Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Author: Jules Schroeder

Ep273: Stripping Down to Your Bare Feet, with You Enjoy Life founder Joshua Greenfield
Some of you might recall the name Joshua Greenfield from the renowned entertainment duo Brothers Green. Together with his sibling Mike, the two went viral online for their fun chemistry in the kitchen which made it to the airwaves of MTV, airing internationally.
This was the picture of success for most entertainers and artists, but Joshua shares with us today his newfound happiness from stepping away from the spotlight.

Leaving Fame
As Joshua puts it, we’re all creating an image of who we are through some kind of channel. Whether it be YouTube or TV, or any online presence, there is a version of us there that we try to hold up. He shares that it reached a point, where he couldn’t take up the façade any longer.
“Holding on to this idea of who I am will create suffering for myself,” Joshua shares, “putting meaning to this person who we think we’re supposed to be, created more struggle.”
In leaving his celebrity image behind, Joshua found himself a path to rediscover his true self.
“Leaving brothers green was one of the most freeing things that ever happened to me. I was starting to get caught on this character [and] it led me to this journey of who am I really beyond that character.”

Rediscovery
After leaving Brother Green, Joshua rekindled his love for cooking and found more purpose in his kitchen.
“What I love about food is the connection,” he shares, “now I teach more about mindful eating and conscious consumption helping people make a healthy relationship with nature and what they’re eating. Instead of making it about the food, it’s about how it makes you feel.”
Additionally, in this journey to self-discovery, Joshua searched for ways he could connect more to his internal self. He learned from different communities, Buddhist teaching, and on his journey, he even lost his shoes.

Grounding
Being born in a family of Podiatrists, Joshua was aware of most of the science that surrounds it. He also points out that there is a deep connection between our souls and our soles.
Using online platforms like TikTok, and YouTube, Joshua connected with like-minded people who now join him in the Free the feet movement. Together they promote reconnecting with nature and walking barefoot.
“I believe in Free the feet,” Joshua says, “I help people develop a relationship with their feet because our feet ground us to the Earth.”
Learning from Clint Ober’s story in Earthing, Joshua says that people are like conduits of electricity where energy flows. Having this energy flow through and out to the ground is key because stagnant energy leads to a lot of our pains. Freeing our feet from shoes and the like is a way we can let this energy out.
Joshua notes that when he hikes with people who don’t walk barefoot, he always talks to them about it in hopes to encourage them.
“Recognize that your foot is a seedling,” he narrates, “when you take it out of the shoe it’s vulnerable, but if you’re smart and you take care of it, it will grow to this beautiful flower.”
This year, Joshua and other barefoot advocates will be running a barefoot marathon, and he openly welcomes those who are interested in joining.

More from Joshua:

YouTube: You Enjoy Life
TikTok: You Enjoy Life
Instagram: @youenjoylife
Books: Cooking with your Best friend & Conversations with your Best friend
May 24, 2021
Ep272: Leadership Beyond the Calendar with Volley Founder Josh Little
With most of us still in lockdown and our offices empty due to the remote work set-up, leading a team and managing tasks has become a different type of exhausting. Serial entrepreneur and Volley CEO, Josh Little, refers to this as “Meeting Fatigue.”

As the tech boss points out, there is no substitute for the human connection of being in the same place with your co-workers. Being in a group huddle or any project meeting has become this tiring task of listening to words rather than a sharing of ideas, and connecting. Little sees this as an obstacle to productivity and good leadership, but how can we get around this inescapable part of remote work?

Josh says that we need these online conversations due to the current circumstances and leadership itself that needs to change.

“The answer is not in talking less, but in talking differently.”

With his fourth company Volley, they hope to create asynchronous conversations, similar to texting. As the name suggests, people will take turns in conversation, unlike in zoom where words are being thrown real-time while everyone else is on mute, Josh notes that this non-real time meeting provides a different environment and leadership.

“This will let me take time to think about my response,” Josh explains “and allow me to skip back to what you said 2 or 3 times to really [understand] what you were trying to get across.”

“By breaking the turns, it will also allow to be more inclusive and ultimately free-up your calendar,” Josh emphasizes,“and living beyond the calendar is what an asynchronous conversation can enable.”

Having experience in different fields of business—including pickles—Josh notes that today’s environment requires “continuous leadership” where you can check in on demand.

“The lightning-strike-eureka moment doesn’t happen when the calendar says it should,” he stresses, and that in this time when teammates are so distant from one another, is when leaders need to be exceptionally flexible.

More from Josh:
- Volley: https://www.volleyapp.com/
- Josh’s Pickles: https://www.joshspickles.com/
May 18, 2021
Ep271: Building an Audience in a Competitive Industry, with NewReleaseToday President Kevin McNeese

Music is an art form that has lived the longest and has connected the most people. Breaking barriers and linking us together with a catchy tune and a moving beat, it’s a crowded industry that never fails to attract new young artists, and for NewReleaseToday president Kevin McNeese, it has been his mission and business to find an audience for these new voices.

Starting his site NewRelease Today back in 2002, it has grown to be one of the largest Christian music platforms with over 400,000 monthly visitors and 167,000 subscribers to its newsletter. Working with dozens of mostly independent artists, he shares with us how much of the music industry has changed and what it takes to get an audience.

Adding Gasoline to the Fire

Compared to what was the system almost 20 years ago, artists had to rent a studio to make their music. Now some of the most famous clips on the Internet was recorded on a phone, or a computer with an improvised studio in the basement next to the washing machine.

“Everybody can make music now so your product is no longer your music,” Kevin points out, “your product is now You and labels are not going to talk to you unless you are making noise.”

“What kind of numbers and audience do you have following you? Who cares about your music? At this point, if you don’t have any of that, chances are labels not gonna pay attention.”

Kevin notes that a label would give you a team to work with, and they can handle growing your audience while you focus on making your music, but there are other ways to build a team now, and nowadays an artist can do well on their own.

Building Connections

Working with his team on New Release Today, Kevin says that it has been both fun and challenging especially with all the online platforms of today that have really divided people.

“Whether it’s an artist, or if you’re starting a community, you really have to show up in a lot of different places and that’s challenging,” Kevin points out. “And then each one of those places requires a different tone. What works on Instagram isn’t gonna work on YouTube or on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not gonna work on your own website.”

Kevin puts an emphasis on connecting to the audience you want, which means putting out content regularly and putting your hopes on slow and steady growth.

Starting Off with Passion

When a giant such as the internet has been made so accessible to everyone, Kevin points out that the constant dedication to being ready every day is what makes the difference.

“I’m passionate about it,” he says describing the business, “and that passion has never waned. My goal was to just connect as many people as I could find to as much great music that I could find, and that goal was there in 2002, as it is there today.”

Kevin points out that he describes his work with air quotes, noting that it doesn’t feel like a job.

With the same goal and passion, he founded ChristianArtist.Pro and the We Love Christian Music Awards to give independent artists the boost they need.

Burning with passion and determined to be consistent, Kevin is still on the lookout for new talent and great music.

More from Kevin

Website: https://www.newreleasetoday.com/

IG @newreleasetoday

May 10, 2021
Ep270: Three Hacks to The PageRank Algorithm and Growing Your Website’s Reach, with Ardor SEO founder Kris Reid
Fresh off watching the Seaspiracy documentary, software engineer and Ardor SEO founder Kris Reid was thinking of making a donation to the Sea Shepherd organization to help the environment but he understood that there was more he could do.
Just like how he helped Food for Life Global raise six figures last year, digital marketing could do more than what one donation could do.
“Truthfully, I feel that if I get my message across to people, I’m doing them a service,” Kris says, “because I can help any business grow.”
Following the lessons learned from 80/20: Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall, Kris notes that all transactions involve risks, and taking away that risk through a well-designed strategy has increased their sales significantly. He simplifies this strategy to three parts that we can start right now.

Beautiful websites don’t sell things, words do
Before people can judge a book by its cover, they should know it exists first; Kris says when building a business in this digital space, web designers are the last of your priorities.
“A website is like a business card,” he says, “you can have the most beautiful business card in the world but if it’s just sitting in your desk drawer, it doesn’t do anything. Same with your website, it needs to get in front of people’s faces, that’s a lot more important than being pretty.”
He pushes for people to focus on Keyword Research; understand exactly who your customer avatar is and exactly what they’re searching for. Search how many people per month are searching each keyword and have that dictate everything you do—how you structure your website, write your content, and set your title tags.

Build authority
Kris tells us in layman’s term that “Google doesn’t trust new businesses.” He notes that new small businesses need to make sure that their website’s Code Quality is on point since the bar is set much higher for them.
Here he highlights the importance of backlinks and those looking into increasing their website traffic should get as many of these as they can to increase their “credibility” in Google’s PageRank algorithm.

Stick to your Queen Bee role
Lastly, Kris advises that new business owners should organize where they put their efforts into and make sure they’re not wasting their limited resources. Learning from Profit First and Clockwork author Mike Michalowicz, he encourages people to leave certain areas to the experts.
Like in a beehive, the queen has her role, and supporting bees around her have theirs. “Any form of marketing is hard,” Kris stresses, “whether Google AdWords, Facebook ads, or any of it, you can burn money really quick and you can screw it up really quick to. Work with a professional, get them to do it, and stick to whatever it is you do.”
“Unless you want to be an SEO analyst, don’t learn SEO.” Kris reflects on his current role in the world, sharing that during coffee with his entrepreneur wife, they talk about how tiring it is to start new and more projects but he notes that creating more and building a bigger reach is how business owners are making a difference.

More from Kris:
Website – https://ardorseo.com/
May 3, 2021
Ep269: Changing the World One Step at a Time, with Cure Rare Disease founder Rich Horgan
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a rare genetic disease that affects roughly 15,000 boys in the US. The word “boys” is used because the illness causes degeneration of the body and is fatal, without a known cure for it, most patients rarely reach adulthood.
Compared to diseases like the flu, 15,000 is a small number but for Cure Rare Disease founder Rich Horgan these numbers shouldn’t matter, because each of those 15,000 is a life worth saving, especially his younger brother, Terry, being one of them.
Sharing his story with us, Rich explains that growing up, he would watch other kids play and run around while his brother was growing weaker and weaker, and every doctor they went to would give them the same answer, that there was no treatment.
“In my eyes, it just didn’t make a lot of sense,” Horgan shares, “how can we do more than just monitor decline? Terry is one of the 30 million who are impacted and there’s a number of rare diseases out there, Duchenne is one of them, there are still over 7000 others.”

Knowing Why
Like many kids, Rich didn’t know much about other diseases and didn’t quite yet understand why a hospital can’t cure his brother. As he got older and started asking bigger questions, the brutal reality dawned on him.
“Your mind starts to wonder the question why,” he shares, “and why is a really dangerous question because then you start to understand the answers to why. As you understand as a kid, Duchenne goes from sort of this abstract, theoretical concept to this very real, very practical thing.”
Duchenne muscular dystrophy was discovered in the 1980s by French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne, it’s been more than 40 years since then and comparing it to COVID-19, a fairly new virus, we seem to be closer to cure for it than DMD. Horgan says that the pandemic is a clear example of Pharmacoeconomics.
To make up for the funds put into research and development, the economy of drugs needs to address illnesses that cover a wider range of buyers; the rarer the disease the less likely it has a cure—or any research into it. “This is going to kill my brother if nothing else changes.”

Learning How
Growing up around business-minded parents, Horgan took that same fondness and entered Harvard Business School, still carrying that hope that there is a way to save his brother.
“Let’s make a lot of money so that we can take that money and put it to something that’s going to help Terry,” Rich said sharing his thought, “I got to business school in 2016 and it became very obvious very quickly that that wasn’t going to work, Terry just didn’t have enough time.”
His brother never left his mind and he considered the disease as something that was going to shake his life and the people he loved, but rather than sit and wait, Rich acted on hope. “I could never forgive myself for not trying,” he said.

What If
With his Harvard connections, Rich was introduced to MIT’s Jonathan Fleming and later to Dr. Tim Yu, a researcher at the Boston Children’s Hospital, and with that came an even crazier idea that turned Pharmacoeconomics on its head.
“I realized we could actually take medicine, and instead of doing one-size-fits-all, we could actually take it down to the granular level of one-is-to-one medicine, what we call n = 1”
It was at this point that Rich rallied a team together, including his brother’s clinician of 15 years, Dr. Brenda Wong from UMass. He founded the nonprofit group Cure Rare Disease that collaborates with the FDA and other researchers, clinicians, geneticists and bioinformaticians, that aims to produce customized therapeutics.
“It was the question What if that started this,” he said, “we know it’s a journey of a million miles, but what’s that first step? What’s the second? When you look down [at each step] by the time you lift your head up, you can get really far, and that’s exactly what happened.”
He advises the listeners to never select themselves out of whatever it is they’re pursuing, and hang on to hope as they push forward to the next step. Rich’s younger brother Terry will later this year undergo treatment and be patient 001 for the DMD treatment.

More from Rich and Cure Rare Disease:

Website: https://cureraredisease.org
IG: @cureraredisease
FB: @CureRareDisease
April 26, 2021