The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The A-Suite: Trust, Strategy, and Breaking Barriers with Justina Beth-El Johnson

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

The A-Suite: Trust, Strategy, and Breaking Barriers with Justina Beth-El Johnson About the Guest(s): Justina Bethel Johnson is a dynamic executive leader, business strategist, advocate, and artist. As the founder of Valkyrie Solutions, Justina has positioned herself at the crossroads of strategy, storytelling, and soul. She is particularly dedicated to empowering women and organizations to transform self-trust into effective strategy and impactful vision. Alongside her strategic work, Justina is an accomplished lifelong singer and a staunch advocate for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Her work both on stage and off exemplifies authenticity, agency, and audacious leadership. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss welcomes an extraordinary guest, Justina Bethel Johnson, to discuss transformative leadership, the importance of self-trust, and the necessity of redefining power on personal terms. This conversation brings into focus the dynamic A Suite program that Justina has created through her business, Valkyrie Solutions, designed specifically to empower women in leadership roles. Throughout the episode, a slew of insights unfold as Chris and Justina tackle the enduring challenges and hidden opportunities within male-dominated industries. They dive into how Justina’s A Suite initiative helps women leverage their unique strengths and build communal, rather than competitive, environments in the workplace. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in leadership development, gender dynamics in the corporate world, and practical guidance on fostering inclusive workplaces. Key Takeaways: Redefining Power: Women in leadership can thrive by reinterpreting power to mean freedom and collaboration rather than dominance and control. Importance of Self-Trust: Building self-trust is crucial for women to assert themselves and excel in their professional environments. Dismantling Competition: Encouraging women to view each other as teammates rather than competitors to enhance innovation and success. Unlearning Toxic Conditioning: Addressing and overcoming toxic workplace environments that condition negative views towards leadership and gender. Research-Backed Strategies: The A Suite offers rooted strategies and psychological insights to empower women in leadership with evidence-based practices. Notable Quotes: “The greatest transformation is that women trust themselves the first time around.” “When there is no diversity at the top, we see the same ideas regurgitated and recycled.” “In the absence of self-doubt, we’re really able to thrive in other aspects of our life.” “I never should have had to doubt myself in the first place.” “We all rise together when we teach and empower those around us.” Resources: Valkyrie Solutions: valkyrieus.com Justina Bethel’s Music: justinabethel.com Connect with Justina Bethel on Social Media handles available on her website Tune in to the full episode to explore these and more impactful insights into leadership and empowerment. Subscribe to The Chris Voss Show for more thought-provoking discussions and engaging content!

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We're going to be talking about her insights, her experience, and all the good things that she does. Justina Bethel Johnson is an executive leader, business strategist, advocate, and artist whose work lives at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, and soul. As the founder of Valkyrie Solutions and creator of the A Suite, A is for audacity. She helps women and organizations transform self-trust into strategy and vision into impact. A lifelong singer, an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, her voice on stage and off champions the power of authenticity, agency, and audacious leadership. Welcome to the show, Justina. How are you? I am doing well. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming. We really appreciate you. Give us your dot-coms or websites, wherever you want people to learn more about you on the interwebs. Yeah, absolutely. So for Valkyrie Solutions, we're looking at www.valkyus.com. That is my consulting firm, where the A-suite lives, and a few other tasty little side projects that I work on.

For the music, because I do that as well, It's justina bethel.com. The A-suite. I love it. I flunk most of high school, so I have the D-minus suite. I'm just kidding. The A-suite for the winners. So give us an overview of what this A-suite is.

Sure, yeah. So the A-suite is an ongoing container for women in leadership to shred and shed the definitions that they've observed. in their careers of what leadership should like. We work through redefining power on our own terms. So it's not a prescriptive method. You know, it's not like, oh, here's how you were taught to lead. And here's how you do it now because, you know, you have a uterus.

It's more like you define your power, your path and you lead through intuition. It's also chock full of psychology and research-backed practices and information to really emboldened and empower women. So it's not the woo-woo fluff, you know, where it's like, you know, the rainbow comes after the rain, me you see on Facebook. It's really rooted in research and strategy. So that is in a nutshell what the A-suite is. But long-term, it's also a community of women

where you are kind of fast-tracking your growth as a leader as an entrepreneur by being able to dive into and lean into other women's experience and just catapult yourself forward rather than having to reinvent the wheel at every turn of your business path or your leadership path. Now, what inspired you to create this? Oh, God. I have had the very fortunate experience of working in mostly male-dominated fields my entire life.

My corporate journey began. I worked at as a proposal manager for a small security company. We did like the CCTV car. readers, that kind of security, where everyone, except for me, and I think the office administrator, we're all men. And they provided me two unique opportunities. One, you know, there's less competition among women, which I think is what we are, as women typically taught to see other women as competitors rather than as teammates and team players. So I didn't have to struggle with that. And the other side was seeing what it looks like when there is no diversity.

There's no differentiation and gender among your leadership. And that was just kind of like a repeat pattern for most of my career growing up in that space, in the government contracting space where I was often one of, if not the only female in leadership. And you just kind of see how stuffy and stale it gets at the top, where we're just kind of regurgitating and recycling the same idea. And whenever we have the opportunity to bring in diversity or bring into bringing women's voices into those rooms, the innovation just flies. It's incredible how we go from zero to one and then from one to a hundred so quickly when we have diversity of thought in each of these rooms. So that's kind of the corporate journey. The other side of it is being a musician, also a surprisingly male-dominated industry. But again, you know, as a front person of my music, musical projects. It's, you know, I'm interfacing with people constantly. Mostly, you know, men, they're the ones that go out to the bars and do the live music thing. And tell me,

I'm wrong. Is it mostly, is it mostly men who like to, is it the karaoke they like to do? Oh, it's not karaoke. No, no, no, no. This is, this is not karaoke. This is like, um, if you go to, I don't know, I don't know where you're located, but I'm in the D.C. area. Um, if you go to, you know, a music restaurant or a bar that does live music and you've got your cover band. Yeah. I would say nine out of ten times or nine out of ten people in the crowd are going to be some like mid-30s, probably military flannel-wearing young man who's there to enjoy music. So that's been my experience. And usually most of the people in my band are also men. So there's a lot of doubt that I feel is not something I was born with, but it's been sort of projected on to me.

Like when I remember one time specifically, I was in the studio recording and I was telling, we're going to get nerdy real quick, Chris. I hope that's okay. I was telling my guitarist that he was playing a half step too high and it was supposed to be a half step lower. The one note that he ended up landing on because the chord was a seventh. It wasn't meant to be like a normal major chord. And he's sitting there telling me, no, it's not. And in my mind, I'm like, bitch, I wrote this song. What are you talking about?

But it was this moment of like, oh, am I wrong? Is this, I mean, am I wrong? Did I not hearing it correctly? Is it because, you know, my small lady brain is not computing. But having somebody else in that group back me up and say, no, no, no, she's actually right. This is the right note was kind of the validation I needed. But the way that this all feeds into the A suite is I never should have had to doubt myself

from the first place, right? That's true. The, he was probably, you know, I'm a guitarist too. he's probably just too lazy to retune his guitar. Oh my God. We could talk about that forever, the tuning. I hate that, I mean, I guess they make new guitar next now or then what are the calm screws that are, you can, you can just play something and it'll, it'll put it into tune

for you. But yeah, it's such a pain the ass with, with guitars where anytime you get new strings, you got to keep. So, yeah, it's probably, It's probably like, I don't know if to read it into this whole thing. That's probably when it would. Yeah, it's just such a pain, especially if you're on stage or you're, you're mid, whatever, trying to retune stuff.

That's why you have multiple guitars on. I'm just being funny anyway. So what kind of transformations have you seen women go through with the A suite? I think the most powerful and most consistent transformation is that women trust themselves the first time around. They become so attuned to their own intuition and then are able to back it up with not only their experience, but research that shows that they typically outperform male counterparts in the same role. And it's not, that's not to be, you know, like men or the worst women are amazing. But what we see repeatedly is that more frequently,

men, I think it's like 75% of men, and I might have to correct myself after the fact, but 75% of men will submit their application or their resume to jobs that they're not qualified for, whereas women will not do that. And it's just the confidence that men have versus the confidence that women have is the difference is astronomical. And just teaching women to show up with that same level of confidence because they do have the credit. is more often than not they are overworking just to prove themselves. And by way of that, they've developed all this experience that they have that now makes them capable to do this job. So just having them trust themselves is one of the greatest transformations.

And what that translates to after the fact is in the absence of self-doubt, we're really able to thrive in other aspects of our life because, you know, it's not isolated. When we trust ourselves in our jobs, it's really easy to translate that trust to other a reach. that we're in. So it's like a full person, full body, full mind transformation of I trust who I am, what I do, my experience, and how I lead. You talk in the group about unlearning toxic workplace conditioning. I think that's my office. That's my fault. What does that process look like in the program? What is toxic workplace conditioning too, I should ask? Yeah, that's a great question. And it covers a lot. It's a very broad umbrella.

But I feel like the easiest way to translate it is the common term is used a hostile workplace or a hostile work environment. You've heard that before, right? I've been in it. I've been in one now. I was going to say, apparently you curated one. My boss is an asshole. We hate that guy. But what it looks like is the having somebody above you who is constantly telling you,

are constantly gatekeeping you, telling you you're not ready, you don't belong in these rules, you don't have the right credentials, or demanding more out of you than your coworkers who are not expected to do as much, they're not held accountable for as much, or being responsible for the cleanup for an error that you didn't create. And that's, I mean, in a nutshell, or, you know, generally speaking is what it looks like. It can also be framing of, you know, how we, how women specifically respond to emails or answer phone calls or who they speak to in different rooms. I mean, I've been told before I need to learn how to talk to leadership better, you know, because apparently I had embarrassed somebody by just saying, hey, this is how we do the job.

Can we do it like this? Because that's how we do it. And, you know, two weeks later, It was like you, you embarrass this person and you need to learn how to be, you know, I don't know. I don't know what it was. I don't need to learn how to be. But it's that kind of thing where if it were coming from a man, would that have been the same response? Being embarrassed. Oh. Yeah.

Would they have had the same response if a man had said the same? You think so? I don't know. I'm kind of not sure I understand the, the problem. premise. I understand the toxic workplace conditioning, but I'm not sure the promise you're asking me directly on about the difference between men and women saying the embarrassment. Is that what you mean?

No, no, not not seeing the embarrassment, but or like your tone, like tone policing. Yeah. Does that make sense? Are there a lot of men doing tone policing? Or are you talking about? You know what? You don't experience it? I'm talking men, tone policing women.

Oh, really? And yeah, and you probably don't experience it because I assume that you're not a woman. And you also own your own business, right? So, and maybe this is not something that you enact on your own. So it's not something. I've been told me. Have you by? Yeah.

Women. It's a, it's a female nature thing. I just, it just. You think so? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it just is old. Tell me more.

It just is. It just, it's female nature. They, you know, females, you know, emotionally, when things hit them that they don't like, that's a lot of times they'll respond that way. I don't, I don't need to get tone police with men. Men, we have our own code of, how would you say it, meritocracy and stuff? We don't, we're not so worried about tone. We're worried about action and delivery. It's tone's never a thing with us.

I mean, there might be something that's an interesting. Maybe if those men are working. I don't know. They're not there masculine. I don't know. But no, I'd never been told police by a man. Not that I know of.

I've been told you're swearing and that's bothering people. But that's usually in religious areas. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. But I would, I would maybe offer that you haven't been toned police by men because you're not a woman. And I'm not,

I just want to clarify here. I'm not saying all men tone police. men, but this is within the context of those like toxic work environments and unlearning those things. So this is a very specific context. It's not all men, all women, all men in all environments, just to clarify. Okay. Okay. The toxic workplace, I've seen plenty of them.

So do you think that people get conditioned to use those? And so when they go from place to place, they kind of use toxic leadership or toxic behaviors that are learned and that they should. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Yeah. It's, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

I'm just, I'm just thinking on this, because, you know, one of the things about leadership is the leader really sets the tone in the environment. And that really is an important factor. And I imagine you talk about some of that because the, you know, the person on the white horse, the person who leads usually sets, like, the moral and ethical tone for the organization. Now that can be misconstrued, you know, through the, it depends on how bigger organization is. But a lot of those can be handled by good leadership. So I don't know if that you get into leadership and stuff in the program, correct? Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that you asked that. So there is a study that was conducted by Rutgers in 2012 where they interviewed 370-some professionals, men and women alike,

on how they defined power. And repeatedly, consistently, what showed up for men was that they defined power as dominance and control and leadership. Women in defining it, similarly said, not as many, but similarly, they said, you know, oh, leadership looks like power and control. But then when both were asked, when they felt they felt, they were successful as a leader or the most powerful, women actually answered that it was tied to a feeling of freedom and collaboration. Whereas men also consider, they said dominance and control, right?

So these are reflective of, I think, as you mentioned earlier, conditioning, right? So as women, we're very much conditioned to be nurturers, we're very much conditioned to be attuned to our emotions. And, you know, men, you're shunned for that. You know, we're like, don't you dare, shut a tear, don't you dare, have a feeling, right? That's very true.

Yeah. So it's the whole idea behind this is that because traditional leadership in corporations has been male led, right? Women have only in the past, you know, 50, 60 years been really allowed to step into leadership positions in the workplace. We are shaping our leadership after the, the current structure, which has not taken women into consideration. Right? So this is teaching women to lead through that sense of freedom, through that sense of collaboration,

to define power on their own terms and not feel constrained to be dominant, to be controlling, to be a successful leader. So is there still a meritocracy? Of course. Of course, always. Because wouldn't a meritocracy, though, by definition, create those leaderships and control formats.

I mean, there has to be a level of a certain amount of control, right? I mean, people don't do things just because for the goodwill in an office. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, by definition, meritocracy is great. I mean, by definition, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's great, and it's in practice, really horrific. As far as needing control, the jury's still out. We see places where it's successful to have a well-regimented, well-oiled machine where everyone knows their place.

They know their lines of communication. That's one way to operate, and it is successful. There are other ways to operate, though, and we see success in greater forms. And I don't mean like just from like a feeling sort of place. But when we see more autonomy, more freedom and more collaboration in the workplace, revenue, not only revenue increases, but profit increases. So giving people autonomy within their workplace and trusting them because you hired somebody to do a job, trust them to do the damn job, right?

When we trust them to do what's expected of them, they deliver. They feel valued. They feel empowered. And they deliver in ways that somebody who is maybe micromanaged or maybe, you know, has to ask permission of their boss. left and right or wants to ask permission of their boss, they're restricted. Imagine how much of the time suck that is to just have to repeatedly ask for help and feedback and questions, whereas you can be a bit more autonomous in your role and bring up questions

as you have them rather than at every single turn. Now, what are some of the common patterns or leadership challenges that show up for women you coach? What are they running into these days? What I've heard a lot is among women, who do not work in male-dominated industries. And this was actually really eye-opening for me because, of course, I built this structure for the A-suite on my own experience, which, as I mentioned earlier,

was I've grown up in male-dominated spaces. In spaces where women are the dominant gender, teaching healthcare, you know, psychology, sociology, those sorts of spaces, human resources, the common thread I see is that women, and feel like they have to compete with other women, right? That's where we get the idea of the caddy woman. And, you know, an office full of women that's full of gossip, nobody likes each other or there's

clicks, yada, yada, yada. That's something we try to dismantle in the A suite as well because that's another thing that is part of the conditioning. It's we have to be, we have to be the pick me. To be successful, we have to be the pick me. We have to be the one who is the teacher's pet for whoever's in leadership, which has historically been a man. Or we have to

compete to get to the top. And by doing that, you cannot befriend another person who is in your pool of competition, right? We've never been competing on a level of meritocracy. We've been competing on a level of here's your lane, here's your pool. You can compete amongst women.

Again, this is for the context of female dominated industries. Yeah. The the Pygmy thing, I'm familiar. with the pickney term in terms of like dating and and courtship and stuff i'm familiar with that because you know tic-tok has all these girls calling each other picnies and stuff right because they

uh simp for a guy i guess i guess that's the term but is pickney being used in the office place too as a as a pickney to promote me or how does that work yeah i would look at it as like a vibe if you think of somebody as a pick me it's like attention's on me and I guess the best way to describe it is a lot of times the phrase I'm not like other girls is associated with the pick me right isn't it yeah have you heard that right I'm just laughing because I know the context behind it yeah yeah right exactly exactly so in in the workspace that's kind of what you're saying you know as women I'm not like the rest of them I want to you know like I can do this that or the other I'm not like them blah blah blah I'm also laughing because I've heard it

many times over dinner. Do you say over dinner? Over dinner. Oh, for like dates and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I'm not like the other girls,

Chris. You're going to, listen, I'm going to, I'm going to have to scroll through your dating profile and, and match for you because that's not the kind of energy you want to bring in your life. Oh, I know.

That's probably why I'm still single. Now, how is the A suite different from other leadership or business programs out there? You're welcome to sling shit at all of them if you want. Yeah, I think that they also. the worst, the worst. You cannot change your life.

It is not true. No, I'm kidding. Because it is research-backed, I am a huge nerd for research. I want to know the ins and outs of everything before I try to put it as a framework. And that's what I've done with this. So it's based on psychological research. It's based on economic research. It's based on organizational psychology as well as trauma-informed communications, things

like that. But it's not. And I don't, I really don't want to shit on other, other coaching styles. I'm just kidding. I don't mean to set you up as a. Listen, though, if I hear the word manifest again, I'm like, I'm going to punch myself in the throat. You and me.

You and me. You and me. Let's get on that boat and ride it into the, the, we'll make it a movement. Right. And we need, we need a movement. I just realized we need to get shirts and coffee cups for this. Yeah. If I hear, if I hear a manifest, there was some gal.

the other day was telling me she manifested like a corner a corner view in new york some penthouse or something and i'm like yeah let's just see the receipts on that please right i just read a um a book recently and i won't name it but it was like oh i manifested 80 85 000 and she's like and i'll tell you how i did it like it's like i'm like oh cool yeah please tell me because i don't believe in this at all and she's like i bought a ticket a plane ticket and i'm like, okay, well, that's, you know, going to eat into your $85,000, for starters. She went to Dubai. I flew across the country.

Right, right. Had a gambling spree. It was amazing. No, she flew across the country. No, she, I was kidding. Showed up at my friend's door, told her about this thing I'm really passionate in, and asked her for $85,000. And I was like, man, you did not manifest a goddamn thing.

This is, you asked a friend for a loan. These are not the same. So that's just, yeah. Yeah, I see. I see a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's kind of frustrating. I feel like it's almost like it's, it's culty. It's a little bit like. It is, it is Colty. I agree with you. You and I could do a whole show on this thing. We can go on for like three. Hell yeah.

Oh my God. I'd love to. Yeah. It's just, it's and when you see it, you know, it's the, it's the same thing. And, and you're like, no, you didn't matter. I mean, I could probably say I manifested my whole life. and everything I've earned but really the true word is I work my ass off blood, sweat, tears. I'm probably going to die earlier for everything I did to my body, the drinking, the drugs, the food, you know, I mean I started my first coming 18.

I've powered this thing with so much alcohol and freaking edibles and depression and Zoloft and and there's been blood, there's been blood, and things I've done to my body that, that, you know, I had to have surgeries for hernia. Yeah, I mean, that's not, I would call that manifesting. I would call that work. I did the work. Right.

And that's really, I really think, I'm sorry, go ahead, Justina. No, no, no, go for it, go for it. I want you to finish your heart. I thought you had a really good idea there. So I'll throw mine and you could build on it if you want. What was mine? I segue too many times like an idiot. That's what I do.

Oh, you know, doing the work, okay? Like you and I, we do the work. We show up, we spend the long hours. We do the work. And,

you know, we probably scars on our body and our faces, you know, you know, when the president always goes into, the U.S. president always goes into the presidency, and it comes out the other side,

four years later, looking like he's 20 years older. That's kind of how we are. He's aged in decades. Yes. You're like, damn, that job is hard, man. And, you know, Michelle Obama's like, I'm leaving you. You got gray hair now.

But, you know, I mean, I remember Obama's picture, man. He went from, like, this young guy to this gray old man. I was like, wow. That's a hell of a job right there. And, but the manifest seems to imply by its nature. Maybe I don't think it's the word itself, but the nature of how, it's constantly presented online that you and I see ad nauseum, uh,

seems to imply that something you get for free. Like, oh, it's almost like saying, I won the lottery. I just, someone gave it there. It was given to,

well, it wasn't given to me. I just got it because, you know, just like fell out of the fucking sky or something. Yeah, like that magical thinking. Yeah.

And so, you know, basically people, hey, do you have goals? Are you going to be successful, make lots of money? Yeah, it's on my whiteboard.

You're like, well, what are you doing other than the whiteboard? Well, it's on my whiteboard. It'll come to me. Anyway, right now, everybody who loves manifesting is starting to write me email. So you've just lost thousands of subscribers. 99%. Yeah. What's, now in the business program for leadership with the A-suite,

is a more tactical mindset-based or a blend of both? It's a blend of both, absolutely. So the mindset is part of it. You have to unlearn self-doubt, right? You have to unlearn not trusting yourself and relearn how to trust yourself. Then, you know, I've got 36 years of proof that that's not easy. But, and it's still something I'm working through as well, you know, as I'm leading this group, it's like, oh, shit, I still have to do this, this work on myself. And the tactical side of it, you know, we don't just want to kind of puff women up and then unleash them in the wild. No, we want to give them tools as well, right? Tools that they can build on this new found sense of self-trust, this new found sense of I belong here. So there are practices that are, again, rooted in psychology, told you I'm a big nerd. But dialectical behavioral therapy, are you familiar with that at all? No. Tell us about that. So a big part of it is being able to identify the thought or the feeling. so just a general self-awareness, which also takes time and intention to get to a point where you can

identify a feeling or a thought as it arises and detach yourself from it. Say, you know, this thought is not me, this feeling is not me, it's passing, it's fleeting, and then you reframe it, right? So one of the practices in DBT is opposite action where, you know, if you have a negative thought, right, or if I'm in a depressive state and I can't get the motivation to go to the gym, right? I make myself aware and I've got this voice in my mind like, nope, stay in bed. You're tired. Your back hurts.

You know, all this kind of, you know, whatever. And those things may be true, but instead I do the opposite action. I make myself go to the gym, right? And of course,

going to the gym, exercising, it alleviates stress, releases endorphins. And it puts me on a track of making decisions that are better for me mentally and physically instead of defaulting to succumbing to my depression. So, So that's just an example.

It doesn't exactly tie to business. But it's those sorts of applications, the opposite action of, oh, I don't think I should speak up in this meeting. Nope, do it. Do it. You've got a great idea. You've sat back before. You haven't listened to yourself or trusted yourself. Speak up in this meeting.

So speak up. What was that? Mark Zuckerberg's accountant? She had that show, lean in or book lean in. Oh, maybe. I'm not sure. Yeah, lean in. Yeah, show up, speak out.

You know, the one thing you do learn about in being in the C-suits and organizations is, you know, you've got to definitely wave your flag. Yeah. You know, if you're, I've learned this the hard way, too. I mean, if you're quiet, you just do the work and you do good work, unless you're doing your own cheerleading or you have a really good manager who's really good at judging people. Think that I've been lucky enough to see that as well. the, you know, you're going to get passed over. And part of it is a leadership factor. Part of it is showing leadership because leadership isn't about just doing the work and

living in your own private Idaho isolation. And I've tried that where, you know, I tried, I'm like, oh, no, this is when I was young. I was like, I just do really good work and they'll notice. And they easily don't because you're kind of staying isolated. but the people who send through leadership are the people who can self-promote, but also who can communicate well and get along with others and build, build what's the word I'm looking for, and build consensus or build teams or build, you know,

build groups that ascend through the C-suite. And it's about, you know, it's about networking, grouping, but that's what leadership is, bringing everyone together. And if you're someone who can do that, you tend to be more leadership. And I think people that isolate and they, don't wave their flag and they don't lean in or I think what was the term you used oh god what did I use speak up so yeah speak up if you don't speak up and and uh you know stand out you're gonna blend in and when it comes time for leadership or worse when it comes time for layoffs like I've done

some of the best working companies that I knew everybody was just fucking around right and uh the recession hits and you know I'm the first one at the door because like who's Chris I don't know what the Hell he does. I just go over there working all the time. Doing that work. What a jerk. He should just manifest stuff. I'm thinking I'm going to start the anti-manifesting podcast. Can I be your first guest? I would love to be your first guest. Yeah, we're just going to cut some of the audio. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Now, tell us about your upbringing. Some of the concepts that you share in your thing, I believe, have been shaped by some of your experience of life. Tell us how you got into this business, how you maybe became an entrepreneur? Was there a start? Or was there an influence? What were some of the things that influence you into this and working with women? Yeah, that's a great question. Like I was saying

earlier, growing up in a corporate environment that despite the business was largely maldominated, gave me those two unique perspectives of one, what does it look like when it's just men in leadership? And two, what does it look like to have less competition among my female peers, right? So there's that, but there's also, you know, as you rise up through the ranks, you're still, or at least I was, I'll speak for myself instead of projecting, still getting the feedback of it's not your time yet. And trusting my leaders to tell me when it was time. When I found instead was they didn't know any more than I knew, right? And they were relying on me to do the research and hand them the wins.

but also there was an element of fear there where, and you've probably experienced as having leaders who are information hoarders. They feel like if they keep the information to themselves, their role is protected. For me, what that trained me to do is like, I don't want to, I don't want to hoard information. I don't want to do what I'm doing right now in this role for the rest of my life.

I'm going to train the people below me to do that so we all rise together. So that was that was kind of it. And my first venture into entrepreneurship, I lived out in L.A. briefly. I did the musician thing where you're like, oh, my God, I'm going to be a famous singer. And then you realize L.A. is not what it's cracked out to be. Right. It's quite that right there. Oh, did you?

I'm sorry. Beaches are amazing. They are. They are. Yep. That's what's great about L.A. Sunsets. Yeah.

It's beautiful. It really is, especially if you can live, like, on. or near the water. The traffic sucks. You know, I think the difference, and here's me going on a tangent, so I told you I'm in the D.C. area, when I moved to L.A., the biggest difference I realized in traffic was not necessarily that traffic was worse in L.A. It was more so that the drivers in L.A. are actively trying to ruin your day. Like, I have never seen more drivers go out of their way to just fuck somebody's path up.

Whereas here, it's like everyone's trying to get somewhere fast. And they're aggressive, but at least they can weave in and out of traffic without killing anyone. You mean we're not supposed to kill people on the freeway? It's found upon. I'm sure it's okay. You know, depending on who you are, it's if you can get a pass. Let me find a pen here. So I'm going to write this stuff.

But yeah, I did my, my brief little stint out in L.A. And I built a company called the Underground PR, which was for music. musicians who needed marketing and PR for their work. And it was meant to be not label level. So, you know, if you're an independent musician, you're likely not making millions of dollars a year. There's a few people that are. And we, we helped the ones that weren't. So we did some, some promotional work. We did some photo shoots and video shoots. We did some marketing, helped people build their social media pages. But then it kind of fell flat, you know, when you bring four of the musicians on to your team, all full-time musicians, of course,

they are going to give out their time to the tasks and the projects that generate immediate income, which is performing live versus working for a startup. Yeah. It dissipated. Not too long after it started, but that was my first venture into entrepreneurship. And what led me to start Valkyrie was just getting to the top of the company I was working at the company that I thought I'd be at for the rest of my life, honestly. And the only person above me was the president or the owner of the company.

And whereas at one point, he had given me space to be autonomous, to be the leader that I wanted to be. It became completely different. And the company started taking a turn for what I believe was the worst. And I was like, I can't, you know, I'm going to commit career suicide if I stay here. But I also didn't want to work for anyone again. So I started Valkyrie. I did end up going back to another contractor for a little bit.

And that was a fun experiment to just tell me that, no, I don't want to work for anyone else ever again. That's how you find out you don't want to work for anyone else. You work for some really awful people. And you're just like, and once you get the drug, too. So that's interesting, you know, you get the drug of the entrepreneurism. And man, when you get it, it's hard to, I don't think you can never get rid of it. It's, once you work for yourself, it's just really hard to work for other people. So as we go out, the people that are listening out there, who can take advantage of the A-list?

Who's a prospect that's, what does that look like, the prospect for them? And how can they reach out? Who's my target market? Yeah. So I have the link to the A-suite landing page, which is on my website, Balcaryus.com. And then it's really long. The A-s suite, A is for Audacity with dashes in between each word. But you can also find me everywhere on socials, Justina Beth underscore EL.

I talk about audacity and women in leadership all over the place. So those are great places to find out more about the A-suite. Also, happy to just chat with folks over email, which is my initials, JJ at Valkyrieus.com. Don't spam me because I will block you. Otherwise, we can have a great conversation. There's folks that do that. The spamming. I don't know what it is.

Well, it's been wonderful and insightful to have you on the show, Justina, if I can learn to say stuff. Thank you very much for coming on and sharing all your wares and information with us. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. a great conversation. Thank you. And thanks for us for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Facebook. Facebook.com, fordstst, Chris Foss, and all those crazy places to be on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life.

Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right. So this would be...