A journey to success from unlikely beginnings

Narrator  00:00:02 

In a remarkable journey from ballet school owner to a top executive in the financial sector, Julie Ann Booker exemplifies resilience and innovation, featured in wealth professionals top 50 women in wealth, Julie Ann shares her inspiring story and insights on overcoming challenges and building meaningful relationships in the industry. 

David Kitai  00:00:25 

Every year, wealth professional publishes its list of the Top 50 Leading Women in Wealth, and every year, we are staggered by the quality of the individuals listed. It is a list of great advisors, executives, innovators and trailblazers. Juli Ann Booker is one of those leading women. Juli Ann is VP of strategy and operations at Revesco Properties Trust in Vancouver, BC. Her career took her from ballet school owner to executive assistant to her leadership role at one of Canada's leading REIT managers. She joins us today to talk about debt journey. Juli Ann, welcome to WP TV. 

Juli Ann Booker  00:01:00 

Thank you for having me, David. 

David Kitai  00:01:02 

So Juli Ann, how did your career in financial services begin? 

Juli Ann Booker  00:01:07 

Well, that's a crazy story. In 2016 I moved away from my business. I was a ballet school owner, as you mentioned, and all I had done my entire life was dance, and in 2016 I went through a divorce and needed a bit of a shift. I was at the top of my career in dance. I was teaching all over and I just said, I need to focus on my children. I need a nine to five job, you know, just something I don't think about when I get home. But I had no other skills. Would I say? All I'd ever done is dance. In my entire life, I I'd meet since I was three, all I'd done is dance. And obviously I owned a business, but I had so many people that helped me, you know, in my office, and accountants, all of those sorts of things. So it was really hard for me to kind of think of what I could possibly do. So I thought, I'll just get my foot in the door somewhere as an assistant or an office manager or personal assistant even. And I met at Head Hunter, and she placed me with a company called Western wealth capital, which was a brand new firm, and the CEO, Janet LePage, who is a dear friend and another incredibly strong woman in wealth, hired me as her executive assistant, and it was kind of just a rocket ship from there. I started there, and within four months, I thought I was I honestly David. I thought they were going to fire me because I had no idea what I was doing. I couldn't add two plus two in Excel. And that is not I'm not being I'm not making that up. And they promoted me to a more outward facing investor relations role. And from there, I just learned everything I could. And here we are today, almost 10 years later.  

David Kitai  00:03:08 

Wow, okay, yeah, big shift, brave and I mean, amazing to see how that growth kind of began. But, you know, you mentioned it at first, a little bit of the imposter syndrome, a little bit of the you know, not sure how to use the tool, but what were kind of the key challenges you encountered early on in that stage of your career? 

Juli Ann Booker  00:03:29 

Yeah, challenges were major all over the place. You know, getting used to an office environment, getting used to working for somebody else. I'd owned my own business for 10 years. That's a very challenging thing to step into a brand new career in your mid 30s and be literally the bottom rung of the ladder and having no formal education. I didn't have an MBA, I didn't have a university degree, as I mentioned, all I had done was dance, so I had to learn how to take everything I'd learned from my past career and put it into this new venture that I was undertaking. I think that education is really important, but I would say the biggest challenge was getting people to trust, and believe me, because I didn't have letters behind by name. But I also think that is now what I'm most proud of, because I bootstrapped it and I learned and I figured out how to absorb the information I needed and become where I am now. 

David Kitai  00:04:44 

Yeah, no, that's That's amazing. So you talk about earning that trust and ensuring that that clients understood you and saw the value you were bringing beyond whatever letters are at the end of anyone's name. How did. You do that? What was your approach to earning that trust? 

Juli Ann Booker  00:05:04 

Listening, listening to the investors, listening to everything that people around me were doing. I was lucky that I started with a company when it was very young, so I was involved in a lot of you know, initial conversations with investors and clients, and being able to hear what other people were saying and and learning from that. But I still take the approach that in this business, we need to listen to the clients, because whether it's a ten million check or a $20,000 check that is a really important, meaningful amount of money to somebody, and we need to appreciate that. And so for me, learning from the clients and listening and advocating for them was really what helped me overcome building relationships. This is a relationship business, and if you can listen to somebody and understand what their concerns are and take those to heart, then that's where the magic happens. 

David Kitai  00:06:16 

Absolutely so I mean, just that's that is utterly fascinating. And the idea of being a client advocate is such a refreshing view of the way this industry often, you know, transacts in some ways to make it into more of that relationship piece, I think, is key. But you know, you mentioned briefly one other sort of inspiring woman on your path. But you know, did you have other mentors along the way, folks who kind of brought you up along as you were finding your feet and again, a very big career change. 

Juli Ann Booker  00:06:47 

I did, and I've had many people obviously impact me in my career. Janet being one of them, as an exceptional woman in wealth, I would have to say that my biggest mentor was actually in remains a man, a man by the name of Dave Steele, who is a powerhouse in real estate in Canada. And he said to me one day, I remember, and this is just kind of a funny story, but it was my first event I was ever at with Western monk, and we were at the Pacific Rim hotel downtown, which was very fancy, and I was not very fancy. And we were getting a cab home because we lived not far from each other. And I barely knew this man, and I was very nervous, you know, he was the owner of the company, and very smart. And he amended me in the cab on how I had handled clients that night. And I thanked him, and I said, you know, I just, I want to be the best, because that's, you know, when you're a professional dancer, professional athlete, whatever it is, you're always striving to be the best. And he said, what's your goal? What's your biggest goal right now? Now, this is after a few glasses of wine. And I thought about it for a second. And now remember, I'm brand new in my career. Just divorced, and I said, I want to be able to buy groceries the day before payday, that was my goal. And he said, Okay, let's do it. He said, stick with me, and sky's the limit. And I did. And you know, now I sit and I talk with him. He is more of family than than just a mentor, and now we can disagree on things. We can I can still learn from him, but he really taught me that it's little steps, and it's the little things you do along the way that can make really big impacts. And I'm really grateful for that, because I think, without looking at it as a as a step by step growth and and it's not I want to be the CEO of the company tomorrow. It's what do I need to fix today to get to the next step? And I've carried that throughout my entire career. 

David Kitai  00:09:20 

That is such a beautiful story and such a such a great and in some ways, a moment of leading with vulnerability that in the cab with your CEO, with the owner of the company, you you spoke to the challenges you faced as a as a divorced mom, taking care of her kids and trying to provide for everybody. I mean, that's that's huge, and to see that greeted with warmth and support. It speaks well to your mentor, to Dave, but it also speaks well to you, to to your ability to receive it. So that's really an incredible, an incredible moment. Thank you for sharing that and but now you've, you've, you've kind of set up the next question as almost a Of course you did, but, but you know. Years you've, you've laid such a groundwork here, and you you had this, this pretty remarkable start to the shift, one where you overcame some challenges, you won trust, you won a mentor. How did you keep rising up? Because it's one thing to, you know, make that shift in your first year and really like, go whole hog. It's another thing to sustain that and to sustain that idea of continuous growth. How did you, how did you maintain that?  

Juli Ann Booker  00:10:24 

Vulnerability you mentioned, that's a big part of it. And it's not to say that it was just a straight uphill climb. Everything. You know, there was peaks and valleys, as there always is. I made mistakes. I you know, at times I went forward without thinking, or said things without thinking, and I'd learned from all of it, and that's what it comes down to. And I think when I, as I mentioned earlier, realized that my past experience could be completely put into practice in my new career was when things really started to take off. And by that, I mean as a dancer, as as somebody who is constantly focused on being better, because you're never the best, you're never going to be the best, and if you think you are, that's when you failed, right? It's how can we be better? How can I do better? And I started to put that into practice. So instead of getting down, what happened, you know, I had some rough days, as we all do, I started to think, Okay, what could I have done differently? How do I just be better? How do I just improve on this one thing a little bit at a time, and the other thing that I took with me from my past world was learning from as many people as possible. And I did this with my own students. I would always say, don't just learn from me. Go take more classes. Do other schools like learn from a lot of people. That's how you become the best. And so you start to take, oh, I like this thing from this person. I like how this person dealt with this, and you just create this toolbox, and you become the best of all the people that you admire and respect. And that is how I and what I continue to do, that's not to say that I do that every day with the people I work with now, and that doesn't necessarily mean partners or the CEOs and that of a company. It's just the people that I work with every day, my teammates that teach me how to look at things from a different angle. And I think that if you can't do that, that's when you stop, when you stop learning, when you stop trying to better yourself, that's when you plateau. 

David Kitai  00:12:56 

No, it's I mean, lessons for all of us in any career where whatever we're doing, and in some ways, just as you've taught us all the lesson, I'll ask you, you know, in the course of of this career, what, what would you say has been your greatest lesson that you learned? 

Juli Ann Booker  00:13:11 

Don't try to be somebody that you're not. That is, I think, a message that I still tell myself and I share with the people that I mentor now, and especially with the women that I work with and mentor, we are taught at such a young age that it's systemic. It's not any one person doing this to us. It's just, you know, of a certain age we're growing up thinking, well, that's a man's job. That's a man's world. Or I'm doing this, I'm the only woman in the room. I better behave like all these men do, and it's not necessary. You know? What do you know? What i Does that make sense? It does. Yeah, no, it to be different, and it's okay to lead with vulnerability and with empathy. It goes a long way. I had a conversation with a woman who was very, very accomplished, and, you know, had had retired, she was in the energy sector of all sectors, and had been the CFO of many major companies. And I said, How did you I asked her. I said, How did you handle the fragile male ego, which I know I'm not trying to get canceled here, David, but, and I'm not saying not all men, of course, but how did you handle that? And she said, You know, so many people say women shouldn't be in business because they are emotional. They're too emotional. That's what it comes down to. And she said, they forget that Anger is an emotion, and I often see that. I often see people just building to this anger. And anger is where we make mistakes. We make mistakes. And anger. We send the wrong email, we blurt out something we don't mean, and we have to backtrack. And I think when you can approach things with empathy, and when you can put yourself in that person's shoes, that's really how we need to shift the industry and so many industries forward to welcome. You know women men, you know people who are gender non conforming. That's not what is important in business. It is what you bring to the table. It is how you treat other people and how you continue to learn and grow.  

David Kitai  00:15:37 

Yeah, no, that's, again, a key lesson for all of us, I think, is, is to stay true to yourself, and to stay true to to that and as this, I think, just a fascinating way to approach it in the context of even questions like around the the male ego, which, believe me, I've seen plenty sometimes suffer from it a bit myself, but, you know, but I think, I think just such a, such a key idea of self awareness that runs through that, and awareness of how other people will present themselves, and using that to your strength. But then there's the question, so as your mentor, another Dave, I guess, asked you many years ago, what, what your goals were then. Now it's my turn as a Dave to ask you what what your goals are now.  

Juli Ann Booker  00:16:22 

Well, you know, first and foremost, keep doing what I'm doing. It's working. So that's a big one. But work wise, business wise, I have this amazing opportunity at riversco properties, trust, as you mentioned, we're one of the leading REIT managers in the country. We're going to grow to a billion. That is the goal. Funds been around for about three years. We're at 150 million, Aum, and we're taking off. So that, professionally is the goal. And that is a goal for all of us here. And lot of people talk about culture and saying, We have this great company culture, but they don't always live it. We encompass that, and the partners here encompass that. So it's, it's all hands on deck to get to that, to that goal, my other goals, I would say, you know, raise, raising my children with honesty and integrity and to be proud of themselves. You know, have a son and a daughter, and my daughter definitely doesn't suffer any fools. She's very strong, and I'm so proud of that, and my son is is kind and gentle and has this amazing respect for other people. And I think that the best I can do is leave a mark by empowering other people, that includes my children, that includes the rest of my friends, family, colleagues, to try to do things a bit differently. I'm a very firm believer that the way things were done in the past does not mean it needs to be done that way in the future, and so that's my goal. Is just, let's, let's just stir stuff up a little bit and try and try and change things.  

David Kitai  00:18:23 

Yeah, yeah. That's a beautiful note. And again, such a such a great weaving of those personal and professional pieces of your own life, the you know, those personal sort of drives that brought you into this career, the professional lessons that you've taken and then reapplying them to your personal life. It just an incredible kind of you know, the way our lives intersect in so many different ways. But as a final question, and you talk about affecting positive change, you know, when this industry looks at its gender balance, when it looks at the role that women leaders like yourself can have and the success that you bring to organizations. You know, I need to ask, on behalf of the industry, how can the industry help more women like you succeed? 

Juli Ann Booker  00:19:11 

That's a tough question. There's a lot of different ways I would say again, it all comes down to a lot of it comes down to listening. You know that don't dismiss women just because they come in and heels with their makeup and hair done and and look nice sitting at the table. Don't assume that they are not brilliant firecrackers with a million ideas. I think that again, it comes back to systemically, we just need to appreciate that everybody has value, and if they've made it to a certain role, whether that's an executive assistant or, you know, somebody that's sitting in the C suite. Uh, they they bring something. There's a reason why they're in that seat. And I think it's really important to understand that everybody brings something to the table, and to listen and value and appreciate what what those different what those different attributes are that people have. You know, I've I always said it was actually funny when I won the award, because I thought, am I being a little bit? Am I selling out? Right? Because I always said, I don't want to be a woman who's excellent. I want to just be excellent. But I take the approach of, there, there is an imbalance, a huge imbalance, especially in senior leadership roles. And I think a lot of that comes down to fear. A lot of women are afraid to step into a room full of men. And it still happens to me. I'm I'm generally the only woman in the room. And, you know, sometimes those men will watch what they say or not want to use foul language, or, you know, behave a little bit differently. And I'm I always say no, like, just treat me the same as you would anybody else, because I'm not here to apologize for who I am. Don't apologize for who you are. It takes all different types and all different ideas and visions to make companies Excellent. And I will say I have to give huge props to robesco and revisco properties trust and the four incredible men that lead this company as partners for not just saying, I want to know what you're what you have to say, but almost demanding it. It's, it's very important that they have all different ideas coming at them. And I think that's the biggest thing we can do as an industry is just listen, and we don't have to agree on everything, but we do need to give everybody an equal opportunity to be successful. 

David Kitai  00:22:12 

Yeah, that's, that's, again, not to keep saying that's a beautiful note, but that's a beautiful note. That's a, I think, I think you've hit on so many themes that are brought up in this list, and you see it among your fellow winners. You see it woven through your own career. And I think you you know you've summarized. You've done an incredible thing, which is taking those personal lessons and widening them, widening them out, it is sometimes so hard to make an individual story into something that speaks to wider societal themes. You've done that expertly, Juli Ann so, so with that, I will just say thank you so much for sharing your story with us and sharing your insights. I know that I and all of our viewers are very, very grateful. So thank you.  

Juli Ann Booker  00:22:53 

Thank you. 

David Kitai  00:22:54 

And thank you to all of our viewers for WPTV I have been David Kitai, have a great rest of your day.