Julian treats setbacks not as detours, but as raw material. As he’s put it elsewhere: ‘We all go through life only to discover that we are our own greatest enemies.’ Learning to self-evaluate and mitigate risk, while evaluating economic principles, is what allowed him to move past his own limitations — a process he later put into words as becoming ‘a student of my own history.’

His approach to building a business starts before the product does. Identify and define the market sector first, then build; evaluate scalability and exit strategy from day one. As he puts it: “People don’t fail — strategies fail.”

Photo: Olga Tutunaru on Unsplash

In 2014, Julian published The Jetstream of Success, which reached the Top 10 of Amazon’s self-help e-book bestseller category the year it launched — coverage that included a feature in the Pensacola News Journal’s roundup of self-help bestsellers “geared to rejuvenate.”

He calls the people his book is written for “Intellectual Mavericks” — “people who can champion their lives forward, overcoming obstacles, fears and setbacks.” He holds his own genre to a high bar: “My genre is judged more critically than others, so what I write has to be a higher standard. Anything that is not deeply insightful is instantly rejected.” His process reflects that: “Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite. It’s a competitive industry, so you need to ensure that what you are writing is of the highest standard.”

He’s currently at work on a follow-up, Your Life Your Rules — 70 Life Lessons from 70 Billionaires, part of the same Intellectual Maverick series — built around real billionaire quotes, on the premise that success comes from self-engagement, not chance.

He sums up his own guiding principle in three words: compassion, love and gratitude — “We need to act on these three words daily. Doing so will irrevocably change your world.”

“It’s not the goal that matters, but who you become in the process of achieving your goals that defines your legacy.”