Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Author: Jules Schroeder

Ep:179 Taking the First Step – From Zero to One, with the founder of Amplio Recruiting, Chris Chancey

Finding a job in today’s economy is challenging. Finding a fulfilling job is even tougher. Now imagine being a refugee, with little to no relevant experience, in a new country and a new language… Near impossible. However, Chris and his project Ampilo have trained and placed thousands of refugees into careers they thrive in. If it can work for them, it can work for you.

Chris Chancey is an advocate for the refugee workforce and the founder of Amplio Recruiting, a staffing agency that helps great companies hire dependable employees from the refugee workforce. Chris and his team have placed over 4000 people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster into employment. These people have been stigmatized in the workforce and in the community but the truth is that they are very dependable, highly motivated, growth orientated and legally able to join the workforce.

Amplio has found that these people want to give back to society, get an education, share their voice, participate in society, vote and pay taxes. Just like many immigrants before them.

In this podcast, Chris talks about Amplio and the techniques he uses to help empower refugees, or anyone looking to start a business.

How to find your big idea

See what is happening around you, just outside your door. As you become more involved with your community you will see the problems people are facing and you might be inspired to provide a solution.

When Chris met his neighbors and people in the area he realized that most conversation’s ended with people asking him if he knew of any job leads. As the relationships with his community developed further he realized that these people were strong and reliable people and this lead to the creation of his Amplio Recruiting.

An exercise that Chris has found helpful was to keep a small piece of paper in his pocket and when he “saw a gap in the way the world worked” and how he felt it could be better he would write down the solution. He then assessed if taking action seemed inspiring and exciting enough to tackle. For one week, open your eyes a little wider and look out for any obstacles that your community is facing and see if you have any creative solutions to these problems.

How to go from an idea into action

“ The risk at failing at this idea is worth the positive impact if it works- if you get to that point where the potential impact is so great it’s worth failing for, then go for it! “

Any effort you make to begin to take notice of the things that are happening around you, you might realize that you are uniquely positioned to actually make it happen.

Start and find your way step by step. It’s impossible to know exactly how this idea is going to take shape. Most people feel they need to know step one hundred before they can take step one. So just take that first step and the rest of the clues will uncover themselves.

Failure is a part of innovation and could possibly be the most important function. We receive feedback from each action we take which enriches our learning experience and sets the stage for future iterations of development. We can also reframe the concept of “failing” into “collecting data” so we keep our minds in a positive flow and effective at problem-solving.

A few mindset hacks along the way

Cultivating the right mindset along your entrepreneurial journey is essential. If we have our warrior mindset qued we will have no problem treading uphill during challenging moments.
Below are three values and keywords that Chris uses with his team to keep everyone in a positive mindset.

Humble + Action = “Humbition”
This world is a reminder to not take yourself to seriously and to try to have fun in this pursuit. Maintaining your commitment and dedication to your project is important but have a sense of humility that you can control the outcomes.

Buoyancy
“Recognizing that the role that you are in is endless- there is always more to do, it’s a neverending pursuit.” Think of that buoy on the waves and no matter how big the wave is, it still comes back upright. Just because you get knocked over by a wave doesnt mean its a sign to stop. The concept of buoyancy is a reminder that you are resilient.

“Only by rising back up can you see what the next opportunities that are coming down the pipe look like.”

Stay true to your values. Every day you will be faced with many choices and each decision may feel existential that will largely affect your business in the long term. What is required is a guiding principle, some greater metric to help you navigate. Communicate what is important to you and represents the ethos of your business. When your values become embedded in your work, they will also become embedded into your brand. These values are your foundation in which your project is built on

July 15, 2019
EP:178 Using Niche Marketing to Target your Ideal Audience , with Kenny Kline from Jakk Media
Whether you are launching an online course, getting started with an e-commerce company, or have a product of your own you’re looking to sell, the number one priority you will have is marketing and exposure. Even the best and most recognized companies in the world, spend a considerable amount of money on marketing.

It’s no secret, the product is only half of the company, effective marketing is the other half.

Thirty years ago, the marketing avenues accessible were the newspaper, radio, and tv. The audience was large, and so were the relative costs. The percentage of people who were interested in the product advertised was by today’s standards, incredibly low. If someone was advertising a product made exclusively for either men or women, they would immediately lose half of the audience conversion potential, but still, have to pay the full cost.

By today’s standards, 1,000 views cost around $2-$5. Would you rather sell a knitting product to 1,000 random people, or would you rather sell it to 1,000 women ages 30-60 who have recently subscribed to groups related to knitting? The latter is clearly superior, and demonstrates the power of today’s niche marketing vs the old traditional mass marketing techniques, that many of the “big corporations” are still stuck in today.

Even though these big corporations have access to niche marketing, the majority still use traditional marketing techniques. This is a phenomenal opportunity for people like you to get ahead of the curve and lead the next evolution in the attention economy.

This week on Unconventional Life show is Kenny Kline from Jakk Media. Jakk media is a company that leverages its knowledge and expertise to create high-quality content and launch effective marketing campaigns for other companies.

Jakk media works with popular companies such as Barbend, Sleepopolis, Mattress Clarity and Security Baron. Each company is operated by a team of writers, videographers, editors, and designers to create content that is engaging and specific to each target audience. One of their main techniques and area’s of expertise is building a passionate community and leveraging niche marketing.

In this podcast, Kenny shares;

Insights on niche marketing and ways that they can help benefit you in your online business

Ways for bloggers to create income

Actions that Kenny took to move away his corporate job

How Kenny balances family life and entrepreneur life

Kenny shares three tips for researching what product to market.

1. Collect data reference points

The first step is seeing if people are actually interested in your potential product.

Start by entering keywords that relate to your product into Google and AdWords keyword planner to see what comes up. If you find keywords with a high search volume then that is a good indicator of a profitable niche. You can also search for keywords on Google Trends, Amazon and Clickbank.

2. What is the competition like?

Is there an opportunity for you to stand out in the market or do you need to differentiate yourself from the crowd? If you find a keyword that has a lot of traffic but low monetization then that could be an excellent opportunity for you to insert yourself into that market.

3. Research your audience and find the pain points.

In order to understand and appeal to your customers, you are going to have to know what problems they are facing and what questions they are asking. Go on forums like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter to see what dialogue is happening around the product. Once you know the problem you can create high-quality content that provides a solution.

Kenny states that “If you can get an audience that is passionate, you’re going to find a way to monetize it. It may not be clear from day one exactly how you are going to monetize it but there is always the opportunity to do so in any passionate industry.”

Weekly Giveaway!

Applications from outside of the USA, Enter to win a customized weightlifting program from Barbend. Applications within the USA, choose from a mattress giveaway from Wink Beds or a home security camera from Baron Home Security.

Stay in touch with Kenny and Jakk Media
Jakk media on Twitter or via website
@ThisbeKenny on twitter or linkedIn

Written by Lisa Renee
July 8, 2019
EP: 177 Could Taking This “Super Pill” Actually Level-Up Your Quality of Life? With James Schmactenberger of Neurohacker Collective
We’ve all heard of the fabled “super pill.” Who could forget that fateful scene in The Matrix when Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the blue pill and the red pill—to remain blind to the truth, or to awaken to the deeper underpinnings of reality that few will ever know?

While pills like this have been the theme of countless Hollywood movies, it’s uncertain as to whether or not they could actually exist in real life.

In a world where the $935 Billion pharmaceutical industry insists there’s a pill for every ill, it’s only natural to be skeptical.

When I got the opportunity to interview the CEO and co-founder of a pill that’s setting out to upgrade the quality of life for every human by inducing greater states of empathy, my curiosity got the best of me.

This week on the Unconventional Life Podcast, I caught up with James Schmactenberger of Neurohacker Collective, a company that has reached hundreds of thousands of people with its pills that do everything from enhancing cognition and creativity to lengthening life expectancy.

In this week’s podcast episode, I dive into the vision behind Neurohacker Collective with James. Plus…

Why buying into society’s values around success won’t make you happy

How a shift in mindset from “I” to “We” can help you live a more purposeful life

The #1 thing most people overlook on the path to personal development

James founded Neurohacker Collective after he came face-to-face with the fallibility of his own health. At the time, he was running a company called Body Mind—or perhaps more accurately, it was running him.

Overworked, stressed, and depleted of energy, James was diagnosed with stage 3 adrenal exhaustion in his twenties. It led him to seek a specialized form of intravenous treatment.

His experience with the treatment was nothing short of miraculous.

“All of the depression had gone away,” James says. “My brain function not only came back to where it was, it became meaningfully better than it had ever been before.”

But one unintended side effect emerged too…

“My sense of empathy increased dramatically. Everything that I had studied throughout my life from spiritual traditions about how we’re all interconnected all of a sudden became palpable and I could start to see and feel the interconnectedness of life in a way I never could before.”

When James sought out to create a pill that could recreate that experience for others, the vision for Neurohacker Collective was born.

Below are some of the highlights James shares about what he’s learned along the way to founding and scaling Neurohacker Collective into the company it is today.

Shift From “I” to “We”

Have you ever been worried about your finances? Virtually all of us have. Financial strain is an incredibly uncomfortable feeling, and unfortunately, it’s a big driver for our economic and life decisions. The problem is, many of us are so worried about being able to meet our personal needs that we are blind to the needs of those around us.

“When people start a business, they focus on, ‘What are my personal needs?’ That’s not a big enough lens to look through,” James insists. “Instead ask yourself, ‘How do I contribute to society in the most profound way? What is it that’s mine to uniquely contribute?’”

When we expand our awareness to the needs of the collective, we not only consider our own needs but the needs of others. Our vision becomes larger, and by extension more compelling. By shifting from “I” to “We,” we enroll others into our vision, and the necessary resources to materialize that vision assemble more effortlessly as a cohesive effort.

Focus on Happiness

One of the greatest pitfalls of our society, James says, is that it values the accumulation of “stuff” over the pursuit of happiness. Voices all around us, implicit and explicit, send us the message that our value as a person lies in the amount of material wealth we have accumulated. Though it’s difficult to go against the grain, in a society devoid of wisdom, it’s actually the right thing to do.

“Most of us are willing to give up the things that bring us real joy to try to get ahead. We’re willing to trade in our happiness and ethics for more ‘stuff,’” James says.

Be willing to reevaluate your priorities. Are your current priorities making you happy? Consider that if you rank experiencing joy above owning more possessions or seeing the number in your bank account increase, you may become significantly more fulfilled and at ease
July 1, 2019
EP:176 Engineering Human Connection: How “Being in the Now” Addresses the Loneliness Epidemic with Seth Bunting
Your morning train ride is packed wall-to-wall with a sea of people swaying to and fro, the white glow of phone screens illuminate faces as they madly swipe, click and text. The train is silent.

In a fast-paced world of constantly packed schedules and instant communication, authentic and meaningful human connection is hard to come by.

Enter Seth Bunting. Seth has made a life of creating outside-the-box, immersive atmospheres, and events that are conducive to connection. Using human loneliness as a roadmap, experiential designer and scalable live experience curator, Seth Bunting, walks us through the realities he creates where carefully designed physical spaces and experiences draw event participants out of their phones and into the present moment.

“People are seeking to come back into connection with each other and they don’t know how. We believe it’s possible to begin redesigning social spaces, physical and digital environments, the places we are interfacing with every day…how do we redesign all of that so that we have more connection with each other?”

We are living amidst the largest loneliness epidemic mankind has ever seen. Our current society values hyper-individualization and rewards self-reliance. From pop culture action figure icons touting the “I’ve got this”, solo warrior mentality capable of saving the world on their own to the self-help movement, guiding people towards the notion that all answers lie within themselves, a world where people need each other is not the story of the hour. The result– a lonely generation glued to their phones for a sense of belonging and connection.

A nationwide survey of 20, 000 adults found that 54% of respondents said they feel “no one actually knows them well”, while 40% stated that their “relationships aren’t meaningful” and they feel “isolated from others”

Through his projects Presence and Equilibrium, Seth Bunting makes actionable change towards addressing what he sees as the two core concerns that inhibit meaningful human connection.

Human Connection

Presence

“Everything that we are creating for is just to drive people to states of being. The states that we hope to achieve are just to bring connection to each other.”

Seth creates alternate worlds for his experience attendees. The goal: to invite authenticity, play, vulnerability and an essence of magic into the mix. Using a technique called the deictic shift (the phenomena that occurs when you become consumed by the emotional journey of your beloved Grey’s Anatomy characters) he designs experiences where people become the lead character of their own story, interact with the world around them and connect with one another.

How to cultivate presence daily

Designate a time in your day to be tech-free

Set that timer for one hour, maybe even two or three and give yourself a well-deserved reprieve from the constant stimulation of your phone. If you walk and text, which most of us do, it’s near impossible to be present with your surroundings, the people walking past you and the stunning bloom of spring around you. Unplug, unwind and look up!

Improvisational theatre (I know it can be scary…I dare you!)

Improv is the embodiment of the moment, off the cuff and unscripted exploration created completely spontaneously. We spend so much of our lives in our logical, thinking mind and activities like improv get you out of your head and into your body.

Eat a meal with no distractions! No book. No Music. No Phone.

Take this time in your day, the time you’ve set aside to nourish your body as a time to connect with yourself, your food and take a well-deserved break. Building a positive connection with your food means also being present with it while you’re eating it. Ever heard the phrase you are what you eat? The mindstate you are in when you eat influences how your body interacts with your food! You are far less likely to overeat and far more likely to enjoy your meal when you give it your undivided attention.

Meditation

Introducing a regular meditation practice into your life offers a multitude of benefits from reductions in stress and anxiety to a more focused mind, less prone to distraction. If you’re a beginner and need some direction, consider signing up for a class at your local yoga studio.

Movement/Exercise in nature

Sweating and increasing your heart rate daily is the key to overall health and vitality. The combination of movement and being outdoors adds an extra level of nourishment to your practice.

Connect with your senses

Removing your shoes and getting your toes in the sand, grass or mud (oh I went there!) connects you with our beautiful earth. Close your eyes. Now: what does the ground below your feet feel like? Can you feel wind or moisture in the air? What does the air smell like? Turn your focus to your 5 senses and ask yourself to identify something you are detecting using with each – eyes closed!

Weekly Giveaway! One free ticket to the Equilibrium Event!

The Palace of Fine Arts, Sept 13-15th in San Fransisco

*Really interested? Send us an email and let us know why!

Written by Olenka Toroshenko
May 27, 2019
EP:175 Three Ways To Cope With Grief To Live Courageously, With Kirsten Schowalter

In today’s world, you might feel that you are constantly fed with ways to level up and be brave.

This advancement is engrained in our society and living up to this level of advancement could feel like you are carrying around the weight of expectations.

What if I told you that the key to reaching these higher, more advanced levels was actually to revisit all the situations where you felt pain? Only when we take the time to be with our pain and properly grieve can we rise up to something greater.

This week on the unconventional Life show is Kirsten Schowalter. Kirsten is the Author of “In My Own Skin” and founder of Ageing Courageously, a community that inspires people to make dreams come true at every age and The Flip Side of Life, support and resources for a new way to grieve. Kirsten fills us with insight and knowledge about a topic that is so misunderstood and often so silent.

“If you want to see a rainbow you have to learn to see the rain.”

― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

Embrace Your Growth Cycles

We all go through change, we lose a job, have a shift in identity, we feel dissatisfied, our weight fluctuates, we have money struggles or we find a new romantic partner.

If you observe nature and the cycle of a tree, you see that in each season it grows, blossoms, shed its leaves and hibernates. When the leaves drop they decompose to provide nutrients that support the continued growth of the tree.

You are hardwired to mimic nature.

You too have cycles where you go into hibernation, shed layers and usually, need a period of rest and reflection before you are ready for your next big move. You probably don’t view the tree as dying just because it sheds a few leaves but just a natural process of growing.

Once you are able to get acquainted with these cycles in all aspects of life, the more resilient you become. By not getting knocked down by figurative death you learn to release what is no longer present and for you and this can be an awakening experience to a fuller life.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Your Feelings

Are you ever hard on yourself for slowing down? Or try to hide sadness because you think you should be happy? Often it’s not how you feel but how you think about how you feel that shapes your experience.

For example, If you are feeling sad but say to yourself “I shouldn’t be sad, be positive, put on a smile” this won’t be an authentic expression and will actually require more effort to pretend.

When I feel in a funk I ask myself, “What is the most nourishing thing I can do for myself? It could be watching Netflix for 4 hours, having a bath or letting myself cry. The most important part is to not feel guilty or label emotions as negative experiences. By doing this practice I have found that I have become stronger and much better at navigating any painful experiences in my life.

The number #1 question that Kirsten receives from her clients is “how do I talk about my grief or sadness? , what do I say?” Kirsten says, “That peole are afraid to talk about their fears because they think that their sadness or grief could be contagious. In reality, the pain from grief is the footprint of your love.”

Shortcut The Lows And Accelerate The Highs

Let’s face it, life is a rollercoaster ride, there are high- highs and low- lows. So how do we find balance and ease throughout this process?

Kirsten shares that once we get in the habit of navigating our emotions and giving ourselves exactly what we need in each moment we are able to find inner confidence and rise up to something greater.

Kirsten says that “courage comes from a lot of vulnerability and we can build the strength and skills to live with and dance with vulnerability to become more courageous in our next step”

Giveaway! “How To Cope With Grief Masterclass” – A 9-week program Learn how your grief can lead to your passion and purpose.

Check out Kirsten’s website and Book

Access the Free webinar “How to Talk about Grief”

+ A recording of the talk Jules references from the National Life Insurance Conference.

By: Lisa- Renee Delwo

May 20, 2019