Welcome to our latest episode. Today, we’re thrilled to have Julie Holly, owner of Three Keys Investments and host of The Conscious Investor podcast. Julie helps investors protect, preserve, and grow their wealth through investing in large apartment complexes and development. As a Conscious Investor Performance Coach, she helps people unearth their potential and take bold actions towards personal and financial freedom.
In this enlightening discussion, Julie shares her journey into real estate investing and the principles of being a conscious investor. She delves into the differences between multifamily and assisted living investments, explaining why a holistic approach to investing can lead to greater success. Julie also discusses the impact of mindset and habits on achieving personal freedom and financial goals. Additionally, she offers valuable advice on networking, decision-making, and integrating health and spirituality into the investment process.
Tune in now to gain exclusive access to Julie Holly’s expertise and discover how to become a conscious investor. Don’t miss out on this insightful episode!
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right, are you a conscious investor, right? The term conscious doesn’t mean that you just sit and you’re a yogi and you just meditate all day long, but it means that you have this holistic approach to the way that you invest because again, you can go after and get all the money in the world, but if your health is in shambles or your family relationships are in shambles or you’re not really doing the things that give you life, you’re not really wealthy, right? But wealth is not just what you have in the bank, it’s all the different elements of your life, right? Somebody, I think Ralph Walda Emerson said the first wealth is health, right?
So that’s one of them. There’s also a spiritual wealth, right? And your relationship with God or the things you do on the spiritual side.
So there’s different things that build wealth and it’s not just about the money. So this interview, you’re going to love it. If you love what I just said, you’re going to love this interview with Julie Hawley.
She has a group called The Conscious Investor and she does real estate deals and multifamily and an assisted living and really like Julie a lot. So you’re going to enjoy this interview. Let’s jump in.
All right, Julie Holly, welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. How’s it going?
Julie Holly: Oh, so happy to be here, Bronson.
Bronson Hill: I’m happy to see you. We were just recently at a book writing camp and I’m writing my second book called Rich Brain and you are writing your book called Conscious Investor, which fits with your brand. And I am so excited to talk with you because you have, I think we both kind of started about the same time, maybe like five, six years ago.
And you’ve just done all kinds of amazing things. And what I love about what you’re doing is you’re creating, you know, there’s an alignment. It’s not just, you know, people really do sell themselves or sell their soul for money.
And you’re like, you’re, you’re all about, there’s different forms of wealth here and spiritual, emotional, physical, all the different parts and there’s financial, there’s all the different parts of different sides of wealth. And so you’re so great at creating that, but I wanted you to share a little bit of your story and kind of how you got started in real estate and how you got to the conscious investor.
Julie Holly: Wow. That’s interesting because since I’m, as I’m working on my book, it’s actually interesting even seeing the roots of investing in real estate or real estate, I should say, like going all the way back to my dad, being an entrepreneur, selling a sandwich shop so that he could, you know, go into real estate sales. And so I was like raised in this whole atmosphere of real estate my entire life, but I entered into the real estate investing space through house hacking in my early twenties.
I had a very difficult time in a, in a abusive marriage and I decided to leave that marriage, but I was on a teacher salary and I’m like, how am I going to make this work house hacking, rent out a room in your house and you can offset your mortgage at work. But that also planted the seed for exactly what I do now still today, which is how, you know, investing in housing for humans. And that is that when my amazing husband entered my life, super rad, Steve, as I affectionately referred to him, we had a vision of how do we support residents?
How do we help people who are caught, caught in the margins, who don’t look good on paper so that they can make the transition that they might need to make in life. And so we had some single family rentals of our own. And after a while, and after we had our second child, it started to feel really vulnerable.
And I was like, I just don’t like this. And so in that process of trading that one-to-one ratio of, wow, this is great. We have cashflow off the single family house, but a hundred percent vacant means a hundred percent income coming in.
And so we transitioned that portfolio into multi-family real estate investing. We went in on the passive side before I went active because I wanted that experience. And ultimately, this is interesting.
Bronson, you were the very first phone call we ever had with anybody on the passive investing side of things. Like I wasn’t going active at that time. I knew I wanted to, but I remember, you know, my, I was still a public school educator at the time and we had a shift.
You had a deal that was going live and we’re like, I asked my husband, can you get over here to the school right away? And it was, we had this like very fast meeting. It was so much fun.
And it’s so fun to see like where our lives have gone since that moment. And just with that to kind of put the bow on top is that because we were willing to follow the path unfolding before us, and that meant walking early adulthood with struggles, but to using those struggles and allowing God to repurpose that for something greater than allowing to, you know, iterate off of single family investing into multifamily investing. That’s really what has opened all these other doors.
And that’s what opened me up to the conscious investor because it’s really the culmination of all of that heart message with the investing message that really just supports people in creating a holistic investment. So it’s not weighted heavily on heart or heavily on the money and the dollars and cents. It’s like it’s all encompassing.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, yeah, it’s the whole thing. And that’s the thing. I think we sometimes get mess is that, oh, I want this or I want that.
And there’s a lot of people putting out, I want the yachts and Mai Tai lifestyle. And that’s great. You know, I’m sure that’s wonderful.
And even for your conscious soul, that’d be great. But at the end of the day, things like purpose and things like impact and legacy and even the spiritual, you talked about the spiritual, you know, what it’s God’s plan and all this. And I know in my life, I’ve had a lot of twists and turns and things as well, but I just realize everything can be used for good.
And so I’ve seen that. And so, again, I didn’t think, you know, I was doing my medical sales job five years or six years ago and I was doing all these calls whenever that’d be. Now I’ve raised $40 million and all these things have opened up.
And, you know, we’ve had some challenges too, but it’s been like, you know, the path is I think it’s really valuable. So so let’s talk a little bit about it. I think you’ve done a lot of work in this space.
But where do you think like what’s the difference between like a conscious investor and somebody who’s not conscious? So like if I’m having like, OK, I’m just I mean, I’m an investor who’s doing this for reasons and I want cash flow and I want this and I want to play. It’s just kind of matter of fact.
Like what is the true like distinction between that?
Julie Holly: That’s a really great question, but I’m going to write that down and put it in my book now, but, you know, the real distinction is really taking like, can we go how much how many layers deep do we need to go? So a lot of times the ultimate goal of a conscious investor is full agency or personal freedom. And part of personal freedom is financial freedom.
But we have to be able to identify these things. Right. And so is interesting recently.
Well, I’ll talk about the financial freedom wing of things in just a moment, because that’s a really interesting concept in and of itself. Right. But when we’re talking about personal freedom, it’s not tied to how much money we have in the bank accounts.
And so, so often we are subordinating our entire lives to, well, when I have this much in savings, when I have this much in investing, when I have X amount and it’s tied to our net worth or it’s tied to our income level or savings when so a conscious investor is not correlated with that. It says, wait, I have artistic freedom and it’s free. I don’t have to have a net worth to have artistic freedom.
I don’t have to have a net worth to have a healthy physical being. I don’t have to have a net worth to have strong relationships with the people in my life. So I don’t have to have a net worth to have a relationship with God.
I don’t have to have a net worth. And you can see how this works where too often we’re so singularly focused on. I just got to work those extra hours.
I’m going to do a little overtime. I’m going to pay the set off. I’m going to do right.
And we’re so much of people’s lives is strategizing around money instead of sending, wait, actually, most of my money is not directly tied towards my net worth and my, my amount of money that I have. And so when we start looking at that, now we become a conscious investor. We say I’m striving for personal freedom in my life.
I’m striving for full agency over my life. And financial freedom is there. And I want listener, please hear this.
Money is wonderful. I love money. So there is nothing wrong or corrupt or evil about money.
Money is a very powerful, wonderful tool. But we also have to remember money does amplify whatever is within us.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. That’s, that’s a really good way to look at it. It’s almost like the, uh, uh, the conscious is a way to do it.
Or like a mindfulness, you know, it’s like the idea of just, you know, somebody who only does, like it’s, it’s when we focus on one thing at the expense of another night, I think we can all think of people that they put their career set up by their family or they put, um, you know, some dream ahead of something else in their life. And a lot of times it’s around just, you know, like it’s, you can get all the money, but it’s just money. I mean, you can always make more money.
You can’t make more time. And there’s a lot of people that get everything they want. And then they get to a place where they’re like so unhappy because they missed out on some of those other things.
And so, um, so would you say, would you, I guess, would you call that like living a balanced life or is it more of just kind of like being very intentional about the way that you live according to your values?
Julie Holly: So I, I really don’t believe in balance at all. I, I will like, I wrestled with the whole balance concept a lot. I will say, I think harmonious would be a really good, uh, expression of that where all of these things should sound like a symphony to us that should sound like, uh, it should look and appear like a beautiful piece of artwork, right, where everything is complimentary.
There might be more or less of something there, but all things are working to create this beauty. And so I think that’s an important element to look at, um, with that.
Bronson Hill: Awesome. I love it. I know you have your event coming up in March of next year.
It’s the conscious investor event. It’ll be the third one that you have had. And so you know, you’re excited for that.
Julie Holly: Super excited for the third growth summit. Um, it’s, it’s definitely a great time for people to come together intentionally to look at that. What does health, what does wealth look like in a holistic way?
What does life look like as a conscious investor? And so when we’re appealing everything apart, we actually take time to have, I have speakers that come and speak. We had everything from gut brain health, um, to like economics.
We have, I’m like, we have a broad spectrum. We have bodybuilders and we have, I mean, there’s just such a overlay of differences being presented at the event. How do I buy a business and how do I utilize credit and how do I invest in midterm rentals?
And then also, wow, where does faith fit in here? And what does that look like if I have faith and spirituality in my life? And so it’s such a, um, interesting convergence for an event because it’s not heavily focused on it’s all health and you’re not going to a real estate event and you’re not going to say a Tony Robbins event where it’s, you know, going to be raw, raw, raw.
It’s all combined.
Bronson Hill: I love it. Oh, that’s great. Well, I think those are things I’m really passionate about.
I’ve realized with personal development and wealth and just life happiness. I mean, I just said, okay, I want to leave my job and I was able to do that. I traveled six times internationally last year.
And so I just, you know, I kind of create, you can create the life you want to create. You can live the life, the health wise, other things. Um, so I think that’s really wonderful.
So tell me, I want to shift gears for a minute here. Um, so you are invested, you know, you work with investors and you have people come in and join you on your deals. You’re doing multifamily, you’re also doing, uh, assisted living.
So talk to us about, you know, kind of, do you think it’s a good time right now to invest, how have you seen things change in the last couple of years? Where do you think things are headed?
Julie Holly: Uh, things have clearly changed in the last couple of years, but it’s always a good time to invest. And that’s where that will always be my position. And I hear of people as do you, I’m sure.
Godly, if only I could go back to 2011 all over again, I would do differently. And say, or, oh, I missed the best buying time of my lifetime. Someone told me that the other day.
And I said, today is your best buying time of your lifetime. Buying real estate right now, today investing right now is the best time of your life. So when I look at the overlay of what’s taking place in the investing space, you know, interest rates, they’re a distraction.
People are looking at that and they’re using it as a talking point. And it’s just distracting because a good deal is a good deal. And so if the interest rate is 18% and the deal still works, it’s still a good deal.
Right. And so we have to look at the metrics that we are considering in our investing. Say, does the, do the fundamentals of this investment opportunity actually work?
And what are the underlying assumptions here that these projections are based off of? And if I agree with those assumptions, and why would I not invest in this?
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So that’s, I think that’s really a good point. And again, I think, I think it’s a great time right now too. We’re just after a couple of years, we’re starting to get back into our multifamily real estate deals.
I think there’s, there was a big standoff between buyers and sellers. And now a lot of sellers are like half to sell kind of stuff where it’s like, we’re seeing those deals out there. So for assisted living, we have a senior housing deal that we’ve done recently, a new development in Arkansas.
But tell me a little bit about that. How many like, when did you get involved with that? What do you like about that space?
Julie Holly: Love the assisted living space. So I just ventured into assisted living a year ago, coming up on a year. And, you know, I’m all about partnerships first, go figure the conscious investor would say, who are the people behind the deal?
Who’s operating? Who’s like, give me the people first. Strong people, especially when you’re considering we’re caring for a very precious demographic.
And we want to make sure that we’re not just buying the real estate. We’re not just buying a property manager and a maintenance person like we do when we, you know, with a multifamily complex. Like, no, we’re buying an entire, we’re buying 120 licensed beds and we’re acquiring a staff of a hundred, you know, of a hundred.
And so there’s a lot more mechanics to it. A lot of moving parts. And so like, I absolutely love it.
I see the impact that we’re able to make on the residents lives. I was just back out in Wisconsin a month ago and we’re, you know, picking up another, I like to call them communities because I don’t like facility sounds sterile and gross. And we create communities.
But think about this, we’re able to turn around, you know, some of these complex, we’re able to turn them around, you know, where maybe they have a staff where there isn’t harmony in the workplace. And so just being able to create a strong culture changes the environment that these residents are experiencing. And I love being part of that.
And I love the fact that we’re now vertically integrated. And so we have, there is no distance, no separation between our team and, you know, the executive director at, you know, any of these facilities. Like we are fully integrated with every acquisition, which allows a lot more oversight.
And that oversight closes a gap that in that gap, that’s where a lot of the fallout can happen in the quality of care. So yeah, yeah, I love it.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, no, that’s great. I think that, you know, assisted living. I used to work as the medical sales at about five years.
I worked with a lot of older people in nursing homes, assisted living. And then my grandmother went to a nursing or like an assisted living place. And some of these are very nice.
You know, they’re very, very nice assisted living places. And it’s like there’s kind of two kinds. One is like a really not so nice one that’s kind of a state one, whatever.
But then there’s really nice ones that, you know, people get. I mean, there’s a lot of social activity. There’s a lot of opportunity to meet other people.
And I think that’s an issue for people to get older. They get socially isolated, so you’re able to create that. But we’re seeing to the demographics of just as people are aging, there’s a huge demand for this.
I think over the next about the next 15 years or so, where we’re just seeing all these boomers get older and everybody, you know, wants to be in a nice place. And a lot of people want to stay at home or in a home like place. And so I think it’s really ideal.
So I guess for you, you’re creating. Can you talk a little bit about your book and kind of what’s going to be in the book where people can get that and just what you’re creating? I know that’s super exciting, what you’re creating.
I would love to hear more about that.
Julie Holly: It is super exciting. The conscious investor and the subtitles always a work in progress, but initially the working title is just like the conscious investor manifesto because most people don’t understand what does this mean for me to be a conscious investor? What is this other philosophy and how does spirituality have to do with anything?
And what, why do I have to worry about my health? And, and so this really is unpacking and allowing somebody to shift their perspective from financial freedom, meaning, and there’s so much. I put a Facebook up post recently and the feedback, I just said, what does financial freedom mean to you?
And it means something. It’s all similar, but it’s different at the same time, person to person to person. And so, and even if you look up a definition online, and so this conscious investor manifesto, we’ll call it right now is really creating a lot of clarity as to what are these elements of personal freedom and how do we live this holistic life that is leading into virtue, character, contribution, just as much as we can be building out our net worth.
But we really have to have that premise. And it’s based on, we have a foundation in our health, health, meaning our physical health, our relational health, and our spiritual health. Like I had strep throat last year and I had COVID during the pandemic.
When you are sick, nothing else matters to you. You’re just like, who cares about money? It’s not making me better at this moment, right?
And so we have to be caring for our health as a foundation. And when we are healthy, we can make much better, clearer decisions, right? Because if we have a micro distraction in our life, because we’re physically uncomfortable, because our hip is having a problem or because we maybe have some gut issues because we’re not eating well.
Like if we have a physical problem, we’re going to have a micro distraction, which can lead to a macro dysfunction in other parts of our life. And that type of health is going to resonate with our relational health and with our spiritual health. So we want our health to be like intact solid before we start building any type of, like before we make wealth, like wealth, like what is a matter of the wealth to begin with?
But I’ll pause there.
Bronson Hill: No, I can’t remember if it was Ralph Waldo Emerson or somebody said the first wealth is health. And so it kind of is the idea of like, you can always make more money. You can’t make more time.
So you miss out on things with our kids. We miss out on things with just people, family members, things that we value. That’s important.
That’s why I think it’s so important to start with the end in mind, right? To start with what is it like I want to create? What is it I feel like I’m supposed to do with my life and get your purpose and your focus and your direction set.
And then once you figure that out, you can figure out, okay, I’m going to go from here to there. You can figure out the stuff, but I just think a lot of people say, Oh, I just want more money or I just want more or whatever. And it’s like, well, hold on.
Let’s take a step back. Like, what’s the reason? Like, what’s the real end goal of all this, you know?
And then when you get into spirituality and you get into all the different things, where’s God and all this. And I think it’s wonderful because I think that there needs to be more integrated conversations around faith and money and even health and other things, because it’s all related. It’s like if I, you know, if I’m dying of cancer, then all the money in the world doesn’t matter.
You know, it doesn’t really matter. You know, I mean, there’s legacy, I guess, but it doesn’t really matter when it comes to being able to enjoy life. So I think that’s really important.
So what are some things that you are? We talked about, obviously, we talked about investing. We talked about your conscious investor.
What are some other things that you’re excited about that are coming up for you that you’re either in the investing side or the personal side, or some developments in those areas that you’re excited about?
Julie Holly: You know, I feel like there’s always something on the precipice. You know, I’m blessed to be able to go to speak at different events. And that’s always exciting.
It’s exciting when you have a new acquisition underway. It’s exciting when you have strong partnerships that are trustworthy and dependable, that just going deeper into those. But it’s also exciting being on summer break at the time of this recording.
And while summer break looks different because I work, you know, but it’s so cool to be able to enjoy time with my kids and to think that, you know, I have a limited number of summers with my kids. And when I think about one of the greatest investments, it is, you know, like, can I be present with my kids? Which today has been a day of a lot of beautiful meetings, but it’s also a good role model to say, like, live into your contribution and we will hang out and have our time.
Bronson Hill: Yeah.
Julie Holly: Yeah. There’s never a dull moment in life at all.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s great.
And I have my daughter with me a lot over the summer. We’ve done some soccer camps and some other activities and things. But I just think, you know, creating those memories and doing fun things together is really important.
And it’s important to do things. We’ve got a couple of camping things coming up, a couple of ventures coming up. And as you get older, you know, you remember those things.
I think that you don’t get, you don’t get that time back. And so it’s really important to create, you know, create those things and be intentional. Because I think the older I get, the more it’s like, the more intentional we can be about what we want to create, what we want to do.
And it’s great to have spontaneous time. I know it’s so funny. I like, I like schedule the unstructured time or I schedule the time.
It’s like, oh, I’m just going to relax this time and do nothing or whatever. And so I think that’s, I think that’s really wonderful. Well, Julie, I really appreciate you.
You’ve done a great job of both building your business as well as building yourself and really integrating those things, kind of think better than just about anybody I know. So I’m really grateful for that. It’s grateful to be grateful to be your friend and obviously be working on some book stuff together as well.
And so we’re kind of giving each other encouragement and feedback on that. But how can people learn about you, hear about your conference, hear about your upcoming book is it’s going to be released and just hear about your deals and stuff.
Julie Holly: It’s so exciting. The best way is to head over to the Conscious Investor website. It’s an affirmation because most of us cannot spell conscious on our own.
So if you just type in the affirmation, Iamaconsciousinvestor.com, you will have access to everything that I do from investing to speaking, to coaching, to our events, to everything is available on the website. Iamaconsciousinvestor.com.
Bronson Hill: That’s right. And you are a high performance coach as well, right? That’s something that you do as well.
So if you want us to reach out to that and perform at a higher level, and you’re like an intense mountain bike racer right here, right?
Julie Holly: I don’t race, but I am an intense mountain bike racer. I do race myself and I love being out where I live. I affectionately say I like to go out and ride with the bears.
So we’ve got grizzly, we’ve got the black and the brown bears where I live and it’s exciting. You just never know what kind of critters you’re going to turn up. Maybe some elk, usually a lot of deer.
But it’s fun. It’s soulful. And yeah, that’s a huge part of life during the summer.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that’s awesome, Julie. Well, I really appreciate you. Thanks for being here today.
It’s been a lot of fun. Really, we’ll look forward to hanging out some more. I’m excited for your book coming out here too.
Julie Holly: Awesome. Thanks so much, Bronson. It’s been great.
Bronson Hill: All right. So I hope you enjoyed this interview with my friend, Julie Hawley. Really, she does live the holistic life, right?
She’s got the family stuff. She’s doing different things to give her life and living the balance as well as pursuing the financial goals. And so, like she said, balance doesn’t exist.
But I think it really comes down to creating those meaningful things for you. What are the things that really matter? Some things that matter to me may not matter to you at all, right?
You may not care about running Spartan races and working as hard as you can and think, man, I actually paid it, get punished. But I actually love that kind of stuff, right? And not when I’m doing it, but looking back, I really enjoy it.
And so for you, what are the things that really give you life? What are the things beyond just having money? But what are the legacy things?
What are the spiritual things? What are the family relationships? What are the health things that you do so that you can live a wealthy life beyond money?
So I’d love to hear that in the comments. I’d love for you to reach out to me on what you thought about that. So reach out to me.
I’d love to hear it. And if you haven’t joined our investment club, we’re doing some amazing deals, really unique deals. I’d love to have you on our investment club.
You can click a link below. You can go to bronsonequity.com. Click the join button.
We’ll set up a relationship with you. We can actually start sharing some of these amazing deals with you. But I appreciate you educating yourself.
We’ll look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show!
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