Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Author: Jules Schroeder

  • Ep265: Knowing the Whys Behind the Whats of Success, with Naked Underwear co-founder Joel Primus

    Ep265: Knowing the Whys Behind the Whats of Success, with Naked Underwear co-founder Joel Primus

    On a farm in the countryside is the last place you would think of to find entrepreneur and business coach Joel Primus. Having made a fortune from the Naked Underwear clothing brand—which he started from the comforts of his own dining table—the successful businessman is now in the process of stripping away his attachments and looking inward to know his true self.

    Under all the fancy suits and business trips, the pains of growing a company from scratch take a tremendous toll on one’s physical and mental health, and for Naked Underwear to become what it is today, Joel went through stress and fatigue that resulted in his hospitalization, and nearly ended his marriage as well hurting his relationship with his daughter.

    Despite the joy of growing the company from scratch, Joel says that his journey with Naked caused a lot of anxiety and depression. This contributed to his new mindset of stepping back and realigning with his internal foundations.

    “For the last few years,” Joel says, “Naked, at the end of the day, broke me. I was very anxious and depressed at the end of it. So I had to do a lot of inner work to kind of get the foundation back in a place where I could springboard into whatever was next. I haven’t figured it all out, but that’s why we’re out here, we’re, we’re looking for ways to lessen what we do, and do it better.”

    Joel describes that his current path for growth isn’t about acquiring more but rather stepping back and letting go.

    Though he is still chasing success and still not straying far from the business field, he is now being more cautious and is encouraging people not to divide themselves between work and life.

    “I reconcile this constant drive to be successful and this inner desire for peace,” he says, “the spiritual Joel and the entrepreneurial feel very dualistic, and but [in truth they’re] two manifestations, within one whole relationship. They’re not separated, and when we will feel the happiest in how we live our lives is when those two things actually form into one and we don’t feel like we’re Jekyll and Hyde all the time.”

    He advises that when they reach this sinking feeling of anxiety and depression because of their work, they should reexamine and know “the whys behind the what”

    “We’re most self-destructive when we’re operating without knowing why we’re operating that way,” he says, “if we can understand our why’s for a lot of the things we do, it doesn’t mean we stop doing it, but we’re operating from a much clearer space.”

    Joel values this inner reconciliation of himself and is encouraging people to not just find the middle ground but to truly be happy with everything that they put their effort in.

    “It’s about holistically, living our lives in a way that makes us feel fulfilled and enjoying what we do—not always looking for the next, and the collateral damage that comes with that.”

     

    More from Joel:

  • Ep264: Choosing Peace Amidst Chaos, with The Angel Coach, Emily Rivera

    Ep264: Choosing Peace Amidst Chaos, with The Angel Coach, Emily Rivera

    To say that 2020 was a rough year would be an understatement, and 2021 hasn’t been exactly the year where the rainbow has appeared after the storm, however with everything that we’ve lost we’re encouraged to not just cry over the confusion and pain brought by the pandemic but also value that which stayed—treasure the things that 2020 didn’t take away.

    “Love and gratitude are the same frequency; they’re just labelled differently by the human mind,” that is according to influencer and Angel Coach Emily Rivera. Having met her first master at the age of five, she is constantly visited by Divine manifestations who show her visions and messages that she shares with others. She is now teaching others to listen to the guides—she refers to as the Saints of Light—to see beyond the panic and experience clarity in their life.

    Being also a mother to a daughter with a disability, her strength was tested when her child had a medical episode that stopped her breathing and sent Emily to intense panic.

    As the medical staff moved to make an incision on the girl, Emily saw the moment slow down to almost a halt and felt energy shower her at that moment.

    “I felt very lost in that moment,” Emily said, “like I can’t survive this and that energy moved down and I remember hearing this beautiful whisper: ‘You can choose to feel the peace that’s here now’. And at that moment I was being reminded that even though there was chaos—and I felt the chaos and I was in that chaos and I was witnessing the chaos and feeling it and being completely in it—I still had a choice to see the peace”

    As she took her daughter’s hand to her heart and said that she chooses peace, the doctors declared a miracle and the girl started breathing again.

    She learned from her guides that people are far more than what we see; more than just humanity “We are this vastness of light and impossibilities” and everyone shares the same divinity as them.

    “They’re just a reflection of who we are, that if I can take my human skin off and I could just be free from the idea that I’m human, I would see the same presence that was standing in front of me as myself.”

    Using her platform, Awakened Superhuman, she collaborates with other educators and teaches others to listen to their guides and be more comfortable in saying “Yes” because as it was told to her, “You are inevitable.”

    Despite how dark these past days may have been, Emily still encourages people to constantly be grateful, listen to their guides, and trust what they feel is right.

     

    More From Emily:

  • Ep263: YouTube Ads and How You Can be a Retargeting Ad Machine, with AdOutreach President Aleric Heck

    Ep263: YouTube Ads and How You Can be a Retargeting Ad Machine, with AdOutreach President Aleric Heck

    Have you ever seen a bullfrog eat a dozen smaller frogs? Or a video on a haircut transformation? Or even wet paint being scraped off the side of a barrel in the most satisfying manner?

    Youtube is one of the many strange places on the internet where you find yourself spending hours upon hours, jumping from algebra lessons to cat videos, to a crash course in philosophy, and to videos about a dance group carrying a coffin. It entertains, educates, but as Aleric Heck of AdOutreach found out, it can also make millions.

    Aleric, before being the president of his own company, made his first exploits on Youtube through a review channel called AppFind which impressed the heck out of a client. So much so that they invited him to work for them.

    “They basically called me up and said, ‘Hey, we would love for you to drop out of college, fly out here to Silicon Valley, be in charge of YouTube ads and you know in this tiny side of YouTube thing will give you a six-figure salary,’” he narrated. “Maybe for a second I looked at that,” Aleric said, “but I knew that I’ve always been this way—that I wanted to be the king of my own castle.” He understood that there was more to Youtube than cat videos and Top 10 countdowns which is why he is encouraging everyone to dive into this new era of content advertising.

    “Right now is the time to come in as an early adopter on YouTube ads,” he emphasized, “and take advantage of that blue ocean.” He notes that Youtube is the second biggest search engine next to Google and it is a place where you can find leads, get sales, and most importantly, make revenue.

    On top of that, Aleric explains that even young starting influencers can grow their audience using what’s called Youtube Discovery Ads, where users will be suggested to watch your video next because it has the same theme as the previous video you watched; sort of riding the same wave that a more prominent channel has. A great tool for YouTubers looking to grow a fan base or take in more subscribers.

    Aleric notes that each business needs to make adjustments and decide on ads based on their own capabilities, but for him, there are set rules that one should follow which pay off big in the long run, one of these is to at least spend 20% on retargeting ads, guided by the Pareto Principle.

    He also encourages businesses to diversify their online presence in multiple platforms—omnipresence as Aleric put it—where he spends at least $50 a day, testing new platforms.

     

    More from Aleric:

  • Ep262: Enjoying the Freefall Through Life, with Australian Freediving Record Holder, Adam Stern

    Ep262: Enjoying the Freefall Through Life, with Australian Freediving Record Holder, Adam Stern

    Freediving is basically a sport where people hold their breath and see who can sink the deepest. In detail, it combines physical training and lung endurance, with mental focus to create the most effective and safest way down.

    For Australian record holder Adam Stern, freediving isn’t just a sport. Sharing with us his passion and love of everything it has taught him, Adam has taken the competition out of the water and made it his way of life.

     

    Diving-bum Days

    In his younger years, like many of us wasn’t too excited about being a worker or a corporate employee, or to be under any boss. After earning his degree in theatre, Adam spent years backpacking across Asia and the Caribbean.

    One day in Koh Tao, Thailand, he came across a sign that offered freediving lessons which then led to the athlete and Youtuber who we know now as Adam Freediver.

    Living affordably in Asia, he could afford to train full time and dedicated his life to training in various waters in different parts of the world. Though despite his dedication to the sport, going professional in the sport wasn’t enough to support him financially, but the sheer passion of Adam kept him going.

    “I would go home—absolutely broke—and I would get some horrible job in like a factory or something that was gonna pay really well,” Adam narrated, “so I could make a lot of money in a short period of time, and go away again to a new place to train and dive with new divers and learn from them. I wasn’t making any money out of freediving, I just loved diving, I love training, and I was just happy to be doing that.”

     

    Choosing to Freefall

    Describing each dive and training session as a form of meditation, Adam takes in every instance of life as he would do underwater.

    He describes that a freediver will let the air escape him and his lungs will then compress to start sinking. Here he would stop paddling and let the intoxicating feeling of sinking down take over—the freefall.

    For one to really enjoy and make the most of that one breath that we have, you have to be in a state of total relaxation and understand that you are in full control of how this dive will go.

    As Adam put it, “I can be in control of my body—I can be in control of myself—even if I’m in a situation that might be adverse. How I respond to things can be absolute and so no matter what’s going on in life, as long as I’m in control of myself, I’m fine.”

    For him, the unconventional life means to always be in control of himself—liberating freedom wherein he can choose to do what he is passionate about, and he is also wishing that people also have the courage to take that brave step of taking control and make the most of that one breath we all have.

     

    More from Adam:

  • Ep261: How To Book Big Names Into Your Podcast, with Command Your Brand Media founder, Jeremy Ryan Slate

    Ep261: How To Book Big Names Into Your Podcast, with Command Your Brand Media founder, Jeremy Ryan Slate

    Other than it’s time-consuming advertisements and often mediocre content, there are more and more reasons why a lot of us are turning away from the television. One of those is that in today’s advancing digital access and almost production-level free software, almost anyone can host their own “TV Show” and make an Oprah Winfrey of themselves with a computer, internet, and some recording hardware.

    However, with everyone racing to get the most views and internet traffic it’s easy to get buried by the sheer number of digital influencers who’ve had a head start. So how can you catch up to this fun and lucrative use of online media?

    Before Jeremy Ryan Slate was dubbed a Top Influencer by Forbes, the young Oxford graduate made money through some handy-man jobs, before teaching at a high school. Now he hosts the Create Your Own Life podcast that studies people of excellence, and the Command Your Brand Media that helps businesses optimize their PR strategy. Here are three tricks he shared with us to increase your reach and audience.

     

    The First 24 Hours Make The Biggest Mark

    Starting out in podcasting as an unpopular person, Jeremy knew that he needed to come in guns blazing—getting every person he could find to subscribe.

    “When I started out, I knew that one of the major things that ranks a podcast is the number of subscribers you can get in a 24-hour period in ratio to the number of current subscribers that you have,” he noted, “so right out of the gate, I was really pushing everybody that I noticed to subscribe—I was pushing for reviews, too, but they don’t really have much influence on your ranking if any at all. So really I was pushing as many people as I could to subscribe, and that really pushed us to have 10,000 listens in our first 30 days.”

     

    Know What Makes You Different

    It’s easy to get lost in trends and copy the styles that work, but Jeremy stressed that you should have a reason for what you’re doing. It should be clearly defined what your podcast talks about, what your channel is used to, and what a viewer can expect from your platform.

    There is an audience for everybody but it’s key to start somewhere that people already like, then grow more defined as you go along.

    “My show started as something for people creating life on their own terms,” Jeremy said, “and it’s gone gradually too, how do you be extraordinary and be world-class at that. So you kind of continue working on that [your show’s initial reason] to get there.”

     

    Content is King

    Being a regular “Joe Nobody,” Jeremy was counting on the fame and quality of his guests to carry and grow his podcast. To do this he made a list of 100 people that he admired and created an intense system of follow-ups that ensured every guest was there to make the most of every episode.

    “I created a Google Sheet, without all the names, emails, phone numbers anything I could find”, Jeremy emphasized, “and I created a follow-up system where I basically reached out to all these people day one by writing individual emails to them. It took me about eight hours which was pretty nuts, and I followed up with him every 30 to 60 days. The first person I reached out to was Seth Godin and he said ‘No, but when you get to 400, we’ll do it,’ and he was Episode 400 of the show.

    It was this consistency and dedication to the show that earned Jeremy his place in iTunes Top 100 and the number spot in the business category. Jeremy noted that even American entrepreneur Dave Asprey found time for his show after half a year of follow-ups.

    This intense dedication to the show’s subscribers is also reflecting in Jeremy’s ad campaign strategy, which he shares with us, that utilizes Retargeting Ads, a formula for making viral 30-second videos, and even noting the relevance of LinkedIn—a relatively smaller social media site with a more professional audience—to extend his reach and promotion of the show.

     

    More from Jeremy:

window-close-line

UNCONVENTIONAL LIFE

Instagram