Unconventional Life – Podcast, Blog, Live Events

Category: Money

  • Ep260: WFH. Living Life On Your Own Terms, with Badass Digital Nomad host Kristin Wilson

    Ep260: WFH. Living Life On Your Own Terms, with Badass Digital Nomad host Kristin Wilson

    “WFH”—an acronym that was almost non-existent until 2020— is now the most popular trend globally with the pandemic affecting the lives of every nation and social class, forcing us to Work From Home. After decades of investing millions into the tech industry to make smaller computers, powerful smartphones, and whatever the heck 5G is, there is a sort of beauty to humankind’s obsession with tech now that we can work remotely.

    It sort of a delight in a way when you think about it: years of competition and advancement has prepared us for a pandemic of this magnitude. But even before the word COVID-19 was carved into our minds, entrepreneur, writer, influencer and surfer Kristin Wilson has been working from home and advocating remote work for the past 18 years.

    Now, Wilson is lending her knowledge to help people, relocate and live better lives without being stuck in an office space. An “advocate” of WFH years before the pandemic, she has worked as a digital nomad and has preached its benefits through her writing in Medium, and Quora, as well as her YouTube channel Traveling with Kristin, and podcast, Badass Digital Nomads.

    Though it has affected travel for most of the world, she acknowledges that this pandemic pushed the lives of everyone almost a decade into the future. “Well you changed, literally overnight,” Kristin said, “because before the pandemic happened, I was estimating that it would be at least another 10 years before the majority of companies accepted the possibility of remote work and work from home for their employees.”

    “I was kind of acting as a remote work advocate to not only help individuals work remotely but also to prove to CEOs and companies and small business owners that their employees could work from home and that it would be a win-win for everybody. When the coronavirus happened, I was like ‘Okay my work here is done.’”

     

    Making Your Own Path

    Even back in her middle school years, she knew that she was not meant to be stuck in an office space.

    “In middle school, the personality tests and the career tests, well I actually would fail those,” she said, “like I would get the results back and it would say, like, ‘Error message, could not fit you with a job’ and then all my classmates would be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a doctor, I’m going to be a firefighter,’ you know, all of the like cliche jobs and mine was just like, I had too many different interests to fit into any job profile. So fast forward to when I was in college, the anxiety of choosing a major was like the same thing. And the only thing I knew that I liked to do was to travel.”

    Now that she’s achieved the work-life balance that she has dreamed of, Kristin has made it her life duty to help others see the beauty of life outside the workplace and even assist them in moving to new places.

    “I’m just on this path to share everything I’ve learned about creating your own job, working remotely or living in foreign countries, and just living life on your own terms.”

     

    Building Your Roots

    Though technology has closed the distance of communication, this globe-trotting entrepreneur acknowledges that our electronic monitors are not a good enough alternative to genuine human connection.

    Which is why she wants people to make connections and build communities, through “slow travel” which means staying in a foreign country for more than a just week or even a month.

    “I even had the T-shirts that say Slow Obsessed With It,” Kristin said, “because when you travel really quick, you meet a lot of people, but the relationships are all on this acquaintance level and it can feel really shallow, sometimes, but also you can go really deep with people quickly and have like this soulmate-connection.”

    She predicts that when the travel bans are lifted and the effects of the pandemic have simmered down, she foresees that there will be a “global migration” and people will realize what they’ve missed while being away from the office.

    In the end, Kristin emphasizes that other than sightseeing our most important experience in our global journeys is the connections with people that we make, and at times our realizations may overwhelm us, that she has this to say:

    “As human beings, you still need that core group of friends that you can rely on and that core community,” Kristin says, “and if you start to feel like you’re disconnected or that you’re really alone in the world, [you] just kind of step back and go back to your roots a little bit. [this could mean that] maybe it’s time to go home.”

     

    More from Kristin:

  • Ep 241: Translate Your Unique Gift Into A Career with The Walking MRI Machine Dr. Olivia Audrey

    Ep 241: Translate Your Unique Gift Into A Career with The Walking MRI Machine Dr. Olivia Audrey

    She is a Board Certified Naturopath, author, speaker; Dr. Olivia Audrey is our walking MRI machine. Since three, she has displayed her gifts of precognition, medical insight, and quantum intuition. That has led her to work with various clientele, such as the British Royals, celebrities, celebrity athletes, CEOs, fortune 500 business owners, and companies. She recently wrote this children’s book called Arthur fantastic, co-authored by the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.

    “If you have a desire, if you have a thought that this is what you want to do with your life and with your profession, then that means it’s a done deal already. And you just have to align yourself with the path as it rolls out for you.”

     

    How She Discovered Her Gift

    At six years old, she pointed at this woman at a baby shower with her mom and said Breast Cancer. It bothered the woman enough that she went and had a screening, and it turns out she had stage two fully interventional breast cancer that was able to be treated and saved her life.

    Further on, she also detected a heart disease in a 22-year-old man. And believe it or not, she’s the first one to see my struggle with Epstein Barr even before I found out about it.

    When it comes to an understanding what’s happening with our emotional, physical, or spiritual system, Dr. Audrey can go right to the heart of the matter. One of her extraordinary powers is bringing awareness to mystery illnesses. Dive in as we discuss topics on holistic health, mental health, and the immune system.

    In this episode, she shed light on Epstein Barr and the viruses and autoimmune conditions that originate and piggyback on the “granddaddy of all autoimmune.” As well as how you can translate your unique gift to a full-time career.

    “Education is key. And so I always advocate that you have a conversation with your body first.”

     

    How To Translate Your Calling Into a Full-on Career

    1. Honor your calling by trusting yourself. Acknowledge and embrace the unique gift bestowed upon you instead of dismissing it.

    2. Check with yourself how it feels. If it resonates as truth for you, step forward and bring it out to the world professionally.

    3. Build it by clearing away any resistance that may be preventing you.

    “The less sense that it makes me in my cognitive brain, the more sense that it’s going to make to the other person.” If there’s anything she wants us to know is to embrace the weirdest parts of ourselves because those will end up being our superpowers.

     

    Resources

  • Ep 239: Navigating From An Underground Passion To A Higher Purpose Calling. Thinking Out Loud with Nate Setto.

    Ep 239: Navigating From An Underground Passion To A Higher Purpose Calling. Thinking Out Loud with Nate Setto.

    The only difference between try and triumph is just a little “umph.” And that is what Nate Setto is all about. An incredible pop and r&b artist, he grew up with a passion for music and began writing songs at seven. But before his career skyrocketed, he had to go through unconventional ways to make it happen.

    “Once you see something click, stick with that, and then keep trying to look for more things, and try to find another thing that clicks and do that.”

    With over 1.3 million views on YouTube, 36,000 followers on Facebook and 61.8K on Instagram, this Michigan native singer strives to inspire people. From creating party kind music to releasing a more personal song called “Novocaine,” that talks about the struggle of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, this artist did not navigate the field without insightful stories to share.

    “If you feel like this is something that you have to do, do it! You’d be surprised at what can happen, where it can come from, and who you can help.”

    With a deeply rooted passion for music, Nate had to make a whole fake school schedule to trick his parents and find the time to go to the studio. As a result, he’s created incredible songs that won his parents’ hearts and approval.

    Eventually, what started as underground music, navigated its way to comedians promoting them. He continued to put contents and try new things that earned him his massive following on social media.

    While all that is happening, his spiritual journey was also unfolding right before his eyes. He started noticing coincidences, signs, and messages from the Higher Being through billboard, music, dream, reading, and radio.

    “Pay attention to what’s going on in your life, and realize that He cares, and He wants to have a relationship with you. Once you connect with Him, you start seeing Him everywhere, and you’ll be on the right path to achieving the things you want to achieve.”

    He has cemented his relationship with God, and now with his listeners. He openly talked about how anxiety, depression, and substance abuse inspired him to write Novocaine to help others who are going through the same thing. The song is different from what people know as his genre, but he is so proud of it’s a purpose-driven song.

    “You know, I’m the type of person that if I was going through something, I want to go do something nice for somebody.”


    Resources:

  • Ep:227 Free Yourself From the Money Trap with Ali Katz

    Ep:227 Free Yourself From the Money Trap with Ali Katz

    Money, money, money! Money plays a massive role in each and every one of our lives. It can subconsciously drive our thoughts and decisions and shape our lifestyle. Having money at the forefront of the mind, we can end up carried away by wants and contorted in our understanding of needs.

    This week’s Unconventional Life guests, Ali Katz made her millions, felt the empty sting of accomplishing “success” without happiness and went on a journey of a lifetime to heal her relationship to money. With a healthy and balanced approach to how much money she really needs, she now feeds her soul in a way that’s placed her in a better position to be of service to the world.

    Examine your relationship to money and free yourself from the money trap.

     

    Money Dysmorphia

    Money dysmorphia is a distorted view of one’s financial reality that can cause people to make poor decisions.  In this state, time and energy can easily be spent in the wrong place and leave people subject to the insatiable, never-ending need for“more”.

    This type of dysmorphia is often sculpted during our early years and shapes the way we think, act and earn. For some it can look like insecurity about never having enough, for others, shame or guilt.

    Ali Katz built 2 million dollar companies, wrote a best-selling book, lived in a beautiful home by the beach and sent her children to private school. Amidst all of that, she found herself unhappy and wondering what had driven her to chase a dream that left her feeling completely unsatisfied.

    “What I discovered was actually wrong is that almost all of my decisions were being made through a lens of money.”

    For her, all of her time, energy and attention was on money. So now what?

    When people get into right relationship with money, one that’s not distorted, it becomes possible to examine what the true driving force is.

     

    What is Your Relationship to Money?

    Do you worry about money monthly? Daily? Weekly? Hourly?

    Do you make decisions based on how it will affect your income? Do you feel trapped, limited or constantly a few steps behind financially?

    Ali Katz built up her world and then watched it crumble around her. She now offers guidance to others through her work with “Eyes Wide Open”, praying that they can learn from her mistakes.

     

    Needs vs. Wants

    Get exceedingly clear: What do I need as a minimum to thrive?

    “It’s incredibly important to understand, what do you really need? We have a messed up view of need in our world. We either don’t want to be needy and so we pretend that we don’t have any needs, which obviously isn’t true. Or we have an overinflated view of what we need. When we have an over-inflated view of what we need, we’re often striving for more, more, more and attempting to fill a need that can never be filled because it’s not a need, it’s a want.”

    Once you’ve established a financial figure for how much money you need as a minimum to thrive, ask yourself: What is my minimum to be of service?

    Now that you’ve got these two figures in front of you, use them as your compass.

    If you find yourself in a spiral of fear and freak out about not having enough money- STOP. Look at your minimum “thrive” amount and “of service” amount. If you have this money and you’re still freaking out, you have now identified that you are experiencing a different fear that resides under the surface.

     

    T.E.A.M.

    How do you spend your time?

    What is it you spend your energy on?

    Where do you focus your attention?

    We exchange each of these for money daily. Where are you in relation to these metrics?

    We Create the Economy

    Money has a place in our current economy, after all, it’s how we exchange and store value.

    How you value your T.E.A.M., well that’s for you to decide.

    “we create the economy. The economy is not something imposed on us from the outside. We are not at the whim of the stock market or the government or any of these outside or big corporations. That is power and control that we don’t have to be subject to that anymore when we realize we create the economy.”

     

    More of Ali:

     

  • Ep:218 How to Raise Money Successfully, with Crowdfunding Expert, Ian Mackenzie

    Ep:218 How to Raise Money Successfully, with Crowdfunding Expert, Ian Mackenzie

    In recent years, with the growth of social media and connectivity, people no longer have to rely on larger companies or grants to get their personal or professional projects funded. Crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter have collectively already raised $34 billion globally in 2020. 

    Once seen as ‘charity’, crowd-funding is now fast becoming a solution that artists, creators, and entrepreneurs can use to accumulate funding for visionary ideas, new technology, unique products, personal needs, and niche offers that would ordinarily struggle to get the attention or funding from the traditional channels.

    Indeed, some crowdfunding campaigns have gone on to become massively successful, multimillion-dollar businesses. To give one example, Oculus VR virtual reality goggles started out with a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised $2,437,429 USD. The company was later acquired by Facebook in 2014 and was forecast to amount to 4.95 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2019.

    So for those looking for funding, what is it that creates a successful crowdfunding campaign? How do you get people to back your project and pledge?

    We caught up with Ian Mackenzie, New Paradigm visionary artist, filmmaker, writer, speaker, and facilitator, to talk about ways in which artists can use models like crowdfunding to bring their ideas and gifts to the world. We also discussed Ian’s unique take on the current pandemic, his journey to becoming a filmmaker, and deconstructing the cultural narratives that we live by.

    Ian has taught the subject of crowdfunding online for 6 years, through webinars and online courses like ‘Crowdfunding for Social Change’. He is an authority on what it takes to stand out and get funded and has some advice for readers looking to get funded via crowdfunding.

    Here are three things to focus on in order to run a successful crowdfunding campaign

    Niche down

    For Ian, it’s more important to know who you serve and cater to them, rather than try to be everything for everyone.

    “Maybe there’s only a hundred people on the planet that would love what you do, the very specific thing you do, and it’s better to aim at them than to try to appeal to the masses and draw in ‘kind of interested’ people,” he says.

    Ian talks about resonance, and how that ‘resonance’ between you and your people is what matters – “you actually want somebody who is aligned with and interested in what you’re doing… you don’t want somebody who is kind of interested or has to be seduced into it because they’re always gonna be a tension, they’re not going to be that satisfied…”

    Cast aside the ‘rhetorics of success’ based on the current market

    For Ian, resonating with your target audience is more important that ‘selling x amount’ or ‘hitting six figures’ or whatever the rhetorics of success of the current paradigm are.

    Ian stresses that you don’t need thousands of people flocking to your page or to be pandering to a certain standard of what success is in order to be successful – “when you are liberated to reach out and make contact with the very specific fans and people that really jive with what you do, you recognize that you really don’t need that many people to support you, to keep going… it’s actually a relatively modest amount of numbers… Patreon is a really great example of that…”

    Tell a compelling story and focus on the WHY

    According to Ian, “ Everybody has an interesting story if it’s told in a way that really highlights its compelling nature…it does really come down to, can you tell a compelling story?”

    Your job as an artist or a creator is to “excavate what is true” and to compel people to act by interacting with their emotions through sharing the personal level of what you do – “how would describe what it is you do over dinner? Something personal about that that really connects…why do you do what you do, what’s so compelling about it for you?’

    “Your task as you craft your offering is to bring that level of passion that people can feel – oh wow, you’re really passionate about this – because it evokes the principle of resonance…” and resonance is precisely what pulls the ‘aligned’ people to you, which we already touched on in point 1.

    Giveaway

    Apply to win Ian’s course “Crowdfunding For Social Change”, along with a signed copy of his graphic novel “Amplify Her”. You can apply to win here, a winner will be announced next week.

    Connect

    Check out Ian’s podcast, documentaries, blog posts and Patreon account here

    Take Ian’s donation-based webinar – Patreon for Artists 

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