Why Julia Green gave up pharmaceuticals for styling.
Julia Green’s life-changing moment came when she sold a sofa on eBay. The buyer turned out to be a Vogue photographer. Green, who was a pharmaceutical industry executive at the time, calls it serendipity.
“When he arrived at my house to pick it up he asked me which magazine I styled for. I told him I sold pharmaceuticals, and he said I was in the wrong job,” she recalls. “The rest is history.”
She walked away from a successful corporate job to try her hand as an interior stylist. That was seven years ago. “I have not stopped running from job to job ever since,” she says.
It’s hard to overstate her success. Today, Green is one of the country’s most respected stylists. She runs her own business, Greenhouse Interiors, styles and writes for some of the country’s top lifestyle publications – including Inside Out, Real Living, Home Beautiful, House & Garden, and Frankie – and has made regular appearances on The Block.
“Now that I look back, I can’t believe I ever did anything else,” she says. “I was always creative from the time I was a child, and had a great sense of colour. I just didn’t know I could make a career out of it. I am now fulfilled creatively and run a great business.”
Green’s passion has turned into a seven-day-a-week job. “I never truly switch off,” she says. “I’m always thinking about my next move – it’s like a never-ending game of chess.”
Many of the business and management skills she developed in the pharmaceutical industry have contributed to her success as a stylist. Green says it “was the best apprenticeship.” The most valuable skill she learned was the importance of listening. “Understanding other people’s needs and delivering on them is what will make you remembered as someone who got the job done well,” she says.
Green also says her clients share her outlook. “I have no ego, am easy to work with and enjoy a laugh,” she says. “I think a lot of people in my game have their own agenda. Mine is simple: to keep the client happy and do the right thing. My ethics are strong and I won’t work with those who don’t share them. I am too old to suffer fools now. I have a great poster that says: ‘Don’t work with arseholes’. And it’s true. I surround myself with great, positive people.”
Since completing an arts degree, majoring in psychology, Green has done very little formal training. Everything she’s learned has been on the job. “I regularly present workshops to people wanting to break into my industry,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like a fraud, given they are often more qualified than me. But in the end, all the training and qualifications under the sun won’t get you the job. You have to go and get it yourself,” she says. “You are only ever as good as your last shoot.”
Unsurprisingly, Green’s work schedule sounds hectic. She styles, writes, hosts workshops, makes TV appearances and manages a team of 27 artists. On top of it all she is mum to two boys, Max, 14 and Jesse, 7. “It’s a juggle,” she acknowledges.
On any given day she might respond to “a thousand emails”, prepare for a shoot, take a new client brief, discuss colour palettes with her artists, write a press release, style a shoot and decorate a house. “This usually all happens in tandem across a 15-hour day,” she says. “Then I fall in a heap and do it all again.”
Most rewarding, she says, is “sharing my knowledge with others that are keen to learn. And being creatively satisfied each day while being paid for it. What a gift. I never take it for granted.”
It’s not all smooth sailing, though. “Managing cash flow is always hard for small-business operators,” she says. “My new industry is not traditionally a well-paid one. But my philosophy is if you are successful, the money will come. I will never choose a job for money as my motivator ever again because it often doesn’t work out to be fulfilling in the long term.”
For those considering a drastic career change, Green says don’t think too hard or long about it – just do it.
“The world is full of dreamers and ‘’gonnas’, but if you want to make it, you have to grab it by the horns and be a ‘do-er,” she says. “Just go for it. I am living proof that you can do anything you like with a bit of luck, a lot of hard work, and the right attitude.”
This article is presented in partnership with Hostplus, superannuation you can take with you throughout your career.
