The Secret to Achieving Financial Freedom Without Having to Wait for Retirement Day! with Julie Steelman

 

“If you have that dream or yearning, start following the leadership of that… because everything that you want is on that path.”  – Julie Steelman

Listen to the podcast here:

Highlights:

02:12 The Road To Financial Freedom
08:35 Core Expectations
11:46 Quest To Soul Actualization
16:40 Be In Your Own Power
21:32 Need For Belongingness- The Root of What’s Not
29:42 Photography in Africa- Pictures That Speak A Million Words
36:51 Wildlife And Conservation- What Is Your Role

 

Have you ever thought about what life would be like if you can do and be whatever you want without worrying about finances? Tune in as @myexpectation and Julie Steelman reveal the secret to financial freedom! #expectationtherapy #podcast… Click To Tweet

 

Resources:

Book

• The Effortless Yes by Julie Steelman 
• Wild, Sacred Beauty by Julie Steelman

 

Photography

• Wild Sacred Beauty Photos by Julie Steelman

Quotes:

“If we surrender to the leadership of [these dreams that we have throughout our life]… they lead us into the freedom that we want to have.” -Julie Steelman 

“The only way that you ever have control of your life is to be able to financially take care of yourself.” -Art Costello 

“Being free is being unbound from having to be beholden to what anybody else thinks.” -Julie Steelman

“Without a good foundation, we have nothing.” – Art Costello

“We have to be really self-resourced and reliant. IT doesn’t mean lone-wolfing, but it means taking a stand for YOU creating your own freedom in life.” -Julie Steelman

 “It’s so dishonoring to have a dream and not follow it through.” -Julie Steelman

“This deep need for all of us to have a sense of freedom and power over our own lives…Referencing to inside ourselves and trusting that.”  – Julie Steelman

“If you have that dream or yearning, start following the leadership of that… because everything that you want is on that path.”  – Julie Steelman

 

Meet Julie:

Julie Steelman dreamed of traveling to Africa and knew the only way she could make that happen was to make her own money. This ignited her quest to create financial freedom and have cash flow for life. She earned her way out of the corporate world at the young age of 47, by generating over a hundred million and online advertising revenue. Julie is the CEO and founder of the Financial Freedom Institute and known to her clients as a financial visionary, wealth coach, and selling expert. Her intriguing and innovative approach to helping to pioneer entrepreneurial women change their financial destiny has resulted in her clients being able to design sustained business models, generating healthy cash flow and building wealth. She is the author of the book, The Effortless Yes, and has a 25-year career in iconic corporate brand sales. She uses her master’s degree in spiritual psychology to translate her award-winning wildlife photography into teaching metaphors.

• Website
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Facebook

 

Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to Shower Epiphanies Podcast, today, I am thrilled and honored to have Julie Steelman on the show. Julie is an adventurer, a master photographer, actually an award winning master photographer, just does beautiful work. Her story about as a toddler, Julie dreamed of traveling to Africa and knew the only way she could make that happen was to make her own money. This ignited her quest to create financial freedom and have cash flow for life. She earned her way out of the corporate world at the young age of 47, by generating over a hundred million and online advertising revenue. Julie is the CEO and founder of the Financial Freedom Institute and known to her clients as a financial visionary, wealth coach and selling expert. Her intriguing and innovative approach to helping to pioneer entrepreneurial women change their financial destiny has resulted in her clients being able to design sustained business models, generating healthy cash flow and building wealth, Julie author and highly praise book, The Effortless Yes, and has a 25 year career iconic corporate brand sales. She uses her master’s degree in spiritual psychology to translate her award-winning wildlife photography into teaching metaphors. I can’t say enough about this woman. She really has done much traveled and we have so much that we can cover from so many areas. I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those kinds of things where we ended up doing another show. Julie, welcome to the show. Can you tell us how this all started for you?

Julie Steelman: Wow. Well, it’s always so interesting to hear your own bio, right?

Art Costello: It is.

Julie Steelman: You’re kind of like, Oh, stop. It started for me as a really little kid. I remember being six, seven years old. Every Sunday night, we would watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and you’ll laugh because I know you’re with me. We were back in the day when it was, there were only 13 channels and you had to actually get up and go walk over to the TV. There were no voice remotes. I’m watching these videos of leopards, and lions, and zebras, and giraffes and my little kid heart was transported to Africa. I knew that no matter what, I needed to go to Africa before I died. And as a little kid, living in Chicago, it felt like this super foreign, huge dream that was very unlikely to happen. And in my brain, my being a problem solver, I started to think about how am I gonna make that happen? And over time I’m realizing that I live in a family that doesn’t have passports. They’re not risk takers. They don’t leave their zip code. And I’m like, there’s no way it’s going to happen that way and somehow I made the decision that I needed to make and create my own money and my own time so that I was free to go to Africa. I’m oriented around my core value is freedom. So I’m always oriented around how do I create freedom for myself? Meaning, how do I have choices? How do I get to do what I want to do? When I want to do it? So through the years, graduate high school, go to college. And in college, I had one of those, what you like to call the shower epiphany moment. Where I was living a life working at a bar, saving my tips so I could pay down my maxed out credit card. We can all relate to this. And then I felt like for 30 minutes a month, I had some financial freedom and I’d go, do what I want, buy what I want, max out my credit card again and it just kept going like that. Kept repeating, repeating. And one day I’m walking down the sidewalk, I’m thinking to myself, how can I make more money? And then it’s like, it’s not really a reality because I’m a college student, I maxed out on time, I’m working double shifts.

And then the question became, how can I keep more money? And that became one of my core foundational belief shifts around money that I would love to talk more about with your audience and this idea of freedom, how are we looking at things? And that was one of my epiphanies so when I graduated college, I decided to take a career in sales because I would have the most direct impact over my own income. And as I was thinking about Corporate America, I’m like, the idea of sitting in a cubicle outside someone’s office in December, they decide if I get a four and a half percent raise, wasn’t gonna work for me. I was all about, I don’t want to be in the office. So you can see how that decision as a little kid kind of created this pathway. Eventually I retired to financially free following this path. And my late husband and I moved to Hawaii in our first trip was to Africa and we just kept going back. And then he died very suddenly and unexpectedly and that’s when I realized how many people ride the edge of financial disaster. Like they aren’t prepared for these mega life changes that you don’t foresee coming. We were prepared, I was prepared. What spawned me forward, and the only thing that made me feel good during that deep grieving time of the loss of this amazing partner was to go to Africa. That’s when I picked my photography really started to amplify. And I met someone who is like my second father and he’s been a mentor to me. Now I’m an award winning photographer because of it. And I think one of the things I would love to share is that these dreams that you have throughout your life, if we surrender to the leadership of those, they’re the thing that lead us into the freedom that we want to have and whatever that way that is for us. .

“If we surrender to the leadership of (these dreams that we have throughout our life)… they lead us into the freedom that we want to have.” -Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah. Do you think that it’s partly in that that is actually part of the path? As long as we listen to the intuitive part of ourselves and listen to our gut feeling, I don’t know if you know much about my story, but from nine years old, I had to figure out everything on my own. It was pretty much left abandoned. I think that there’s a commonality in what our core values? How we develop, there’s something that touched me, you said one of your core values is freedom, and I’m going to ask you a question. Have you ever thought about your core expectations?

Julie Steelman: Oh, that’s such a good question. Yeah. I trip over all the time. Kind of that things are supposed to be smooth and easy., and if they’re not, then somehow I’m not doing it right. So there’s that whole mean, we could talk for hours about the Buddhist belief system around that the whole mechanism that keeps suffering in place.

Art Costello: For me, my core expectations are integrity, compassion, and I just went blank on the third one. Oh, love, I’m sorry. One of the most important ones. So those are my three, and that’s how I live in everything I do. I suspect, but you being freedom as, I mean, I’ve always wanted to be free. I started selling Christmas cards in July as a seven year old. Going up and down the street–

Julie Steelman: Knocking on doors.

Art Costello: And that started me on really understanding that the only way that you ever have control of your life is to be able to financially take care of yourself. It gives you the ability to take care of others. And when I say others, it doesn’t only mean family, but we have charities and everything else that we can take care of. Whether it be churches or whatever your choice is. But it gives us that ability. And there’s a certain amount of freedom that comes with more so to the internal happiness and I think that that’s what comes out in your photography. Because when I look at your photography, I feel it, I feel it. Whether it’s animals or landscape, it doesn’t matter. There’s a gentleness to it, but yet almost like a contrast, this can be over here, and this could be here. There’s so much to take in your photography. Detailed, maybe that’s a better way to put it. I have a friend that is an award winning photographer but he’s passed away last year. He was actually in my high school class, Charles Alsheimer. I don’t know if you heard him. He does a white tail deer specifically.

“The only way that you ever have control of your life is to be able to financially take care of yourself.” -Art Costello Click To Tweet

Julie Steelman: Wow.

Art Costello: Photographed him and he’s won all kinds of awards, it’s amazing. Photography has always intrigued me. For me, it has always been this expression that you could have, then you have to have very detailed eyes for it, and I’m colored blind. I don’t see colors. I often wonder what colors do you see versus what I see. But then anyway, going back to the path, the path that none of this would’ve happened, the internal fortitude to look within yourself and make these realizations. Do you think that that can be developed in people? Do you think people develop it?

Julie Steelman: I actually think, yes. I actually think it’s almost what we’re here to develop. And when you asked about core expectations, I was sort of interpreting it a little bit differently. I would say that my core aspirations are really for peace, and harmony and communion. It’s like the ongoing never ending quest, so to speak. And this path is, it is a path of self realization, a path of soul actualization, if you will. And I think the most important thing is that we were planted with a seed of what we most yearn for. Because following the quest to that is what will actually realize us being our best selves, and our most selves, and our most self-expressed self. And I think we live in a culture, and a society and a time in a world where all of the impressions upon us are about looking without to reference what’s important. And I think the most powerful part of my journey, and mine just happened to be around money. Some people’s is around blood, some people’s is around health, some people is around career, is that I self reference my power, I self reference where I’m going, and what’s the next step on the journey. And that’s the most important part of being free is being unbound from, yeah, there’s the money and you can have the choices and all that. But at the end of the day, it’s about being unbound from the impressions of negative beliefs or inherited belief systems that cost us our life force, our livelihood, or what we want to do in life. And we’re here just like Oz behind the curtains, pushing the bells and the levers, and moving them, and then coming home and then like having a beer or whatever, thinking is this all there is? And I think that the problem is that it’s outer referenced. And being free to me is being unbound from having to be beholden to what society, or family, or anybody else thinks I should be doing.

“Being free is being unbound from having to be beholden to what anybody else thinks.” -Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: I happen to agree, and I think that in itself speaks volumes to you to living to yourself expectations. Because it doesn’t matter what anyone else in this world expects of you. Because you’ve got to be authentic to yourself, and that’s where I believe that true happiness lies. That’s why I teach managing your expectations because people are so bound. I have in my book, I talk about a term that I use, collective diminished expectations. I got interested in that because I have Jewish blood in me. My great grandmother was Jewish and turned Catholic to marry my grandfather. And I had a interest in the Holocaust from the perspective of how did anyone convince other than by sheer power by authority? How did they convince the German people in general to assassinate and kill millions of people? And what I came up was this term called collective diminished expectations. The third right in their prime, the German population that the Jews had no value. And when no one has value, you disrespect them. It becomes easy to diminish their purpose in life to exactly what they did. Line them up, massacre and an alienate a whole group of people. But the same techniques were used in a different way to enslave African-Americans. Somebody has to agree to it, the whole process. And it’s either the population that is going to benefit from it. And that was what the slave owners benefited from the slaves being enslaved. I just have all kinds of thoughts because I wonder how so many people couldn’t fight back? What was the dominance over the slaves of the pure authoritarian, holding arms and hold them at bay. But how do you get a village to come to be able to get to that point to be controlled without fighting back, and you have to diminish the expectations of that groups to the point where they become puppets.

Julie Steelman: I think this isn’t far from what I believe is happening in our current society, honestly. I think large group think is very dangerous because people lose themselves in this idea, I love how you’re framing this idea of diminished collective expectations. It starts to then turn and become a justification for behavior, right? You would never, if you were really in your heart, and aligned with your soul, and your truth that you would never do without being in part of a collective, that’s saying and justifying certain ways of being and behavior, I think it’s extremely dangerous that’s proven to be so in the past, that cult mentality. Oftentimes, at the head of those, a personality that’s really good as a dark Magus, they’re really good at selling this point of view. They’re really good at walking through a door of people’s vulnerabilities and making them perceive things in a particular way. I didn’t really don’t like to talk about politics, but I think that we’re standing at one of those thresholds potentially.

Art Costello: Oh, I absolutely agree. I mean, these next six months, well today is super Tuesday or whatever they call it, or super Wednesday or whatever it is, people are out there that have followed not what their belief system is for their personal happiness, but what that of a collective group. And it doesn’t matter if you’re left or right. It goes both ways that a true democracy would be people going to the polls and voting their heart not voting because of a party. Being that we’re on this rampage–

Julie Steelman: Here we go, right?

Art Costello: –on this one. think that every American politician should denounced their party affiliation and get back to doing what their heart says instead of what the party says right and what all these things. We, the people would be a lot better off if we would see a whole lot different country. There’s such economic influence on lobbyists or from lobbyists on politicians, that’s got to stop. We’ve got to get back to basics. It’s always going back to basics. Without a good foundation, we have nothing.

“Without a good foundation, we have nothing.” - Art Costello Click To Tweet

Julie Steelman: You’re right. And I think we’re all extremely susceptible to being in collusions and group agreements that might not align with what’s really true for us if we’re not in our own power. And for me being in your own power, I don’t mean force, I mean being in your own truth and being unapologetic and boundaries enough to hold it regardless of what’s going on around you and stopping the people pleasing, that’s freedom. And if we’re not solving something, then we’re kind of part of the collusion directly or indirectly. You know what? The women’s pay gap in corporate, there’s a large percentage of women that are in HR in Corporate America, right there in the human resources department. And I’m like, we’re at a day and age when women have to stop being in collusion with the pay gap, they have to know what their male counterparts get paid. And start negotiating and owning their value, and being able to articulate that instead of just going along with the flow because they’re afraid they won’t get a job or they’ll lose an opportunity if they speak up. I was in corporate, I got paid the same or more than guys, but you know? I’m not trying to labor the pay gap point. I’m just trying to say a lot of our problems in a society come from that we’re not in our own personal power so we go into collusion over certain things that typically diminish one group or another. Slavery, though we were all in collusion about that.

Art Costello: We make judgements based on what our sense of right or wrong is, but the right or wrong of what others are telling us, it should be.

Julie Steelman: I think it’s even deeper. It’s like where you think that our belongingness is at stake.

Art Costello: Hmm. Sense of belonging. That’s very interesting., Yes, you’re right. I think that when we feel ostracized from a group, we’ll do almost anything to feel part of the group. If we really want to be it, maybe that’s why I’m such a loner.

Julie Steelman: I ended up being more of a loner than I ever wanted to be, but I think that’s what has made street gangs work. You’ve got kids that don’t have a deep sense of family and sense of belonging. They get sold a bill of goods that they will and they’ll be part of it, protected and included. Now go rob that car, or go shoot that guy, or go sell those drugs. These scenarios aren’t any different from who we are as individuals. I think it’s partly why people get stuck in not having financial freedom for themselves. There’s more than enough money on the planet for everybody to have more than enough. There’s more than enough food on the planet for everybody to have more than enough. What we need is a shift in our perspectives and who we are, and step away from old archetypal frameworks. Like the president of the United States, a lot of people are still plugged into that archetypally as though that’s your father, that’s your savior, they’re going to take care of you, they’re going to pay your bills when you retire, they’re going to take care of your medical care, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Art Costello: Pay for your college education just to get there.

Julie Steelman: Right. And I don’t think we can be that flippant with how we are with the frameworks and the systems. I have to think we have to be really self resourced and reliant. Doesn’t mean lone wolfing, but it means really taking a stand for you creating your own freedom in life regardless of what happens with politics, or society, or anything else, or your husband dropping dead of a heart attack, very unexpectedly and you not having anything in place. We did, I was fortunate, but I know a lot of women who don’t.

“We have to be really self-resourced and reliant. IT doesn't mean lone-wolfing, but it means taking a stand for YOU creating your own freedom in life.” -Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: I can tell you from my experience, I can tell you a man. When I lost my wife to ovarian cancer 13 years ago, we’re sitting financially, very good place, it wasn’t the best of everything that we had. It had been better at times, but that’s the cycle of how things go.

Julie Steelman: Yeah.

Art Costello: But medical bills, I made a promise to my wife that I would pay all of our medical bills no matter what. She was a nurse and she wanted the doctors paid, the hospitals paid, everybody paid, and I pretty much lost everything that I ever thought was going to be. But you know what? I didn’t give up. It took me three years to get my behind and gear. I grieved really hard for three years, but then once I started coming out of it, then I started rebuilding. That’s the key to it is that anybody can have the dream. And when I say the dream, the dream can vary. The dream doesn’t have to be Bill Gates, or Michael Dell, or Jeff Bezos or whoever. You don’t need to be the wealthiest person on the planet. Maybe living your dream is having a roof over your head, three meals a day, family that’s taking care of, and you get to do your vacations when you want to, and you get to do other things. That’s all right, that can be a dream. But to not have a dream at all and not to go after it, or even to have a dream and then not pursue it, it’s a choice you make. You’ve got to get rid of the fear and just go for it. Can’t be any worse than where you’re at, all you got is the room to go up. That’s just how I believe, no matter what happens to me, I’m going to get up and I’m going to go.

Julie Steelman: Yeah, it’s really important to have that type of, it’s so dishonoring to self to have a dream and not follow it through or to avoid looking at what is the dream. You’re right, the only thing that matters is not to do it how someone else does it, but to have it be the way you want it to be. And to honor that, and go on a quest to discover how that can be, and then what’s next after that, and then what’s next after that, then I think we’re on purpose.

“It's so dishonoring to have a dream and not follow it through.” -Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Just like you did getting to Africa.

Julie Steelman: Yeah. And it seems in today’s world, back in 1967, I just dated myself, thinking about going to Africa was actually kind of a scary thought. And talking about it today to people, it may seem like, well, that’s not that big of a vision. So what? That’s like going to Ireland. Big deal, you get on a plane and you go. But for me, my dynamic and my scenario. But it was the catalyst that put me on a path where I was not the most likely to live financially free. We were middle class. We were fine. My dad paid for our college, the greatest gift ever to not have a college loan, but I worked my butt off. After that, my dad was really clear. After that, that’s it. You buy a house, not bailing you out. You buy a car, not bailing you out. You’re on your own. I gave you all the tools, go do your thing, you’re on your own. If you fail, you fail on your own. That’s it. And he was really clear about that. He was like, I got there because they intended to. And because I met a man who had the same aspirations and we pooled our resources. But the powerful thing about that is, that all began with the vision of a seven year old who wanted to go to Africa, because I was on a particular path. I wanted to create financial freedom, but I didn’t even really know what I was talking about at the time. Retiring from corporate was like, you have to wait until you’re 67. I was like, no, let’s see if we can shave 20 years off of that.

Art Costello: Well, consider in that time–

Julie Steelman: I’m just trying to share with your listeners that it’s like, there’s nothing special about me. There was no setup. I wasn’t handed that. I worked my butt off for it. And most important part was that I stayed true to accomplishing what I wanted and they can too. Anybody listening can, it doesn’t even matter what age you are.

Art Costello: Far advanced from where you work, and you learn so much along the way. I mean, you learn so much along the way when you go on these journeys. Think back, just going to Africa is an experience that very few Americans ever have. To see wildlife and to be able to photograph it, I mean, that’s an honor that you worked for. To me, I know that people get jealous over things, but to me, I think it’s honoring what you wanted to do and you’re sharing it with me and the world is really a great thing. It’s just great that you had the fortitude to follow your dream. What was it like photographing wildlife? Am I right that I saw you with a gorilla photograph? You with a gorilla.

Julie Steelman: That was the silverback sleeping.

Art Costello: That just intrigued me, that photograph.

Julie Steelman: I know.

Art Costello: Could you tell us about that.

Julie Steelman: Oh, wow. I have a story about that. It’s my everything. It’s really, really why I know that it’s soul food for me being in the bush. Being deep off the grid with the animals, it’s communion for me. Everybody asks me if I’m afraid and I don’t do what I do, I am not afraid. I’m not afraid. It’s a different thing for me. I’m not saying that I’m being smart about it, but the gorillas that were in Rwanda, which is a phenomenal country. I’ve been to Africa 11 times, it’ll be 12 next year. I go at least once a year and I’m not going to stop. The more I go, the more I have to go. Anybody that wants to go, I encourage you to go as soon as possible. It’s an extremely rapidly changing landscape over there in the Maasai Mara and the Serengeti, which is where the wildebeest do the great migration. There has been on the table for years, a Chinese proposal to build a road through the middle of it. If they do and they succeed in getting it through, it will change. One of the things that’s happened on planet earth since before humans got here in such a dramatic way, I don’t even want to think about it. Everything’s not staying the same. So if you want to go see animals, go do it because all the habitats are changing rapidly. But gorillas, Rwanda is one of those countries as you know that the Belgium’s really incited genocide and put two native tribes against each other and got them to all kill each other. It was a horrific event. Now, that country is extremely integrated. 51% of parliament are women. And that country is a model for what can happen. But you go through this really rural country, and you go way up to the edge of the mountain top, and you have to scale a minimum four to five hour hike, 19% grade on a path that’s about as wide as your foot. If you fall on either the left or the right, you’re going to end up in stinging nettles because that’s what the gorillas eat, and they hurt, they sting. So you have to wear gators on your legs because it will go through.

And then the first time you see a gorilla you’re just like, I put my camera down and I cried. I just cried. And this idea of a missing link, I don’t believe it. And the first troop we came upon, the silverback had put his back to us and they would go off in the Bush and I’m like, something’s going on? He’s protecting the family so we just sat and then they got more comfortable. And then they started moving around, the matriarch was carrying a deceased baby in her lap, and she was stroking its head, and picking up its fingers and kissing them. I have photos of her doing this. I don’t publish them because I’m on the fence about whether that’s the right thing to do or not. But I tell this story, we sat there with them and they were grieving. You could tell by the way they were behaving that they grieved as a unit. They were so emotionally overtaken by what I was seeing. I wish I’d shot a video of it, but I didn’t. Eventually you only get an hour, which is good. They get 23 hours of their day to themselves. The silverback came over and he rubbed up against me as he walked by me, and I just sat there and I was like, somebody needs to pick me up and carry me out of here because I feel like the heart, and the soul and the compassion that I saw in this animal. So those photos, a lot of those photos that you’re seeing are from that experience. We spent another couple of days there, it’s extremely expensive, it’s a very arduous journey to go on, but you end up finding something about yourself from nature, you end up being reflected back to in a way that is difficult to give words to. And that’s what the photography fee for me is about. And these animals, to just call it an animal I think really minimizes the being that’s there, like that being holds its baby, I learned later from the naturalist that she’ll carry that baby until there’s nothing left to carry. They grieve their children like that when they die. It was profound.

Art Costello: I can imagine, I get teary just listening to your story. I think the primates are just incredible to watch. I don’t know what it is, when I was in college, I did a paper on my senior year, and I was with Jane Emory at San Diego zoo and got to observe their mates there. I still extensively read anything that Jane Goodall puts out and everything like that, I just love it. I dunno, I just have a fascination with it. In that area where you were, is that where Jane Goodall did her work? Up in that same area where you were?

Julie Steelman: Yes. Depending on which trail you take, we go by right where her original cabin and office was. So yeah, she was working in the Rwanda area. You know, one of the epic highlights of this is the men that used to poach the gorillas, now their sons are the guys that carry our camera, backpacks and help us up the trail. I don’t care how physically fit you are, you’re going to want one of them to help you up the trail. It’s a steep grade and it’s a long walk. And so we give them money, and they no longer poach. So they’ve turned that whole thing around. I’m telling you, this is an incredible country and a role model for what’s possible in not poaching natural resources, and how to live, and how to overcome a type of genocide that no other country has ever gone through like they have. And incredible, they respect the animals now. And yeah, I think she had so many complex layers of impact in her work, but most profoundly is that the Rwandans now cherish the gorillas as a natural resource and that changes everything.

Art Costello: The population coming back?

Julie Steelman: It’s stabilizing. The problem is that Rwanda is a subsistence farmer country so they continue to have lots and lots of population growth and they’re running out of land. You have to actually walk through a farm and walk over a rock wall. And the rock wall is just coordinating off the top of a mountain peak, which is the gorilla’s territory. That mountain range is shared by the Congo and by Uganda, and the gorillas can move across that mountaintop, but their habitat isn’t growing. So there’s not a ton of habitat for a huge population explosion.

Art Costello: Yeah. That’s the problem in the whole world with species. Our humanity is driving them out because we just keep expanding.

Julie Steelman: And Rwanda out of land. There’s no more land.

Art Costello: Yeah. We’re running into the same problem, believe it or not in Austin, Texas. Austin, the influx of people here, they just keep coming, and coming, and coming. I have a ranch about 26 miles outside of Austin, and used to be, I could stand on the hilltop and look out and see maybe three or four houses over several thousands and thousands of acres of land. Now? I see it creeping. I can see the city lights just coming through towards me. And I don’t think it will be in my lifetime probably, but the rate it’s going, it could be. But that’s what we’re having, that’s what’s happening in the whole world. We’re getting so populated and we’re killing the rainforest. I just read an article on how they keep harvesting the timber and it just took the habitat away from all of the animals. The animal world has a symbiotic relationship with each other. There’s prey and there’s predators, and that’s what keeps it all in check. But when you throw a man in there and he gets a weapon in his hand or whatever, they start eliminating it, cutting the habitat. Well, this has been really great, Julie. I’ve been thrilled and honored to hear about this. Can you tell us how people can get a hold of you?

Julie Steelman: Yeah. If you’re interested in conservation and wildlife, you can go to wildsacredbeauty.com. You can see some of my photos there. I also recently published my first photography book and there’s a lot of very deep and rich explorations into wildlife around the world that also talks about their habitat and their stories, but also shares my encounters with them, the book is called Wild, Sacred Beauty, you can purchase it there. If you really want to have a money breakthrough, you could go to moneystorybreakthrough.com. You can find out more information about me there, and you can download a little freebie, and have some fun, and have get unbound from some of the stuff that’s keeping you from having your financial life or your money be where you want it to be based on a lot of the things that I learned across my journey.

Art Costello: Your website?

Julie Steelman: My website is juliesteelman.com, which is an entrepreneurial women’s wealth and entrepreneurship based information.

Art Costello: We didn’t get to talk much about your financial programs but we’ll do that in the next show that we do because we’re going to do another one. We’ll give people a break, and we’ll do one maybe another month or so with you.

Julie Steelman: That sounds awesome. This was a great conversation. I think it’s so important to talk about things in this kind of way, in this sort of organic way that they go because there’s something powerful about that type of message that wants to come out. And this deep need I think for all of us to have a sense of freedom and power over our own lives. That shift comes from not referencing from outside of ourselves, but referencing to inside of ourselves and trusting that.

“This deep need for all of us to have a sense of freedom and power over our own lives...Referencing to inside ourselves and trusting that.” - Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: It’s important. Have you got any final messages you want to leave for the audience?

Julie Steelman: The big thing I want to leave you with is, if you have that dream or yearning, start following the leadership of that, like being boldly audacious enough to follow the leadership of that. Because all that love money, satisfaction, everything that you want is on that path, I promise and more. And if you don’t know what it is, then it’s time to start getting busy and asking what it is.

“If you have that dream or yearning, start following the leadership of that… because everything that you want is on that path.” - Julie Steelman Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Great advice from Julie Steelman. It has been an honor and a pleasure having you, I’m serious about having you back on, we can keep going. Everybody, thank you for listening today. I’m going to encourage you to contact Julie and look into her different programs. Look more so into her photography. I want you to be involved with her programs, but you will love her photography. You know where you can get a hold of me, expectationtherapy.com, and we’re going to have Heather White to take us out of here.

 

 

————————————————————-

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Shower Epiphanies Community today:

• expectationtherapy.com
• Shower Epiphanies Facebook
• Show Epiphanies Twitter
• Shower Epiphanies LinkedIn
• Show Epiphanies Instagram