Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Category: Business

  • ‘Un-Networking’: The Art Of Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card

    ‘Un-Networking’: The Art Of Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card

    We live in an age where you have just a few seconds to impress someone with your website, tagline, or bio.

    We have become masters at engineering the “perfect” profiles to hook others in and the right pitches to land the job or career advancements we want. If you can outperform your competition, or your business has 100,000 likes on Facebook, by today’s standards, you should feel accomplished.

    But the truth is, most of us are still starving for something more.

    We’re tired of having to impress all the time and are sick of the superficial, transaction-based relationships. We want to be seen for something deeper than our LinkedIn profiles or our ability to add zeroes to a spreadsheet. We want to be seen for who we are.

    That’s why two millennials are taking a stand for a deeper kind of business connection based on depth and substance. No more leading with your business card, period.

    Meet Bri Seeley and Thaís Sky, the founders of The AMPLIFY Collective, a movement to unite entrepreneurs on the basis of who they are, rather than what they do. The LA-based duo is famous for hosting standout events that provide entrepreneurs with both the authentic connection they crave and the business collaboration they need to thrive.

    I caught up with Seeley and Sky on the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast, “Un-Networking: Build a Network You Can Depend On By Leading With Yourself, Not Your Business Card.”

    Sky and Seeley launched The AMPLIFY Collective as an alternative approach to the traditional way of networking. They found that, despite having extensive networks, many entrepreneurs were still starving for real and authentic connection.

    The AMPLIFY Collective was born from the idea that you don’t have to sacrifice friendship for success. You can actually have the best of both worlds: meaningful, one-to-one relationships within a community of ambitious entrepreneurs who have your back.

    The secret lies in what Sky and Seeley call “un-networking,” a methodology they developed that fosters connection on the grounds of who you are, rather than what you have accomplished.

    “It’s more important to show up as who you are than what you do. Don’t lead as your job title—it creates a barrier between people. Form a relationship first, get to know the other person and then call them up for their business skills because you love who they are,” Seeley says.

    The duo claims that when we approach business collaboration from an authentic standpoint, it yields better results. According to the Harvard Business Review, when authenticity is perceived in a business relationship, trust, engagement, and commitment are highest.

    “Business takes place in a greater capacity without the cheesy elevator pitch,” Sky jokes. “Too many of us hide behind what we do without getting to the core of who we are. People buy from us because of who we are, not because of our website.”

    The AMPLIFY Collective currently hosts three events per month to entrepreneurs through its membership offering. The events are distinguished for squashing superficial, transactional exchanges in the name of refreshingly intimate and genuine connection.

    Below, Seeley and Sky share how you can transform your own business relationships to feel meaningful and relevant to you

    1. Lead with yourself. Who you are is your greatest accomplishment, and should be at the forefront of an introduction. Lead with what it is that wakes you up in the morning and drives you every single day, or the kind of change you’re standing for in the world. Make sure to omit your job title and how successful you are—these things are secondary and have nothing to do with you.

    2. Focus on the value you get from the relationship. Don’t go into an interaction with an agenda or something you’re trying to get from the other person. Instead, simply let the relationship with that person and the joy you get from knowing them be enough. Others can sense when your motivation for connecting with them isn’t pure and it creates a barrier between you both. If you do really need help with something, disclose that and be fully transparent rather than coercive.

    3. Let the business value emerge from a space of authenticity. Let the foundation for your connection be a commitment to show up as a friend for the other person regardless of what you get in return. From that space, allow any business collaboration to emerge organically. An added benefit to waiting is that you are more likely to understand the other person’s unique skill set and where they are best suited to serve you after you really know them. The quality of the collaboration will be much higher as well as feel better for you both—instead of feeling used or disposable, you’ll feel like a valued friend.

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  • How This Millennial Turned His Biggest Fear Into A Business

    How This Millennial Turned His Biggest Fear Into A Business

    Fear… It can be paralyzing. It may be what is keeping you stuck in that job or relationship that you hate.

    Neuroscience tells us that when the fear system of the brain is active, we are less likely to take risks, and more likely to cling onto what we already have. Moreover, fear requires massive energy—so much, in fact, that it impairs your ability to focus on other tasks at hand.

    With the ever-present threat of not having a job, suffering a hit in business, or the uncertainty of finding success on your own, the reality is that fear has got most of us locked in its grips.

    Can you imagine what might open up for you if, instead of spending all that time worrying, you decided to confront your fears head-on?

    One man did exactly that, and the result was astounding.

    Meet Brian D. Evans, the founder of Influencive, a content platform with over 1 million readers a month, though it was only created 8 months ago. Evans is also responsible for the 25th fastest-growing advertising and marketing agency in the U.S., BDE Ventures. He launched Influencive as a way to tackle his lifelong fear of sharing his voice as a writer, and now, he’s helping transform the day-to-day lives of millions of aspiring entrepreneurs.

    I caught up with Evans about confronting fear head-on in the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast, “How To Use Fear To Fuel Your Greatness.”

    Evans says the catalyst to dive into his fear was a near-death experience he had as a child. At the age of eight, he suffered a near-fatal bike accident that would forever change his perspective after he went head first over handlebars into the corner of a brick wall. It awakened him to the fleeting nature of life and the urgency to rise up and create something meaningful.

    Through that experience, Evans recognized the importance of overcoming what is standing in your way to serve a greater purpose. For Evans, this was the fear of being heard. “I was scared to death of writing,” he says. “If you had asked me three years ago if I would be writing on big sites one day, including my own, I would say absolutely not.”

    Though writing wasn’t his strong suit, Evans saw a need in the world for inspiring content that would motivate young entrepreneurs to achieve their goals. They were hungry for daily inspiration backed by concrete and applicable direction, and no platform on the market was offering this. Thus, Influencive was born.

    Day by day, Evans began testing his ideas by simply throwing new content out there. He started improving his grammar and technical writing and before he knew it he had a network of people—first 5, 10, 50, now 105—that wanted to write for the site. Soon after he started getting invited to write for Inc. magazine, Entrepreneur and many other leading media outlets.

    Today, Influencive has over one million readers per month, a hundred thousand plus Facebook followers and is quickly becoming the go-to platform for inspirational content for young and aspiring entrepreneurs. Evans currently serves as editor-in-chief and CEO alongside his partner and COO Clinton Senkow.

    Below, Evans shares how you can use your fear as fuel for success.

    Eliminate conditional statements from your vocabulary. The words you speak reflect your mindset and determine the outcome of your success. To be successful, you must align your beliefs, words, and actions with certainty. Evans says he views success as inevitable, and has removed phrases like “try,” “if it happens,” and “maybe” from his everyday vocabulary.

    Focus on one task at a time. “Ambitious entrepreneurs are like, ‘I want to do all these things, I want to conquer the world’… but you have to start somewhere,” Evans advises. “People have this idea of wanting to do all these things at once, but it’s too much. You really just need to have incredible laser focus on 1 or 2 things.” He recommends writing a list of 25 things you want to accomplish in your life, and narrowing down just five that you want to accomplish in the next two years. Commit to finishing these first five things before you move on to the rest of the list to ensure that you’re actually accomplishing what you intend to.

    Mobilize others to support your mission. Whatever it is you are creating, it’s much easier to achieve with the help of others. Enroll others in a collective vision that isn’t centered around a single person, but rather is dedicated to the whole. “You have to have a collective vision. It’s not about one person, it’s not about me, it’s the collective vision of the whole thing. If you can find people and bring them together into a bigger vision, I think that bigger collective is a stronger base to make things successful quickly,” says Evans.

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  • Why This Founder Is Starting A Movement To Empower Young Entrepreneurs

    Why This Founder Is Starting A Movement To Empower Young Entrepreneurs

    The era of the big brand is on the decline with big names like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Macy’s, and The Gap consistently losing revenue in recent years.

    That’s because a new wave of conscious consumers has been born, and they’re voting with their dollars in favor of products that contribute to a greater good.

    If you want to stay relevant in this day and age, you’ll need to adapt to consumers’ new preferences. Simply selling a product is no longer an option; instead, you’ll need to give people something to stand behind.

    “Rallying people around a cause they care about allows them to create personal meaning and connection to your brand, becoming loyal followers who are compelled to share your mission with others,” says Elizabeth Kanna, a brand impact strategist.

    One cofounder is doing just that with his brand movement Youngry, an online media and education platform that aims to empower young entrepreneurs to become successful in the 21st century.

    Meet Ash Kumra, a two-time White House award winner, speaker, author, and former talk show host. After launching a handful of businesses that lacked real substance and purpose, Kumra has reversed his approach to entrepreneurship to lead with the consumer first–and it’s rewarding him more than ever.

    I caught up with Kumra about his new approach to business on the latest episode of Unconventional Life, “Set Your Brand on Fire: How to Start a Powerful & Profitable Movement.”

    Kumra’s journey to entrepreneurship began when he spontaneously gave a speech to his entire college fraternity for the chance to speak at a nation-wide Greek conference–and won. While the other contenders spoke for minutes on end, Kumra kept it short and sweet, with the unforgettable words, “I eat, drink, and sleep greek life,” before dropping the mic and exiting stage.

    As the audience roared, Kumra realized he had a knack for communication and could effortlessly enroll others in his mission. “In that moment I realized gosh, I can communicate,” he says.

    Now, Kumra is using his gift of communication to enlist others in a force for public good, with his latest venture Youngry.

    What makes Youngry unique is its community-funded operations model. To date, Youngry has sourced tens of thousands of dollars from nearly one hundred investors–everyday, nonaccredited contributors like you and me.

    Kumra chose to fund Youngry this way to create a strong bond between brand and community. “It’s the best way to get connected to your core audience,” he explains. “We said let’s ask our community–the people who are gonna get help from Youngry, the early-stage entrepreneurs, those who want to contribute, the mentors, the partners, let’s ask them all to back us from day one. Let’s let them be a part of our journey so that as we rise they rise.”

    To Kumra, Youngry is less a company for individual profit than it is a movement that benefits thousands. It is a place for young entrepreneurs to come together and learn how to build businesses that serve the planet.

    “When you unite people on common ground with a shared objective, people will mobilize together and make the brand a success,” says Kumra. Below, Kumra shares how you can position your own brand as a movement.

    1. Consider using equity crowdfunding. This is effective for two reasons: you can attain funding without having to worry about finding an Angel investor, and you create a bridge between your brand and your target audience. Nothing says movement like a bootstrappy “by the people, for the people.” If you go with equity crowdfunding, you’ll need to file legal documentation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to document each of your investors. Kumra recommends hiring an advisor to ensure a smooth and simple process.

    2. Start your business for purpose, not trend. When you’re in an industry for the trend, it’s because you’ve noticed there is profit to be made and you’re looking to make a quick buck. When money isn’t flowing, you’re likely to leave. If this describes you, you’ll want to reconsider a different industry that you’re truly passionate about–in other words, the motivation for your work must be purpose. Any movement that is to stand the test of time cannot waver when profits suffer; it must be rooted in the mission it seeks to accomplish. “When you’re doing something you’re so passionate about and you feel others have that same passion or commonality, that’s your genesis for a movement,” Kumra says.

    3. Tell a story. It’s not enough to simply sell a product or service anymore–you’ll find yourself drowning in a sea of competition. Instead, elevate yourself from the rest by aligning with a story that connects to consumers’ pain and provides a solution. A movement brand that has done this exceptionally well is Flint and Tinder, who famously won $1M in a kickstarter campaign that offered sweatshirts with a lifetime warranty as a way to take a stand against mainstream clothing that falls apart in months. Whatever your brand offering may be, position it as the unique solution to end a struggle that has had your audience feeling fed up for too long. Do this effectively, and your movement is bound to catch fire with a momentum of its own.

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  • How This Millennial Thought Leader Is Using Facebook Live To Build Her Business

    How This Millennial Thought Leader Is Using Facebook Live To Build Her Business

    Over 22% of marketing emails never reach their subscribers’ inboxes. For marketers, these missing messages translate to devastating losses in potential revenue–totaling in the tens of millions annually.

    If you’ve ever crafted an email for a list of subscribers before, you know the amount of care that goes into writing each and every word. The fact that roughly a quarter of your messages are destined to be lost, denied, or in the spam folder is nothing short of an outrage.

    The good news is, it’s 2016, and you don’t have to continue using a marketing platform that’s leaking dollars out of your wallet. You can now use Facebook Live, the live-stream video tool that doubles as a sneaky marketing agent–generating 1200% more shares than images and text combined–and is rapidly replacing the prehistoric email opt-in.

    One millennial has developed an ingenious marketing strategy with Facebook Live that’s driving traffic and sales for her business. Meet Amanda Rivera, an influence and PR strategist for millennial entrepreneurs who is known for creating major press opportunities in under 5 minutes. Her Facebook group, Millennial Thought Leaders Mastermind, is a hub for exclusive, members-only content that has outsiders begging to be let in–and ultimately becoming buyers.

    Rivera reveals the details of her Facebook marketing machine on the latest episode of the Unconventional Life podcast.

    Rivera’s mission entails “bringing healing where there is suffering, hope where there is doubt, and courage where there is fear in the world.”

    The bulk of Rivera’s work occurs on Facebook, within her Millennial Mastermind group. She is constantly responding to comments, reviewing applications for new membership, and updating the page with enriching content–particularly via Facebook Live.

    “It’s like having a party at your house,” Rivera says. “You can’t just say here are the hors d’oeuvres, now fend for yourself. You have to be checking up on people making sure everyone’s ok. You really are the host of your Facebook group if you want to do it right.”

    When Rivera runs advertisements for her group, free live-streamed content is the focal point. Group members get access to frequent goodies like 1-hour talks led by prominent industry figures and thought leaders.

    Joining the group is like opting-in to free content, which tends to convert group members to paying customers at some point down the road.

    Part of what makes Facebook Live so effective is its format of active video engagement. Studies show video promotion is 600% more effective than print and direct mail combined, and that two out of every three people are more likely to watch a video than read text.

    Since launching her Facebook group, Rivera has attracted dozens of new and recurring clients for her business, as well as pioneered a successful marketing model for others to follow.

    Below, Rivera shares the key strategies behind using Facebook Live for business marketing.

    1. Let members know in advance when you’re going live. Rivera posts a weekly schedule of live speakers on the cover banner of her group. Doing this generates excitement and anticipation, as well as guarantees far more viewers per video. Design your schedule as a graphic with plenty of pictures, eye-popping text, and attractive headlines. Finally, consider offering free email notifications to let members know days, hours, and minutes before their favorite talks are going live.

    2. Curate your group to represent your target customer. Be selective and intentional about who joins your group. Consider requiring new members to apply for their spot; Rivera says she only accepts 1 of every 5 new members who apply. You’ll want the bulk of your members to represent your target market, so that they’re likely to be interested in what you post and will invest in paid content.

    3. Feature guest speakers who enhance the value of your group. Populating your group with enough quality content can be overwhelming if you’re trying to do it all on your own. Instead, reach out to figureheads and influencers in your industry to feature their content on your page and appear on Facebook Live. It’s a win-win for you both: they get free promotion, and your group becomes more valuable, increasing the appeal for new members to join and motivating existing members to stay active.

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  • 5 Steps To Prep For Leaving Your Job To Start A New Business

    5 Steps To Prep For Leaving Your Job To Start A New Business

    After you’ve chosen a career path, it’s easy to feel like you’re locked into that decision for the rest of your life. Maybe your job isn’t fulfilling, isn’t providing you with sufficient opportunities to develop your leadership, or you just feel like there is nothing new there for you to learn.

    According to a survey from Deloitte, two-thirds of all millennials plan to leave their job by 2020 and 44% say they would leave their employer in the next 2 years.  If you have got the itch to leave your job, you are not alone.

    The average American switches careers six times throughout the course of their life–meaning there’s a lot more room for second chances than you might think. You may know it’s possible to make a career change, but understanding how to take action in your own life is a different matter.

    Meet Eric Finnigan, a professional copywriter and founder of Autopilot Email, an email marketing service agency that helps companies boost their revenues by $100k+ through automated emails. Today, Finnigan works a schedule on his own terms structured around projects he cares about. But just months ago, he was working a 9-5 for a corporate company that drained him.

    I spoke with Finnigan about how he was able to leave his former career and restore purpose to his work on this week’s episode of Unconventional Life, “How to Leave Your Corporate Job and Pursue Your Dreams.”

    Fresh out of college, Finnigan found himself broke and in debt, with all his credit cards maxed out and nowhere to turn. “I had this moment where I was like holy cow I just went to college and in theory I should be set financially, what’s going on?” he says. “It was kind of this panic moment where I realized I had to make money.”

    Like many new graduates in this position, Finnigan was eager to start paying down his debt and immediately got a job. Over the next seven years, he would dedicate nearly all of his energy to getting promotions and salary raises until his financial insecurity faded to a distant memory.

    Step by step, Finnigan climbed the corporate ladder to the position of Vice President, managing a $36 billion portfolio for his investment strategist company. His salary was abundant and he occupied a luxury apartment in NYC… yet something was missing.

    “I would sit at my desk and think, do I really want this? I had this moment of yeah, I had succeeded in what I wanted to do, but what I had been working towards it turned out wasn’t the thing that was actually fulfilling for me,” Finnigan reflects.

    Upon that realization, Finnigan decided it was time to make a change.

    He still depended on his job as a source of income, so he didn’t just quit on the spot. Instead, he began investing all of his free energy into his lifelong passion for writing, which he never pursued because he didn’t believe it could be profitable. Within several months of studying the art of copywriting, Finnigan felt confident he could monetize it and quit his corporate job.

    Today, Finnigan has created a livelihood around copywriting and has become one of the most sought-after contractors in his industry, running six and seven figure campaigns for many multi-million dollar clients. But the doubt and uncertainty that accompany making a major career change were not lost upon him. Below, Finnigan shares how you can succeed in making a similar transition.

    1. Learn from others. Immerse yourself in the stories of others who have already made this transition and are thriving on the other side. Listen to podcasts and seek out news articles to encourage, motivate, and inspire you to do the same. You’ll begin to feel like it is possible for you, too, and you’ll benefit from learning from their mistakes and advice.

    2. Ask for help. Ditch the mindset that you need to figure it all out on your own. “For me it was a matter of pride,” Finnigan says. “Have humility–you can make it much faster with help.” Asking for help might look like reading books, enrolling in courses, or finding a mentor. Guidance and accountability are essential to your success.

    3. Hustle on the side. Use your current job as a safety net so you don’t put too much pressure on yourself to “figure it out,” which can actually be counterproductive. Be reasonable and give yourself time to develop your new skill until you feel confident that it will be able to provide for you financially. Be prepared to put in the hours both for your current job and your emerging passion. “I worked 4 to 5 hours a day in addition to my job,” Finnigan recalls.

    4. Understand success isn’t linear. Unlike working in a corporate job, success isn’t linear when working for yourself. “It’s not like plug away for a few months and get your first paying customer, then in another few months get your 5th paying customer,” Finnigan says. “It’s frustrating coming from the corporate world, where you work hard and get a bonus at the end of the year.” While you may struggle at first, don’t be discouraged. Keep at it and be mindful of how you measure success–fulfillment is equally as important as profit.

    5. Create your own urgency. “If there’s no urgency on your end, no one’s going to create it for you,” Finnigan says. Develop a timeline for your goals to keep yourself on track and be willing to let go of whatever may be holding you back.

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