The Conscious Investor

Ep500 Celebrating 500 Episodes: The Journey of Conscious Investing and Embracing Purpose

June 24, 2024 • Julie Holly

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Can you believe we're at 500 episodes already? Join me, Julie Holly, as we celebrate this incredible milestone on the Conscious Investor Podcast by reflecting on our four-year journey. Curious about where our top listeners are from? You'll love hearing about our most engaged cities—LA, Atlanta, Denver, New York City, and Seattle! Plus, some fun surprises about our audience demographics, including a fascinating gender flip between YouTube subscribers and other podcast platforms. Your support has been our driving force, and I'm excited to keep this conversation going. 

In this special episode, we explore the essence of conscious investing and the importance of inner resilience and belief. Drawing from years of personal experience, I emphasize how true purpose and intention lead to genuine creation and lasting fulfillment, far beyond just external achievements. I'll also be sharing some exciting updates: this summer, I'm taking a well-deserved break to focus on family, mountain biking, and finishing the "Conscious Investor" book. Stay connected with me on social platforms, and let's keep inspiring each other to live big, love bigger, and make a meaningful impact.

Access Julie's calendar, the investor club, Conscious Investor Growth Summit, social profiles and more when you CLICK HERE

Episodes referenced in the introduction:



Speaker 1:

Hello Conscious Investor and welcome back. I'm your host, julie Hawley. For over four years, I've paired my background in real estate, investing, education and coaching to create powerful content for you each week. This podcast is where we take a holistic approach to investing by focusing on three ingredients to a life of personal freedom health, mindset and wealth. We'll talk about everything from passive investing through syndication and how to use your retirement accounts to boost your investing, to mineral balancing and gut brain health, and into topics that cultivate your inner strength and resilience so you can thrive regardless of any of life's current events. And yes, those are all episodes currently available and linked in the show notes below. Join me each Monday for a mindset episode and later in the week for an interview with expert investors and health professionals, so that you can experience your greatest health, strongest mindset and build the wisest wealth.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back, or welcome to the Conscious Investor Podcast. I'm so happy you're here. I'm so happy to have these precious Mondays where it's you and I, conscious Investor, talking about mindset and digging into some of those stickier things in life that transcend the investing space. Today is extra extra special because we get to hang out, you and I, and this happens to be the 500th episode of the Conscious Investor Podcast. I wanted to celebrate a little bit today by sharing a few of the core things that I have learned by creating 500 episodes of this podcast. Now, I know, on the birthday of the Conscious Investor, on March 2nd, I always create a birthday episode and I do some reflections and things, but I can promise you that this reflection is actually different than the reflection from the birthday episode this year, the previous year, the previous year and the previous year. I can't believe we can even say that Four full years of podcasting, which is absolutely remarkable. I'm going to share some fun facts with you about the show, because I did some digging and I'm trying to learn more about you, conscious Investor, so I can serve and support you even more substantially. And then I did some inner digging and really really found some powerful truths about creating 500 episodes.

Speaker 2:

Let's go ahead and let's start with the really fun elements. Who wants to know the top five cities? I always want to know the top five cities. Anytime you show me a top 10 list or something, I'm all about it. I always want to know the top five cities. Anytime you show me a top 10 list or something, I'm all about it because I want to know. But you know, conscious Investor three is my favorite number. However, I'm going to share the top five cities and I'd love to know if you were in one of these cities or if maybe, like me, you live out in the middle of nowhere and your city is never going to show on the map Top five cities we have. Coming in at number five LA Shout out to California Way to go, la. Atlanta. Coming in at number four I had no idea I had so many amazing listeners in Atlanta. Denver coming in at number three.

Speaker 2:

I'm a little not surprised. I have so many friends in Denver and I'm so grateful for those of you who are listening. And if we haven't connected and you are a good friend of and you want to be friends and you're in Denver, you need to reach out to me directly. I pass through Denver often, very, very often. I have my best friend there and I love Denver. My kids were born in Denver and so I just there's a special place in my heart for anything and all things Denver.

Speaker 2:

Here's one that really shocked me New York City. I got to go visit the Big Apple. In fact, I'll give you a special surprise at the end of the episode about New York City, surprise at the end of the episode about New York City and the first and foremost top listing city. Can you guess it? Have you already figured it out? We've gone from. We went West Coast, east Coast, central, like mid, with Denver literally in the middle. Then we went back to the East Coast. Well, we're going to end.

Speaker 2:

Our top city is on the West Coast and one of my absolute all-time favorite cities Seattle, seattle, super. Shout out to you If you are living in the Seattle area. I am especially grateful for you and I happen to go to Seattle on a regular basis as well. I love the mountain biking over there, love the seafood, I love the buildings, I love the people. I just love Seattle and the surrounding area and I absolutely feel so much love that so many of you are listening from Seattle, so that's a fun fact about where you are listening from. If you are not listening, you are not in one of those cities. Let me know where you are and, regardless of where you live, please share the podcast with people that you know so that this podcast can spread even further Love to see it going all the way around the globe. And yeah, people are listening around the globe, but let's make it go further and deeper. Are listening around the globe, but let's make it go further and deeper.

Speaker 2:

Okay, another fun fact which this really really shocked me because it's flip-flopped. Now you're going to be surprised, maybe, like I am Conscious Investor, but over on YouTube, out of the subscribers and you know if you haven't already subscribed over on YouTube, you know you just go show it some love. It's not an area where I go and don't promote the YouTube very often. However, I put every single podcast episode over on YouTube and I have some very deliberate specific playlists over there. Any workshops that I've ever hosted and such learning sessions those are all posted on YouTube so that you can go and visit them. I was surprised that 82% of the subscribers over on YouTube are gentlemen. That's amazing. That is so cool.

Speaker 2:

What was most surprising to me was that over on the other players on the listening spaces like Spotify and such, it was just the opposite. 82% of the listeners were women. I thought that was pretty funny that it was so flip-flopped in it. It was interesting to me to see how that works. I happen to be a massive podcast listener and I listen over on Apple Podcasts, so I'm not sure what player you're listening on, but wherever you are, podcasts is available everywhere. You can't get away. The Conscious Investor is everywhere.

Speaker 2:

All right, I want to dive into three episodes, or sorry, three elements that I've learned from podcasting, and I give this a lot of thought. I recently met a really, absolutely phenomenal human being, mark Levy, and in our conversations this was at book camp recently and in our conversation and in his presentation he regularly says what do you know that your reader doesn't know thinking about? Well, you know I could just say, oh well, you know I've gained a ton of discipline and you know I understand a compounding effect and grit and resilience. I can say all that and all of those things are true, but then you know a lot of that to be true also from your life experience, and so I really wanted to think about what is?

Speaker 2:

it that I may have learned might be nuanced from what you've already learned, what you've already learned over the years and I'm going to start with grit and resilience. And I realized, I thought that throughout my adulthood right from adulthood, meaning, you know, from 18 years, until here I am, you know, in the middle years I thought that I had seen the scope and breadth of grit and resilience in my life.

Speaker 2:

You know, that I had some really hard times in my early adulthood and I struggled tremendously and I worked through that, which is really phenomenal. I thought that that might have been like max out, like hardest thing ever. And in life I've had some other hard things Losing, you know, multiple miscarriages, unexpectedly losing my father, you know, multiple miscarriages, unexpectedly losing my father. You know just some big, big things taking place in life and all those things. Right, we can't I don't want to place a value of this one's better or worse or anything like that.

Speaker 2:

But when I thought about grit and resilience, those elements were very much. They were faster, the timing of it was faster, and grit and resilience shows up in different ways. Right, so we could have the time of having to heal, having to mend, having to mourn and grieve. But there's another type of grit and resilience and that is what I've learned over these 500 episodes. It's not the same grit and resilience, it's just kind of like just hanging on. It's this different, determined grit and resilience. And I wrote down, I wrote a few notes over here.

Speaker 2:

And I wrote down resilience and I wrote down. I wrote a few notes over here and I wrote down. You'll never know what you're made of until you're dangling over the edge. And when you're dangling, falling off isn't an option and your grip and grip will absolutely surprise you. But now what was interesting?

Speaker 2:

This is a podcast. So I mean I could let go. But could I? Because letting go of the podcast would be letting go of a greater belief, greater conviction. It would actually be what I like to affectionately refer to as a jonah right, jonah from the bible where God says hey, you, jonah, go to Nineveh and I want you to go tell these people that you know, repent, they're going to be saved. And Jonah's like, yeah, screw them. I like they're jerks over there. I'm not going that direction. Go ahead and let them burn. Right, jonah has a really hard heart and he just goes the opposite way. Right, jonah has a really hard heart and he just goes the opposite way.

Speaker 2:

And I think about the Conscious Investor podcast and the Conscious Investor Growth Summit and the Conscious Investor Movement. I think about all these things and I think how can I possibly let go? I don't want to end up in the proverbial belly of the whale because I'm not willing to go and do what I'm supposed to be doing, what I feel called and in purpose in doing in life. And so there's this different grit and resilience that I've discovered over the last five years that says you could let go, says you could let go. This isn't a grief, this isn't a trauma that has happened to you. This is something that I've an opportunity I've placed before you and you have free will jewels. You can do whatever you want, but I can assure you and I can hear, you know, the sovereign's voice just saying, like I can assure you, this path is going to be way better. Just follow down this path, it's going to be better. And so that's a real difference. When we talk about grit and resilience, we're not talking about, um, that internal, just part of the tender parts of us that need love, care and attention, that just need that comfort. We're talking about the grit and resilience that says I could let go, but if I let go, I don't even know what the cost is, I don't know what the collateral damage is. I know that this is the purpose I am created for and I must follow and carry through on this mission. So then letting go now becomes no longer an option, which is pretty. It's a different position to be in.

Speaker 2:

When I was in year two of the podcast, I didn't know that it was going to go this long and I honestly don't know how long the podcast is. You know, every birthday is. You know, am I going to continue or not continue? So this isn't one of those moments. This is a 500 episode celebration and when I think about year two, I was in golly.

Speaker 2:

I was probably two and a half years into the podcast, right, and I thought I was seeing more growth at that point and I was still not getting the reach that I was hoping for. And I don't know that I'm ever going to get the reach that I'm hoping for. I can only do that honestly with your health conscious investor, like I ended up myself can't do that. I don't go and advertise the show and things like that. I really count on you saying this is important and sharing the podcast with other people. That result is the conviction to create important content that serves you well. But two and a half years in, I got so discouraged and I questioned and doubted and wrestled why am I even doing this? This takes a lot of time, care, attention, I'm just creating all this content for who, for what? And really I can hear you, conscious, you conscious investor, wondering about in different parts of your life like why am I pushing myself in this way, why am I continuing down this path? And sometimes what.

Speaker 2:

I discovered was that this was more about preparing me for the next part of the mission. Right, like this is where I want you to go. But I've used this example in the past. If we're out, you know, lifting weights, or if we're out mountain biking, we try to take someone to a level that they are not equipped for. It's going to be painful, maybe impossible. Right now there is no way I could go and bench 200 pounds and that's not me having some limiting belief of any kind, it's I'm not physically prepared to do so. I haven't done the training necessary. And so, by sticking with this podcast, by sticking with and through that point, those undulations where you doubt, you wonder, you question, I now recognize that all of that was simply preparing me and growing an internal strength.

Speaker 2:

As I'm working on on the book, right, and that the book, I'm so excited I can't wait. The conscious investor um, the subtitle right now. These are all working titles. It could shift and change, but the subtitle right now is how to achieve genuine generational wealth. As you know, conscious semester we're looking not just at dollars and cents and investment portfolios. We're looking at, you know, health, looking at mindset. We're looking at something in a holistic way and, as I am, as I'm preparing to write that book, I realize to go and put a body of work like that out into the world it requires internal resilience. Part of this resilience that I've discovered over the 500 episodes is I am not directly tied and correlated to the statistics and to the outcome. I'm directly connected to the purpose and intention of it. When we're driven from the inside out, the results are different, because we're no longer creating to just people please and to make things correct and to have a facade of any kind. We're actually creating from an internal truth that we've been equipped with to carry out to the world.

Speaker 2:

Now, if we don't work within that paradigm, what happens is and we've seen plenty of examples of this is that you reach a pinnacle of success. You reach this opportunity to serve and support the world in a powerful way. But if you're not internally equipped for that, you reach that pinnacle and it just implodes. It's almost like pulling a souffle out and shaking it just a little bit and it just falls flat. Not just flat, but it actually has a concave to it, and we've seen that with so many celebrity stars that they reach this pinnacle. They have all these movies or all these songs or whatever, and then they can't handle it.

Speaker 2:

So, while it's been painful to have slow growth over the years, you know, compared to some people where I can be like, oh my gosh, it's them they're already success, they've already reached it. And success is air quotes and loosely put Right. But it's interesting to think what are we doing on the inside that is going to allow us a sustained path? The inside is going to determine that resilience, that ability to maintain a strong, firm, sure-handed grip along the way, every single step of the way. So that was really one of my number one takeaways.

Speaker 2:

And I know I should start with you know, the lesser of the takeaways perhaps, but I wanted to start with that one because it's really a foundation. There's another part of the foundation and that's the cornerstone. I didn't know the power of belief until I reached 500 episodes.

Speaker 1:

I understood it along the way.

Speaker 2:

I've I've started discovering this, but there's that song. I think Jason Mraz has a song in. In the lyrics it says something like if you know, and we've seen all these, you know. And in the lyrics it says something like if you know, and we've seen all these, you know these posters out there that will just try to encourage you, right. And it says something along the lines of if you see it, if you believe it, if you can see it, you can achieve it.

Speaker 1:

There are lots of different spinoffs of this.

Speaker 2:

But it's true, we live out whatever our core beliefs are. We're actually living those out to the world, and so we want to be mindful of what is that deeper belief in me? One of my deep beliefs is that the conscious investor is absolutely imperative for people across the globe. That personal freedom, that a holistic approach to creating generational wealth is absolutely imperative for the world to embrace, so that we're not bankrupting the best parts of our life. I believe that heart and soul and that belief it allows that. It's like the engine that just keeps going. Maybe you can even think of the energizer battery and the little bunny that just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going.

Speaker 2:

And if we have um belief, belief is all we need to start building on something. So you, conscious investor, have something that you believe in right now. You have something that is drawing you that you can see it. Maybe it's foggy, hoary, but you can see it. Belief is enough to start taking that very first or that next step towards that.

Speaker 2:

So you don't want to, you don't want to bankrupt any part of your life by not pursuing them. I mean, after all, what would that look like? We, we end up at the end of our life and we look back and we wonder. We would end up wondering what would have happened if I would have just stuck with that. What would happen if I wouldn't leave that to a point of taking action? I don't know about you. Practice semester, I don't want to live a, I don't like living in what if? But I also, I don't want to die with that regret of complacency because I was creating.

Speaker 2:

Remember what we call that right, it is a reasonable excuse. Oh well, the kids, oh well, I need to accomplish this in my career. And then, and we say and then, instead of saying I believe, I believe this, therefore, I will go and accomplish this, and that belief is powerful, I want to encourage you that these elements grit resilience, belief. They're imperative. You are hardwired, you are equipped and prepared. You are equipped and prepared. Your DNA already pre-qualifies you for stepping into your greater purpose. God already has like here you go, kerplop, here's your DNA. You are unique, hardwired a very specific way, and the interesting thing is that purpose is something that can feel very elusive.

Speaker 1:

Like oh, I got to figure out my purpose.

Speaker 2:

I don't think it's a matter of figuring it out. I believe that's why we've been given a lifetime. We've been given a lifetime to discover the different facets of who we are and how we're equipped so that we can serve and live into our purpose. Right, we don't live our purpose.

Speaker 2:

We live into our purpose, which means there's like this, off balance, forward momentum taking place. It's not complacent at all. Purpose is not a destination, it's not a ending spot. Purpose is a daily, daily opportunity and you're ready for it. You don't have to do anything special because, just as you are, you are enough for exactly where you are today. And if you're willing to accept that and if you're willing to say I have enough, just right where I am, and if I do this, I'm putting in the rep that I need to do that will prepare me for the purpose that I am created for tomorrow. Imagine, if we approach life that every single day, I just need to live into my purpose today, and today will prepare me for tomorrow. Imagine the compounding effect of a lifetime, the attitude and posture like that Absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 2:

It would be amazing, I would be remiss, if I did not talk about discipline and consistency. I'm not a fiercely disciplined person. Some people would look at me and say that is very untrue. We all have different expectations of what that looks like, and so when I think about the level of discipline I would like to achieve in my life, I'm still not there. And, yes, I recognize I am far more disciplined than many other people. But this podcast has really created within me a respect and an understanding about what is birthed from being disciplined and the opportunities that present when we are willing to be disciplined to something, when we're willing to be committed, present when we are willing to be disciplined to something, when we're willing to be committed, when we're willing to be resilient and persevere even when we want to quit. The interesting thing is that we don't get to know what's on the other side unless we walk the path. So I want to encourage you, conscious Investor, walk the path, be disciplined, take your belief, put action to it, have the grit and resilience to do it on a daily basis, because all you have to do is win one day. That's all you're in it for, and the days will stack upon themselves because you're being disciplined. I want to share something really fun with you, and this is going back to the beginning of the podcast episode. Remember I mentioned a stick around to the end New York City. I have something fun for you Now.

Speaker 2:

This is not set in stone, but this past weekend, super Rad, steve, the kids and I went and we were checking out RVs and we're talking, tossing around this idea pulling the kids from school for a year and hitting the road and guess what? New York City was on one of the bucket list places where we have to go, we have to visit. So we're excited about this concept of touring across the United States and in that process I was thinking it would be really, really fun to loop in a book tour. The book the Conscious Investor will be out at that time and I thought that would be really fun. You could hit the road, you could go and see all these exciting places yes, mountain bike along the way, of course and then go and do some book signings and speak for different events around the country. So I'm curious Should we stop at your city, I mean New York City?

Speaker 2:

All right, you're a shoe-in, we're already going to come to New York City. But what about your city, conscious Investor? Should we stop by your city and go visit you, your one stoplight or no stoplight town? Because I have a special place in my heart for small towns. They're absolutely amazing and they will definitely make the list. If you can reach out and say, hey, my small town should make the list. Tools, that's what I have for you, conscious Investor 500 episodes. I almost want to say 500 more to go, but I'm not sure where it's going. I'm going to go where I'm supposed to go and every day I will know better where I am supposed to go.

Speaker 2:

I hope that you enjoyed that, that this supported you in everything that you were working on in your life. Conscious investor, you were made and equipped in such a powerful, beautiful, unique way. The world would be lost without you pursuing that contribution. Go for it Absolutely. So go for it, absolutely. Go for it. Remember, adventure belongs on the trail, not in your best seat, not in your personal life. So please make sure that you are reaching out if you need support.

Speaker 2:

In either way, I won't be taking on any coaching clients until the fall, so I just want to let you know that right now. However, if you're interested in coaching and you want to get you know, be in the lineup sooner, then please reach out so that you can fill out the application in advance and be ready to roll. But over the summer, I have a couple of goals. One, I really need to spend time with my family. Two, I need to spend time on my mountain bike, and that top not top priority, but you know, up there with all of these is, I must finish the conscious investor book by the end of October I'm sorry, by the end of August. It's so a little bit focused on that reach out. If you need anything on the social platforms, please make sure you take time to share this episode. Until next time, live big, love bigger and do great. Thank you ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.

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Julie Holly

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