Forensic Finance to Empowering Women with Julie Garis

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0:27 Carrie Kwan: Welcome to Mumbition, the podcast where we celebrate the ambition and achievements of women in business, motherhood, and everything in between. I'm your host, Kerry Kwan, and today we have a very special guest joining us, Julie Garris, the founder of Simple Split Financials. Julie is a true champion for women, particularly those navigating the challenging experience of separation and divorce. Through her business, Simple Split Financials, she provides invaluable support and guidance, helping women gain financial clarity and confidence during one of the most difficult times in their lives. Julie has been an incredible member of the Mums Co community over the years, and she's referred so many talented women to join us. Last year, she was a key sponsor for Be Empowered, where she supported our amazing conversation with Tracy Hall. The author of The Last Victim. Julie, it's such a pleasure to have you on Mumbition today.

1:26 Julie Garis: Welcome. Thanks, Carrie. It's been a long time coming. I've been meaning to do this for a while.

1:31 Carrie Kwan: Now, we love making business connections. Please, can you share with us your 30-second elevator pitch so that we can share your business with our network?

1:39 Julie Garis: Thanks, Carrie. Try and make it 30 seconds. Um, my passion is really to help women going through separation and divorce to support them through the financial aspects. That's the property or financial settlement process. So I meet my clients where they're at on their journey, whether they're thinking about separating or have already started the process. As you appreciate, it's an incredibly tough time, emotional, overwhelming, and very messy.

2:05 Carrie Kwan: Ah.

2:05 Julie Garis: So I work with my clients to simplify the process, educate and empower them, and so that they can make hopefully informed decisions to move forward and thrive financially. The reason I'm so passionate about what I do is because 10 years ago, I was, my marriage ended in a whirlwind of emotion and had 2 little kids juggling life and I understand the overwhelming confusion and the fear that surrounds it all. So my career background is in finance and forensic accounting, but at that time I was so emotionally overwhelmed that you know, that experience helped a little bit, but it wasn't enough. And in hindsight, knowing what I know now and the connections and the people that are out there to help, I would have done things very differently. And essentially, that's why I started my business, to help people navigate this process financially.

2:57 Carrie Kwan: I can hear and I could see you, Julie, as you even just cast your mind back to that experience.

3:04 Julie Garis: I always—

3:06 Carrie Kwan: Yes, you did. And I'm sorry you had to go through that experience and how remarkable it is that you are able to pull from that and then now have a business which helps other people navigate that really daunting process. Because I did wanna ask, how does your business actually help through that?

3:31 Julie Garis: Yeah, I actually feel really privileged to be able to do this work. My business helps women, but saying that, I have had male clients as well, but predominantly the people that gravitate towards me are women who come to me either directly, they are planning to separate, they wanna get their ducks in a row, so they're in that very early thought process of doing it, or they have separated, whether that's been instigated by them or by their ex-partner, and I work with them in a number of ways. I guess essentially educating them about the property settlement process and really, there's a bit of counselling in there, a lot of detailed financial analysis, working through documents, explaining concepts to them because they want to understand. They want to understand sometimes if they haven't been privy to what's gone on financially in their relationship. That might be by choice or just by unfortunately, you know, financial coercion and that is a thing that—

4:28 Carrie Kwan: Yeah.

4:28 Julie Garis: It's coming out these days a lot more. But for whatever reason, they're in a position that they just want to really understand what happens so they can make those informed decisions and not look back with regret about what they end up agreeing to. So I get those clients coming to me directly. I work with them and I will refer them to family lawyers that I, you know, trusted. They're my trusted advisors in this space. I'm very clear on my boundaries about I'm an accountant, I'm not a lawyer. Yeah. So when that time is right, I refer them to somebody that I really trust in that space. And then I can continue working with them if that suits the circumstances. I guess the other way I help is I get referrals or family lawyers contacting me and they might have identified a financial issue that needs a forensic analysis. Just something that—

5:20 Lucy Kippist: Mm-hmm.

5:20 Julie Garis: You know, dig a little deeper into this. Map out a little bit more what's going on in this situation. And for those lawyers, they can see the value in having someone like myself doing that process and then working with them closely like their advisor. And that works really well with some of the lawyers that I work with.

5:38 Carrie Kwan: Um, can you also explore a little bit more about that? Because I was like reading your background and thinking, okay, forensic accountant, that kind of implies another level of of, of scrutiny and investigation. And could you just explain a little bit about that a bit deeper?

5:56 Julie Garis: Yeah, I guess forensic accounting— and my background was, you know, in working with the Big Four firms where we had big fraud investigations, or we did litigation support work, which was slightly different to what I'm currently doing now. But essentially it's just digging really deep and understanding what's happened Putting that puzzle together, that's how I like to frame it with my clients. Let's map out what's happened, let's follow through any issues that they might have. Um, it might be, you know, they might— my client might suspect that there's been a gambling issue, or there's been money that, you know, they just have no idea where it's gone. So it's following the trails of that sort of thing. It's a lot of different ways that I can— I help. Um, but basically just getting to the bottom of any financial issues that might be of concern to either the client or the lawyer. Often the clients will come and they've got these ideas of what might have happened and I'm very big on not letting them go down rabbit holes because I think that can be a dangerous place to go. Yeah. But saying that, if they really truly want to do something and want to understand it, I will caution them and say, "It might not get you any more money at the end of the day. It's not going to find a pot of gold down there." But, you know, as much as they want to and be guided and work with them in that way as well. And just, I actually go to people's houses and sit with them and go through documents and things.

7:20 Carrie Kwan: Right. It's fascinating. And I think that's part of it. You know, there's so many decisions that you have to make when you're going through this process. It's exhausting. So I can just imagine how much, you know, when you come in and you actually have that lens of just establishing the facts you know, helping you collate information, you know, get a clear picture of what's going on. It must be such a huge relief to have someone like you by their side in that process because often I think a lot of, you know, and I don't— I'm not generalizing here. I actually have invested quite heavily in my financial understanding over the last, you know, decade or so. Not in the early years, of, you know, and so I know where, you know, I'm monitoring transactions, like, just not for anything, you know, my husband's amazing. It's just more that I want to know, like, where I can allocate. But I'm not sure if everyone is at that point where they have the interest or the awareness.

8:28 Julie Garis: Yeah, going back to what you said, the words decision fatigue comes to mind when you were talking a bit earlier about they just— there's so much emotion and things that can help come in set out the facts and really help them with that decision fatigue. And the financial literacy side of things is a big thing. Like, it's something that's missing in a lot of ways, and it's not taught in schools. It's a big thing that I'm going, why isn't this stuff taught in schools? Males and females, not just to women. But really, life, life goes on, and people, you know, establish roles in relationships. Whether it's, you know, often my clients happen to be the ones that have taken on the childbearing roles, may or may not have worked, the husbands or their partners have been primarily the income earner, and they've had the relationships with the accountants, the financial advisors, and it's just, you know what, it's all good until it's not. So why would they necessarily think to go and ask about all of this stuff? I think it's very important to do that, but they don't often think that way. And then all of a sudden the rug's pulled out from under them. They might have instigated it, the husband might have, whichever way, but they're left in a way that they just don't have the knowledge to navigate this process confidently. So there is a big education part of this. And I think once I can help them get through and work with their lawyers and get through this part of it, the next step is to bring in— Yeah. Financial advisors to get that, you know, that future planning done as well. So I'm a big proponent of getting people in a community involved in this. I wish I'd known it 10 years ago that it's not just your family lawyer that can help you. There is people, there's communication experts in high-conflict situations that can really help. There's advisors that are specialists working with women going through this. I think I've found some really trusted people that I can refer my clients to.

10:28 Carrie Kwan: Oh.

10:29 Julie Garis: And that's what I love. And even my, you know, people in health and wellbeing, it's just key. The other day I met a client, I went to her house. I referred her a financial coach, an advisor, and happened to have an accountant at the same practice. Her friend needed somebody who could help with the communication in a high-conflict thing. So I ended up leaving about 4 referral things there. Yeah, now they don't need that all right now, but I just want people to know that when that time is ready, when they're ready for that thing, there is this community of people. And what does it say? It takes a village. It's all that sort of stuff. It really is true. Whereas I've seen the landscape change, particularly from when I went through it 10 years ago.

11:15 Carrie Kwan: Yeah.

11:15 Julie Garis: Now I had a lawyer, but he, you know, I'm not saying he was a bad lawyer at all, but emotionally I wasn't even ready to communicate with him. I didn't know anyone that was divorced, so it was that feeling of being really alone and vulnerable. And so that's why I just want that sense of empowerment.

11:33 Carrie Kwan: But also to know that that's the time when you shouldn't be alone, right? You shouldn't be alone. And there are, there are, there is support, you know, reach out, reach out to one person, it's the right person, um, you know, that can open other doors and they can help you out there too. Okay, so let's cast your mind back to the first major business milestone that you had. Why did it feel like such a great achievement?

11:59 Julie Garis: Yes, the answer is I don't know when I started my business that I had big milestones. I was sort of jumped in at the deep end going, I wanna leave corporate life. I don't want to do this anymore. I can see there's a different way for me and I wanna help women going through this thing. But at the time I really, I didn't have any big vision because I didn't even know whether my proposition was viable in terms of will anyone come and work with me? Do they actually see this as a viable business? Will family lawyers refer to me? All that sort of thing. So I don't think, I did some initial planning, but I think I was so conservative in what I was thinking. I was like, if I can just make enough money to pay my rent, then that's my first milestone. And it happened and it's continually evolved. So, In terms of my other milestones, yeah, that could be it.

12:51 Carrie Kwan: That could be the— you started, it was started, and it was leaving a very safe space in your corporate world.

12:59 Julie Garis: I did, yeah.

13:00 Carrie Kwan: Started, and you, um, hopefully hit that first, uh, rent-covering milestone quite quickly, and then you hopefully started thinking bigger. I think that's the— that's That's a great first milestone and your idea of success in the beginning, and hopefully that's changed as you've gone through different phases of your business. So what's one thing you wish you knew before you started your business? Ooh. And then apply that perhaps, what's one thing you knew when you were going steady and when you wanted to potentially quit?

13:39 Julie Garis: You know what, I've never really wanted to quit, so I'll take that one off.

13:43 Carrie Kwan: Amazing.

13:43 Julie Garis: Yep, I sort of came in and I thought, this is the way I'm gonna go forward and just gonna keep going until I, yeah, so there wasn't a thought of actually really quitting consciously, I don't think it, although saying that, I probably did question a couple of times, but not really. So what I wish I'd known, I came from a big corporate, like, you know, I worked in the big accounting firms, so there was, support everywhere and then starting a new business on my own. I didn't even know how to register an ABN. Now that's a very simple thing, but when you go from somewhere where you've got an IT department and an HR department and everyone to support you, then starting your own business, as you know, it's, it's quite daunting. Um, and yeah, I just think I took it too slow because I am at heart a perfectionist. And so I'm like, Okay, I've gotta get all set up. I've gotta get my templates all done. I've gotta do this. I've gotta get the legal agreements done. Everything tick, tick, tick, tick. I was just too slow. And, you know, people were saying, just jump in and do it. I'm like, no, no, no, no. So I guess what I wish I'd known was it will happen if you do consistent things, but it's progress, not perfection. And so, yeah, I just, it was a steep learning curve. Yeah. But I wish I just had more confidence in myself.

15:05 Carrie Kwan: Okay, yeah. And that's a— progress, not perfection is actually the best piece of advice, because as long as you're moving in the right direction, you've got it 70, 65%, you know, like you gotta, you gotta get, you gotta get in there and get feedback because things are moving so quickly nowadays that I think if you don't do something and you wait and you wait, you could actually have missed the timing. You know, a lot of business is about timing. Or maybe you invested too much time in it and you could have focused it elsewhere, which is what you need to do because you need to do all the things.

15:42 Julie Garis: Mm-hmm.

15:43 Carrie Kwan: You know, processes and finding clients and your systems and your workflows and hiring potentially and all those things.

15:54 Julie Garis: And also things like where I started off thinking my business was going to look like, I thought was gonna sort of, this is what I'll start doing. It's now taken a much bigger leap forward in, you know, initially I wasn't really even focusing on the forensic work and now it's like a probably 50% or more of my business and it's just, oh, okay. And then as you get out there and meet people, I wish, you know, And I'm a big networker, I love it. So, and it's funny 'cause I look back and see the people that I met initially, some of them I'm still in contact with, but a lot of them was like, I just went out and met so many people and now I look back and go, oh, it's a few that I still keep in contact with, but it just evolves. So it's like, just jump in for the journey and yeah, it's exciting, but it is daunting when you're starting out and trying to make your rent. So yeah.

16:44 Speaker D: Yeah.

16:44 Carrie Kwan: And what about when things were going a bit more steady? What's one thing you wish you knew?

16:48 Julie Garis: Just to enjoy the ride, probably. Not to worry constantly, because that's what I did. Um, it still was like, okay, just go with it.

17:00 Carrie Kwan: Beautiful message. Productivity is something that we're always trying to aim for, you know. We're, um, single moms, we're busy moms, um, and there's all the mental load to integrate with your business, driving your business. So from a productivity sense, what's one way that you've maybe disrupted yourself on how to boost productivity?

17:26 Julie Garis: Hmm, I'm not sure if this is the right answer for this, but very on point for me right now because it's all to me about my morning routine, how I set up my day. So, and I feel that productivity flows from how I start my day. And I've got a very strict morning routine where I get up, I do, at the moment, I don't know if you've heard, I'm doing "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron, and they do morning pages where you get up and you journal for 3 pages a day. And it's just free-flowing thought that comes out on the pages, and it's amazing what can come out. I then, I won't go into too much detail, but I have my lemon juice and this and that, and then I do my, morning meditation. And I just find that in that meditation, I always set up an intention for the day. And I just, and it's different every day, but I just find if I don't do that, my productivity throughout the day is a little bit off.

18:22 Carrie Kwan: I know that Lucy, my co-host usually, she would love this. And I think she does do something very similar. It might be the same technique in the power of journaling to, you know, absolutely boost your productivity, um, and your focus.

18:38 Julie Garis: Yeah, and I find during the day, if I'm, if I'm getting a little bit— because I work from home, I find sometimes I just like get up and I might go for a walk. But I've just trained as a Pilates instructor as well, so I'll often just let myself into the gym and just do a Pilates class and then jump back into work.

18:54 Carrie Kwan: And it's like, you know, productivity is, you know, ultimately it's yourself It is, it does involve, people can affect your productivity, but I think it starts with yourself and how you choose to set yourself up or, you know, which techniques you use to focus. And, you know, a lot of us have heard of the Pomodoro technique where we're like doing concentrated blocks of time. Mm-hmm. And recently one of my colleagues She's actually set up a focus, like a working time, so she'll actually meet up with a group of strangers online and they actually just do work together. But you concentrate, you're kind of held accountable, but you're not held accountable.

19:42 Julie Garis: And that's really interesting because when you work from home by yourself, yes, that, you know, the productivity, the accountability can— I mean, I've had days where I've It's a tired saying, but I've sat on the lounge and watched Netflix instead of doing work when I should have been. So yeah, being accountable. I like that idea, group of strangers just sitting on Zoom or something.

20:03 Carrie Kwan: Well, we actually have them with our community as well. So we have had those focus sessions with the Mums Co community too, where you just literally dial in and everyone's doing their own work, but you're together. Together doing work.

20:20 Julie Garis: Interesting.

20:20 Carrie Kwan: Yeah, and it just focuses you because you're like, I've committed to it and here I am and I've got no other distractions. I can't watch Netflix because I'm— I've accepted this invite to be here to work. Is there a tech tool that you can't live without? And this could be for the home or for your business.

20:38 Julie Garis: I mean, all I could think of was my iPhone. There's lots of things and lots of apps on my iPhone, but it, um, yeah, sat nav, my, my navigation guidance, my iPhone, and most recently my Duolingo to learn Italian.

20:54 Carrie Kwan: Beautiful, beautiful. My mum, my mum also uses Duolingo. She's like a ma— I don't know what the highest level is, but she's like Jedi level.

21:03 Julie Garis: I'm not there yet. I'm just literally—

21:05 Carrie Kwan: That's what she tells us about, the streak.

21:07 Julie Garis: Been 3 weeks, but I set myself this crazy vision, which I can share on this podcast, that I want to move to Italy. So I'm like, this is my first step to put it out there.

21:19 Carrie Kwan: So you're gonna, you're gonna dial into our Mums and Co focus sessions and then just work on how to get to Italy, and it could be like doing Duolingo or— yeah. And speaking of, I guess, technology, and technology is usually a bit of a disruptor, has, um, AI actually played a role in your business, or, or how perhaps do you feel about it?

21:39 Julie Garis: It scares me a little bit because I don't understand enough about it, but I can see it definitely has a role in fast-tracking and When I first came across AI, when I was working in forensic accounting, and that was a while ago when the first data analytics tools and things came through, sifting through massive large data sets in different fraud investigate, different ways of using it in that aspect. Never really understood it that time because there was people writing codes and doing stuff and I was like, you know, but in my work now, There are certainly tools coming up, and they already exist, but in dealing with a large lot of documents, for example. So it might not be your technical AI stuff, but certainly systems and things that can be used in understanding large, for example, a whole database of bank statements or something like that. If there was a matter, a litigation, family law litigation matter that needed analysis of bank statements to work out expenditure patterns, things like that. So there is a thing, I'm a bit of a learn as I go. So unless I have a matter that needs it.

22:46 Carrie Kwan: Yeah, and I think it's just, it's very much little steps at the moment. So I absolutely think technology is an enabler and we, you know, it's always about just kind of giving a little, giving it a try, right? Seeing where it might apply to your life. And AI is definitely something that, you know, just testing out whether it's for creating a recipe plan at home, or you might be able to ask it how to create a, uh, a lesson plan on how to make sure that you learn Italian in the next 3 months. It might give you like a full lesson plan of how you can achieve that.

23:30 Julie Garis: I have jumped into the odd ChatGPT questions and things like that, which is always, it's always helpful, but I do fact-check that as well because I—

23:39 Carrie Kwan: Yeah, yeah, the accuracy of things. Now we've got a question that we're going to jump in from one of our members, Lily, uh, from, from Sydney. She's asking, what is the most transferable skill between motherhood and business?

23:56 Julie Garis: Apart from organizational skills, it comes very foremost to mind, but I would say in my business, I like to think that in my personal life, in my family life, I'm an empathetic, caring, loving mum. Um, and those skills, you know, dealing with the people, my clients, and the vulnerable people that they are in that stage of going through a financial separation, relationship separation, those skills are absolutely important. And having had been there in those situations, I can completely empathize. So that to me is the most transferable skill in my particular business.

24:35 Carrie Kwan: Absolutely. Such an important skill and crucial because we are the business as well. If we, you know, we're trying to— you're in a particularly heightened situation and exchange, but empathy is something that if we understand our customers and their needs and their pain points and their challenges and how they want to communicate with us and empathy. And that's a great strength of a lot of the women, um, that, that run these businesses, particularly professional services, but in, in all, in all aspects where you have customer. Now, we're fascinated by the ways our relationship with risk impacts the way we do business. How would you describe your relationship to risk?

25:23 Julie Garis: Yeah, that's an interesting question. As for me, as someone that's come out of a marriage where I didn't work full-time throughout my marriage, you know, there was always income there. My ex was the sole provider, but it wasn't an issue. We always had the money, so there was stability. I didn't really need to worry about money, but when I separated, I had to work out what I was going to do. I hadn't worked for a long time, even though I was successful previously working. And I got a settlement, how was I gonna do that? So I guess my relationship to risk changed to, it was all on me at that time and no backup support. And so initially my tolerance for risk was quite low, but now as I've developed my business, my confidence has grown after a lot of inward sort of growth work, I now back myself more and my tolerance to risk has grown. Yeah. Has changed and I'm more willing to not do risky investments, but I do have a more— I'm more secure in myself that I'm going to be okay. So it's, it's changed. But being an accountant, um, I'm very clear on my boundaries in my business as well. So I don't step into areas of legal advice, financial advice. You need qualifications to do that. So I'm— in terms of the risk, you know, I'm very clear. Yeah. Of that. I deal in facts and numbers, and I leave the advice to financial advisors and legal advisors. So I think having those clear boundaries of what I will and will not do, I'm all the first person to go, "No, you've gotta go and speak to this person or that person." Saying that, I, and also, you know, I've got all my insurances in place. I've got my public indemnity insurance, my cybersecurity insurance, and that comes from me wanting to tick all the right boxes to make sure that I've done everything right.

27:12 Carrie Kwan: Yeah, it's interesting that you've gone through so much of a risk phase and now you've come out and you're really comfortable with it because you've actually seen that, you know, any given time we are going to be exposed to, you know, even like a, you know, I'm a mum of two, so my young, young, and my youngest is quite curious and gets involved in lots of bumps and bruises. So your risk radar is always on, right? You're always trying to go, how do I keep them safe? And once you start looking for those signs, you figure out how do I actually manage that? How do I mitigate that? Or I've learned from that before and this is what I need to do to make sure that when things don't go to plan, I've got something in place.

28:03 Lucy Kippist: Yeah.

28:03 Julie Garis: My boys are now 18 and 19, so different risk factors now around the children, but you know, it's certainly the financial risk that they're becoming much more independent. So that's sort of taken a lot of the sort of pressure off me rather than having little kids that, you know, don't know what's going to happen. Now it's different. So anyway, that's another story.

28:24 Carrie Kwan: But the risk doesn't stop.

28:28 Julie Garis: Just different.

28:29 Carrie Kwan: Uh-huh. Oh, beautiful. Yes, fellow mum, fellow boy mum. Yes. Congratulations and commiserations.

28:39 Julie Garis: No, they're beautiful. They're 18 and 19, so they're doing well.

28:44 Carrie Kwan: Amazing, amazing. They're everything. And now our co-is-everything. So you alluded earlier in our conversation to probably some amazing women in your network Who do you confide in? And if you'd like to give a shout out to any of them.

29:03 Julie Garis: I might not, my inner circle of close girlfriends, my personal, you know, for a personal vent or even in business advice as well, because some of them support me in my social marketing. So, and I've never really had a business mentor, but I've recently found an amazing lady and I've just signed up for a 12-month program with her, which I'm really, really excited about. So yeah, I mean, there's lots of people. Helene Sarakis is an awesome social media website lady. Marianne Mentis works closely with her. They've been big supports to my business, plus a whole bunch of girlfriends that just mean everything. So yeah. And then the wider network of people as well. I mean, I could name a dozen people, So I got double more.

29:52 Carrie Kwan: I mean, I just— yeah. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. You don't want to forget anyone, but, uh, amazing.

29:58 Julie Garis: The last protocol to listen to me is my dog George. Um, he's 15 and he's a bit deaf, so he's quite happy to sit there and look at me.

30:08 Carrie Kwan: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Julie, for sharing. Um, been great to chat with you today, and thank you for joining us on Mumbition today. If you'd like to find out more about Julie Garris, you can find her on our Mums and Co membership directory.

30:24 Speaker D: And we hope today's story has inspired you, and we'd love to help support you on your journey, uh, in 2025. Moms Co helps women in business grow, and we have 3 tiers of membership that provide strategic advice, access to deep networks, and opportunities to be more visible. Head over to momsandco.com.au for more details. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to to tell someone about it or drop us a review. We love hearing your feedback. We read every single bit that comes through and it helps other women in business find us so that we can support their business journey too.

31:00 Julie Garis: I am the one, the silver lining, just look up and find me.