undercharge, you will not see the value in your own services, so on and so forth.
Salesman number five is the prostitution wound. And this is the wound that says, I'm afraid that people will think that I'm just doing this for the money. Or the flip side, I'm only doing this for the money. And it's kind of gross what I am doing, but it's only for the money. And then salesman number six is the visibility wound. And the visibility wound says, I want to be big, bright, and shiny, but I'm also so afraid. And as I said, there's an external power source associated with each one of these wounds that we naturally
we kind of turn to. You know, with the money wound, we look for money. With the love and money wound, it's the tribe, people around us. with the prostitution wound and with the power wound, it is the systems and structures that provide a lot of power. And the one that I want to just talk for a few minutes about, and again, I know that we've got a just a very short window of time, is the power wound. Because it's the one that is the least I say I would say it's the most prevalent, but the least acknowledged.
so the power wound again is the wound where the person who is suffering from the power wound is a person who does genuinely have a fair amount of power within the systems and structures that govern our world, but they don't feel like it. And so stereotypically this is a straight white man.
but it certainly doesn't have to be. there are other people who have access to power and certainly, in different parts of the world. It's not not all white people too. these are the people who the world the systems have given them power and or they've developed skills and gotten themselves in a place where they have access to a great deal of power, but they don't feel like it.
And I myself was this person for years. I mean I'm some I don't know if it's how much it gets communicated on Zoom, probably at least somewhat. but for my entire life, since I'm two years old, probably, certainly since I was twenty, people have said to me, My God, Julia, you are, incredibly powerful. you have such presence. and do you think that maybe people find you kind of intimidating, right? that has always
been how other people perceive me. but I never felt like that. I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault as well as a variety of other experiences of abuse throughout my childhood and developmental years. And because of reason and for others, I've always felt I for the first 45 years of my life, always felt like a victim. I felt helpless. I felt like vulnerable
And and I couldn't see or couldn't access this tremendous well of power that everybody else saw in me. So I really identify with people who are suffering from the power wound. and I myself, for a long time, I went out inflicting harm on people. I was aggressive. I was pushy. I was scathing.
there were certainly ways in which I harmed other people and I did it because I felt unsafe. And so we probably can all call to mind people who we know, who we either people we know personally, or people who we can imagine that are large figures in our business world, who are people who have a lot of power but who seem like they don't have
a great deal of power and who certainly act as if they are at threat and they are vulnerable. And one of the this a l the last piece that I'll throw out here to and then I'll wrap up, is that one of the most concise manifestations of the power wound happens in a very dark way. it's a project that I've spent years researching, which is workplace sexual assault assault and harassment. And we've certainly, you know
in twenty seventeen, the Me Too movement came large and in charge for all of us, right? And we've had some backlash and some responses since then, I won't get into all of, but what it has left so many people with is there's this there's this imprint now of what happens when when somebody behaves badly in the workplace.
And there's a whole spectrum from, calling somebody sweetheart when they are your direct report all the way up to
Inviting somebody into your office, locking the door, and raping them. there's a whole spectrum in between. And what we're often left with is, well, how much time has to go by before this person, usually a man, but not always, in the case of sexual harassment and assault,
How much time has to go by before this person is forgiven and before we'll let them back in? And the body of work that I present says that that's the wrong question to ask. We don't want to ask how much time is irrelevant. Much more important are the following questions. And and I'll leave you with these as I summarize. the first question to ask yourself is.
And then by the way, these these questions I'm gonna share come straight out of the restorative justice as a philosophy or body of work or approach. I'm a practitioner of restorative justice. and the the and the my thoughts on these this topic is basically that let's bring the principles of restorative justice into this the the question of how do we resolve toxic harm in workplace. So the first the very first question to ask yourself is has the harm stopped? Has the harm stopped?
And this is the number one hands-down question to ask in all these situations.
if you're talking about a family member who, like, you know, is you know, Aunt Rita, she's come to you know, Christmas drunk every year and ruins the holiday.
You know, when are you gonna finally forgive Aunt Rita? Well, has Aunt Rita stopped drinking? Has she stopped being abusive? If the answer is no, if the harm hasn't stopped, there's no basis for any kind of conversations. That's question number one. Has the harm stopped? Question number two, does the perpetrator acknowledge, and there's and there's five questions. Does the perpetrator acknowledge that their actions caused harm? Whether or not that was their intent?
And there's so much in this question. Again, I could do a whole hour just on this question. But the the basis is did they acknowledge that they have caused harm, even if that wasn't their intention? And we're not talking about like a performative apology that we hear, the blah blah blah. No. Somebody, and I I forget the the person's name now, but it was an Australian, actually. I listened to a lot of global podcasts.
And this Australian was accused of behaving very badly and saying some very horrible misogynistic things to a woman on his podcast. And he came on later and the the following week and he said, you know what? you know, blah blah blah excuse. And like, what am I gonna say? I I was a wanker, is what the man said about himself. And there's an authenticity in that. You know, when I said blah, blah, blah, because I just mean it was it was there was
a basis, you know, he wa he was having a panic attack, some such thing, right? He's like, I behaved like an absolute wanker. Okay, well we now we can start to believe you. You're acknowledging that you've committed harm. and even if that wasn't the intent, I didn't realize that what I was saying was making you uncomfortable. And I'm so sorry for that. That absolutely was not my intention.
Julia (15:41)
Has the person done that?
Julia (15:42)
Okay, great. Now we can if they haven't done that, there's also not a basis for having a conversation. question number three, if they take in responsibility. And it's not, you're so sensitive, or I'm sorry you're so sensitive, it needs to be, I'm sorry that I did that. should have been more sensitive. I should have paid more attention, right? That's question number three. Number four, second to last question. What assurances can the perpetrator give that they won't ever commit this harm again?
This is a really big one. What assurances can the perpetrator give that they won't ever commit this harm again? And in most cases, the perpetrator is not able to give suitable assurances. And so this is what the the impetus comes back on the community, the workplace, the board of directors, whoever it is in which the harm was committed.
Julia (16:28)
That group!
Julia (16:29)
That workplace, that community has to do the hard work of coming up with the standards of behavior that we expect. You can't just say, well, you did some harm and now you're bad. we as the community need to do the work of coming up with these standards. and if there's been a violation, we need to be the ones to hold that person accountable. For example, I myself was sexually harassed just last year.
And the business leader, the director sexually harassed me. And when I brought it to the board's attention, I said, Well, first of all, what needs to happen is that he needs to be told that he may not have one on one meetings with women going forward because he doesn't know how and and and after he harassed me, he harassed two others in the community.
So he needs to be told that he may not have one on one meetings. And then somebody on the board needs to have at least a a weekly meeting with this man to discuss his calendar and to go through these things. And they said, well, we can't possibly Well, they didn't want to take the responsibility on themselves as a community. So now they have a leader, a director, who is running around the community committing sexual harassment on business owners in the community. It's terrible.
And this is what a lot of companies do. Finally, the step number five is and this is the restorative piece, you know. Once once we've put the standards in, once the perpetrator has taken responsibility, once the person has said, I'm gonna do better, I commit to doing better, and now the question is, you know, the the fund the big question, can we let him back? Can we let him start having meetings with women again?
Can we let him resume his position on the board or her? But it's usually a man in case of sexual assault. the question is, are you walking your talk? Has the perpetrators' actions demonstrated that they have changed? Have they done the things that they said they would do? Have they adhered to the standards? Have they gotten to the point where they're not just doing it because somebody else is holding them accountable, but because they themselves have changed?
That's the point at which, okay, now we can trust you. Now you can resume membership in the community in full good standing. So hopefully this has been thought provoking and helpful. and to wrap it up, this is all a archetype, a manifestation of the power wound. sales wound number three. it's and so anyway,
hopefully this has been thought provoking,