Julian Musgrave’s Kind But ‘No BS’ Approach Offers the Best of Both Worlds to Budding Entrepreneurs

With his disarming smile and easygoing nature, MindShift.money Certified Coach Julian Musgrave has the look and personality that suits a financial coach who has mentored hundreds of individuals.

So it often comes as a shock to clients that Julian actually started his working life at age 14, when he dropped out of school and took a job as cowboy in rural Northwest Australia.

The “No BS” Approach

Back then, in the mid 1980s, the Perth, Australia, native remembers the unemployment rate hovering close to 25 percent with interest rates around 18 percent. Needless to say, Julian’s parents weren’t too pleased and most certainly didn’t expect him to last too long in such a rigorous environment. Yet his stubborn personality and insistence on an unconventional career path—which led to stints in farm work, truck driving (stock, grain and wool), the military (as an infantry soldier in 1 RAR Australian Army), open cut mining operations and more—ultimately built the foundation for success as a financial and business coach, and his reputation for a “no BS” strategy.

“I’m not interested in smoke and mirrors and telling people how great everything is when it’s crap,” says Julian. “There has to be a dose of honesty in people’s’ lives, although it has to come from a place of love and care with the aim of making positive changes in someone’s world.”

Julian stands out from other financial coaches for other reasons, too. For one, he’s one of the only (if not the only) financial planner licensed to operate 300-ton excavators and D10/11 bulldozers. Second, he’s able to relate to, literally, everyone, regardless of upbringing, personality, or class. Julian’s various vocations exposed him to hundreds of individuals, from tattooed machine operators to black-tie corporate types and everything in between.

But he spent many years honing these skills. After finally finishing year 11 of school, and job-hopping a bit more through to his early 20s while seeking the right mix of adventure, service and skills-learning opportunities, Julian found himself taking take a keen interest in how businesses work. He wanted to know how to do his job exceptionally well with the highest possible efficiency, whether moving dirt with an excavator or dozer or loading a truck. Once he’d master a skill, he found himself looking for natural opportunities to share his secrets with his peers.

Just when he’d built up enough experience to start working as a business coach, his ongoing health issues took a big turn for the worse. He found himself suffering chronic pain on a daily basis.

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A Health Setback

In his late 20s, Julian was diagnosed for the second time with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a condition that would increasingly make his life more hellish, physically and financially. Simple tasks such as sleeping, standing and walking became excruciatingly painful and cumbersome. For 12 years, strong opioid-type painkillers gave him little relief, and he only slept three to four hours a night in 20- to 40-minute blocks. Somehow, he still held down full-time manual jobs.

But there was a silver lining to this intense period of his life.

As he adjusted to his new life with an autoimmune disease, he came upon an opportunity to work as a mortgage broker when he met Mindshift Money co-founder Dr. Tony Pennells. While working in finance didn’t have the sexy, fly-by-night appeal of working with heavy machinery in the great Australian outdoors, he needed a less physical job. And he welcomed the opportunity to work with individuals in an equally transformative way. Julian went on to attain his Cert IV Financial Services (Mortgage Broking) and helped build a national mortgage brokerage, recruiting and mentoring members. He earned his diploma in Financial Services (Financial Planning) and begin a new life of mentoring and coaching finance brokers across Australia on the integration of financial planning into their existing businesses.

Still, helping others be honest with themselves and make hard changes remained the core of his practice.

Helping Entrepreneurs Face Reality

One of his most recent successes was helping another financial coach revamp her entire business, by helping her to see the value in her work, and insist upon a higher standard when taking on new clients.

“This woman was working herself to the bone for clients who didn’t value what she was doing, and underpaid her for her work if they actually ended up paying her at all,” Julian recalls. “She came to me with the goal of finding more clients, and I helped her see that what she really needed wasn’t more clients initially but a better self-image and vision for herself and her business. She needed to start thinking differently and figure out why people were taking advantage of her. While it was hard for her to hear this, ultimately the changes made, while challenging and confronting, have started to bear fruit. She has thanked me for helping her attract better clients who valued her as a person as well as her knowledge and skills.”

But perhaps the biggest testament to Julian’s success from bucking convention is in his personal life. When Julian first met his wife, he was still knee-deep in his autoimmune disease, suffering day in and day out. So he vowed to do his best to get stronger six years ago—when his first daughter was born.

Moving Forward With Strength

He looked for the most efficient way to make changes, and landed on CrossFit to boost his strength and mobility. Using his “tough but kind” style and lots of dedication and focus over the last three years he has managed to rebuild his body’s functionality. Today he is a proud father of two girls and can squat, lift weights, do box-jumps, handstand pushups and engage in most other physical exercises with his CrossFit peers. He is stronger, fitter and more mobile than at any time in his life defying the path normally attributed to AS sufferers and confounding his specialists.

“My journey’s been hard knocks, lots of hard work and 60-hour weeks covered in dirt and sweat,” says Julian. “But it’s given me compassion, and a great perspective on what is possible as long as you’re willing to put the work in and look around with intent… Not just walk around in a fog of sameness accepting what’s happening to you as a given.”

To find out more about Julian’s specialities, and how he can help you as a MindShift.money Certified Coach, click here for his Specialist Panel profile.

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