In this fascinating episode, host Rudy Rodriguez welcomes the remarkable Jules, musician, real estate investor, speaker, author, business coaching consultant, and creator of Unconventional Life, a company that creates bucket-list-worthy events and hosts a widely successful podcast for entrepreneurs.

This candid conversation delves into Jules' transformative journey which began with a life-altering wakeboarding accident that led to an out-of-body experience and a renewed perspective on life. This pivotal moment was a springboard for her to follow a path of what truly energized and excited her, leading to her current roles, including becoming a global ambassador for education, launching the Unconventional Life podcast, and holding her first of many international events in Bali.

Jules underscores the importance of following your passion and believing in the power of co-collaboration and co-evolution for achieving greater success. She shares the innovative "star method" for promoting her events, whereby she partners with people who have the experience and audience reach, creating an organically growing network of individuals who not only facilitate the events but also act as cheerleaders promoting them.

A vital part of her event strategy is carefully selecting 'stars' for her events - individuals who can bring diverse energy and fresh perspectives to the gathering. Jules explains how she gamifies the selection process, providing incentives such as commissions, upgrades, or credits to encourage participation. She also stresses on the significance of creating win-win arrangements, which she achieves by initiating conversations with potential stars to find opportunities for mutual collaboration and support.

Understanding the importance of empowering her 'stars,' Jules provides them with the tools and guidance to effectively share and enroll others in her events. Recognizing that everyone has their own preferred method of communication, she tailors her approach to match, thus making the process of sharing as natural as possible.

As the conversation comes to a close, Jules offers a special gift to listeners - a meditation and workbook designed to help visualize and manifest the creation of unconventional events. She emphasizes the power of nonlinear reality creation and accessing meditative states to bring intentions into form.

Tune into this episode for an inspiring exploration of Jules' unconventional journey and learn how you too can embrace the intentional design of your experiences, creating a transformative journey that is uniquely your own. And don't forget to share this episode with those who could benefit from Jules' inspiring story and potentially life-altering wisdom.

Want to connect with Jules?

Free Gift: Meditation and Workbook to Create a Retreat Experience

https://www.artofexperienceretreats.com/workbook?r_done=1

Website: https://www.unconventionallifeshow.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UnconventionalLifeShow

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julesschroederlife/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unconventional-life-with-jules-schroeder/id1089511978

If you'd like to be a guest on the High-Profit Event Show, click HERE.

Hi! Rudy Rodriguez here. And on today's episode we have a special guest Jules from the Unconventional Life Show. Welcome!

Hi, welcome everyone. So good to be here.

Awesome Jules, I'm glad you're here on the show with us today. I'm really excited for today's episode because when you were connected to me by our mutual acquaintance, Maya Rose Rogers. She spoke very highly of you right away. She was so impressed by the quick call she had with you.

And the Unconventional Event that you had coming up in Egypt. So I had to learn more and then when I went to start to learn more, I started to learn more about you and I was like, oh my gosh, Jules has to be a guest on our show and here you are.

Here we are. Yeah, so good to be here.

Yeah, for our listeners who are just now meeting Jules for the first time, Jules is a musician and the creator of Unconventional Life. It's a bucket list events company that actually is also one of the top rated podcasts for entrepreneurs, it's reached millions of people in over 75 different countries and features stories about people who follow non-traditional paths. She's also a real estate investor, speaker, author, and high-level business coaching consultant and the reason she's on the show is because she's a very experienced event leader. In fact, she was ranked number one event for entrepreneurs by INC magazine. So with all that being said Jules, I am really excited to hear from you today on how to unconventionally promote your event and how have you done it? How have you built your event business and done the amazing things you have done?

Yeah. Well, thank you for this introduction, you know, I never actually set out to get into events. I think they sought me out. It all actually began with the near-death experience. The wakeboarding accident I had about seven years ago where I went out with the guys one day, hit the water, face-planted, and came out of the MRI and the hospital. Out of Body Experience to this white figure six, black shadow council member conversation.

Jules, you have more work to do at the time, do you want to do it? And at the time, they thought my neck was broken. They thought I might have been a vegetable and I just remember saying, yes, as long as I don't come back as a vegetable. And then, that next moment, I was back into my body, felt this energy forge my neck back together and shoot down the spine. And the day I woke up in 2015 that day, everything shifted, it was very much the end of life being driven by me in the start of life coming through. And I didn't know what, I didn't know.

At the time I was running a digital marketing agency. I had just gone through a business partner embezzling a bunch of money, and was in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt from another venture. And I get a call three weeks later from a woman working at The United Nations who I met at a Ted conference and she was like, you want to come be a global ambassador for education and I'm in a neck brace still recovering from this accident and this voice is like tell her, you have an initiative. And flash forward, three weeks later I'm at the UN, I start writing for Forbes, I create the first podcast on Forbes called Unconventional Life.

That led into a visceral dream that I had where I saw 30 entrepreneurs gathering and I woke up and Bali came out of my mouth and it was the vision for the first live event and at that moment in time, you know, that dream shook me. I remember talking to my then boyfriend. I was like, I have this idea. I think it's about business. I think it's about life. I don't even know if I like people. I don't even know if I'm good at events. I have no idea how to get started on this. And I think we all have these feelings sometimes knowing that there was something more, it just ate at me.

And I called a girlfriend, who had been in the industry for 15 years. And I was like you got to help me out. Three weeks later we threw the first event in Bali for 30 entrepreneurs and it was the first moment in my life that day that I felt like I finally found my form. I finally found the outlet for all these parts of my self-expression as a musician, an entrepreneur, all these different things to have a seat at the table .Flash Forward. I had a great time, I put it out there to keep continuing and eight, ten years later, I've done trips on seven different continents for hundreds and hundreds of people.

And it's been a really extraordinary experience that we really set out to do and here we are doing it.

Well, it's inspiring and I love that you share. Like you had no idea how you're going to do it. You know, how you're going to events, can find people, you know that you just have this vision in state and you just committed to that. And here you are sick. And seven, ten years later and you've done it in a very unconventional way.

Yeah, absolutely. We've done these events in castle towns and Italy islands and Madagascar. We just got back from Antarctica. And it's, you know, always been.

I always come back to what's most alive in me and where do I feel the energy? Where do I feel the current? And I really do believe when we give ourselves conviction and we take a stand for the things that we feel that are important to us we honor and pay respect to the things that really light us up. I do believe that we get that same back tenfold. That's been really the secret of my business- people. It's a bit about caring for people, taking care of people, but also recognizing that one form doesn't always have to be the same.

So the model is replicable. However I was very clear from the beginning. It wasn't going to always be the conference town and you know Austin, Texas at this hotel annually. It was, what does this group want? What do I want? What excites me? That allowed us to have ten years in the making. Do these destination countries all over the world. And we have one coming up to Egypt in a couple weeks. There we are taking over a ship on the Nile river which is going to be incredible.

The events range in size from 32 to 500 plus people. I like to say I'm a magnet for people and transitions. It’s so fitting right that I got birth from my near-death experience, transition almost. And it really gets to be a place where people get to be in the perspective of success for themselves, not just for monetary, but how do you really live legacy, purpose impact, and all those incredible things.

Thank you. And just when we were in The Green Room, before the show we were talking about the show topic and you mentioned that building events you feel has been a strong suit for you guys and your approach to do it, very unconventionally, you mentioned this idea of the star method. So I'd love to turn over to you, to share how you've unconventionally promote your events over the years all over the world.

Absolutely. So for me it got really clear even back when I had that dream and I got clear. It's great to be a big fish in your own pond. But what is it like to really leverage other zones of geniuses into these co-collaborations and I believe we're in an era in our world right now that co-collaboration and co-evolution are greater than the sum of the individual parts. So even that very first event for me back in 2016, I called my one friend who had experience who then said ‘hey what about these three other people who didn't even know me who had audiences, who had experience who had expertise?’ And I just said ‘hey there's not much I can offer other than an all-expense-paid trip to Bali. Do you want to come and share your gifts and facilitate in an exchange?’

Those people then became people that shared the event and we literally, in three months, sold this thing out. And I remember my dad, a Wall Street guy, is like you're gonna get people to pay you how much to fly where and time zone. But it's really true that when you think about all the people it's a network of conversations and one of the ways that I've been so successful at filling these events is it’s all been organic, all word of mouth, and people come back to at least two plus events. It very much feels like this family home.

That has been able to really tap these co-facilitators or what I call the star. So if you're listening to this you're like I've got an event that I want to do or I've used paid traffic. I haven't been that great with it. Audience pooling is really at the heart of the method. I say who activates your star, who are the five people? The Five Points in your life. The five cheerleaders that just love you. And at the time I didn't even know what. I didn't even know. I was like I had nothing in the industry. I wasn't coming from an audience. I wasn't coming from anything, but I did have people that have been in the back.

Who were witnessing my journey, loved what I was about, dug my vibe and they had friends who also happen to be in a similar network. So, your first step in this star method is to identify your five cheerleaders. These could be people that are in your industry, they could be people that just love you such as how we got connected, right? It was just someone that heard about what I was doing that shared about it with you and she hasn't even been to one of my events yet. We have these people who often see us explicitly.

And then it's a conversation of hey, I would love to collaborate with you. And maybe these stars are also people you want to have come to your event, maybe they're co-facilitators, maybe they're people you want to have present, whatever that might be, maybe they're just joint ventures, maybe you offer them an affiliate, but figure out what's the win-win. You can create in the relationship and sometimes it's just like hey, I just want to support you and you get me later sometimes, I'm happy to support you. I love a percentage of ticket sales sometimes. It's like I just want a free trip to Bali. That's great. I'm happy to support you but discovering the win-win is the next step.

And activate the star. I find once you get five people in motion about your event, the conversation or the current of transformation, the arc of transformation, or standing for it, it starts to become its own independent entity. Where I see people get stuck in filling their events is they really are the only ones holding it. Meaning, they're the ones or their business is the one that's holding the energy of it.

So whether they're on a good day or a bad day, whether people are registering or not, the idea lives and dies at the effect of what they can individually or as a business handle. When you move it into this next layer of the star method it starts to become something independent, like a separate organism that breathes outside of you and then that creates its own network and conversations. Then usually I find there is that next star, those five tell five more, who tell five more, who tell five more. So where I spend my energy when we do our events is not individually selling, but I go to how do we most empower people in that first five to feel empowered to share, how can I create a win-win where they think it's so freaking cool.

So whether they're on a good day or a bad day, whether people are registering or not, the idea lives and dies at the effect of what they can individually or as a business handle. When you move it into this next layer of the star method it starts to become something independent, like a separate organism that breathes outside of you and then that creates its own network and conversations. Then usually I find there is that next star, those five tell five more, who tell five more, who tell five more. So where I spend my energy when we do our events is not individually selling, but I go to how do we most empower people in that first five to feel empowered to share, how can I create a win-win where they think it's so freaking cool.

I'm over here taking notes on these tools. This is remarkable. Now, I'm going to recap what I heard you say. Number one, how do you test the star method, select your five stars, discover the win-win, and then empower them. And then I think I lost you on the next step for just a little bit. What was the next step?

And then once you've got them empowered, then your job really just becomes about tending to your network. It is less of at this point spending the time having one-to-one conversations or trying to get people to register for my events. I really go one to many, and my time is just tending to my stars. What do you need? Should we jump on Facebook live? Do you need a sweet graphic made? Like how I can best Empower you to be more supported. I'm really just the audience tender and that allows all boats to rise and for people to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. And that's the last step. We're naturally wired to want to feel in community. So you want to feel a part of something that's bigger than ourselves. So if you can connect, whatever that thing is for you to me.

I realized I didn't want to make money in one of 12 ways like I wanted to have the dream and reality. I wanted great love and great relationships, and great money, and all the things people wanted to rally around that. I get to be the cause of that. So, whatever the thing is that lights you up at your event, stand for that, that you care about. If you full-heartedly, just get to embody that vision that you stand for and rally your stars to hold that with you, then that gets to be your full-time job and you'll watch how quickly the results of registrations happened from that. Stay in your zone of Genius, which just having your vision activated, those two have shared visions and see the fruits that become possible.

This is great and as far as selecting the five stars, if I can, just maybe they dig a little deeper with you here. Can you give a relevant recent example of how you went about selecting five stars or one of your five stars and just kind of how that conversation sounds?

Absolutely. So we've got our event happening in Egypt. We are unconventional. I've seen every single year we're going to The Nile River and we just did an event in Fiji in November. And I was feeling this sense of like I wanted some new energy. So new stars if you will. I was feeling like the same types of people were coming to the events, and I love that, but I always try to have at least half the ratio of new energy coming in as well. So one of the conversations that I had was with my core team, those that I knew were already going to come, and I just put it out there and I said, hey, I want to expand what's here. Who has some great ideas of other people that we could tap into? Oftentimes, we feel like I don't have an audience, I don't know anyone.

There's no one who can support me. So even speaking into existence, I'm open for new introductions, I'm open for new relationships. Who do we already know? So if you can even just ask the question, if I know somebody who I think has a network or who might know other people who do, that is the first step. I often find that was an example of how I did it. Next thing I knew I had like 15 introductions who are way over the latitude of possible people that could happen. I then just started to have a couple conversations.

And for me, it's first the energy and alignment and from there sharing what the opportunity is, what could be possible. For my co-facilitators it's a trip to Egypt in exchange. I hope that they at least bring two people at a minimum and then after they bring their two people, I then have a whole sweet perk system, whether it's like commission that they then offered to them or if it's upgrades or credits or whatever it might be. I then have a game plan of what I'm doing. So it feels fun.

Everything I'm doing, I tend to gamify. So in that particular incident, pulling the audience for more members, that's been one. Then the other is if I'm activating a star I sometimes see who's sharing my stuff a lot, who seems to be commenting a lot, who seems to just be down on all the things that I'm doing. And sometimes, that's another way I'll find stars is just to have a conversation. Say, hey, I noticed you like a lot of what I put out there and would love to see if I can make you an official ambassador and that's the other approach. I'll activate ambassadors in my network of stars to co-facilitator ambassador people who love my stuff. It's almost like you think about a music artist and they do a grassroots approach. I view it the same way where I'll have stars, ambassadors, co-facilitators, super fans and all those things and it just kind of scrolls from there.

Wow, so there's multiple tiers of stars. Sounds like different types of people who are supporting and promoting you along the way.

Absolutely. And one key distinction here is once I have someone that says ‘I'm a Yes’ actually have an agreement. I have a speaker or a facilitator agreement or an ambassador agreement and why I do it and it's simple. It's just a one-page document but I find there's something that when you can have people commit to something, just the act of the commitment, like if an ambassador or a star knows, hey, if I do this or this happens, then I'll get that. There's something that finalizes it in the energy. I tend to hold the value that, if I activate five stars and they become shooting stars, then I've won the game. So for me there's no scarcity of I must find the perfect five stars in some way. Now at times I'll even activate 10 stars. If I'm doing a big event, sometimes it's even 15 stars and if I just get three to five shooting stars, it really takes off. The game is won and so it really does get to be a snowball effect that compounds.

Awesome, very cool. So activating stars, five or ten stars just knowing that maybe not all of them become shooting stars but that's the game and you're okay with that. I like how you say discover the win-win as a second step. I feel like you were kind of tipping into that a bit here with how they get these incentives. If they bring a certain number of people, or anything else you can share around, how do you go about discovering that win-win with your stars?

Absolutely. It's just a conversation and I used to think everyone was motivated. Sometimes you listen to marketing stuff and it's like it must be affiliate commission, must be money in the way. My events work the high cost events on the front end. So offering additional money for affiliates doesn't really always work with my model. So I had to think creatively like what other things can I offer? And so how that conversation will typically go will be like, hey, I'm doing this event in Italy, or I'm doing this event in Egypt coming and I'm looking to really expand the tribe.

I believe in the power of the one degree network, which really is one degree away from someone amazing that we should meet or vice versa. Someone I know is amazing from someone that they should meet. And so I will say, hey I would love to give it to you as one of my stars or ambassadors or co-facilitators depending on what role that I exceed them in. And I love to know if you'd be interested in having a conversation about it.

That's kind of the first step is like, start the topic and get consent. Are there any shared interests? And sometimes I'll be like, what does that mean? Or you find your own language, right? I'm using my language for it. You might find your own language for it, but get consent. I'm into it or tell me more, etc. And then I'll usually share and ask what's happening in your life right now? Like I always like to discover what you have got going on? Sometimes someone, like I have one of our stars, and I've got an event happening in September, will say maybe we could make a great marketing video where we promote your Egypt event on the front end and then we promote mine and if they sign up for both, we offer $500 off. Like what do you think about that? It was a brilliant idea. That was the win-win. So I had the team make a reel, we had a win-win video and then boom. Now we're off to the races. So being asked, hey what's happening in your world, what would support you? And sometimes it's simple like that.

Sometimes it's like, I don't even know right now, but I'd love to be able to count on you. Or when I have a moment I could come back to you later. Or someone's like, yeah I'd love the exposure to your audience. And that's another thing is never underestimate the people you have and the currency we have. Relational currency in my opinion is more valuable than any monetary currency. If you can be a good human and do good things and show up for people in ways that matter to them, people will want to show up for you in return. That generosity pays dividends tenfold and the more you nurture, which for me, the more I nurture my garden, my relationship garden, my audience garden, the more I don't even think about is it a win-win or not? It just becomes this overflow. I tend to be a listener first, an excavator first. Then sometimes the timing is right and sometimes someone is like I'd love to but I can't right now, catch me at the next event, I got a lot going on. Okay, cool. From there you know you meet people where they're at and you just be a good human and good things happen.

As simple as that might seem, like be a good human and also specifically like listening for what makes a difference for people, or meeting them where they're at. Really cool. And then the third thing, you said empower them. Anything you want to share or expand on how you go about empowering your stars?

So everyone has their own method for how they share, and I find that really understanding how someone gets lit up and sharing about things. Sometimes you have that friend that always gives you the phone call when they're excited- like, oh my Gosh, you got to come to this concert or whatever it is. Sometimes you've got that friend that just texts or never calls you on the phone. Sometimes you get that friend that forwards you emails, but they don't call or text you. So you have to figure out what natural format informs this person and set them up for success.

So I don't just like mass emailing people with here's my affiliate and all these things. Not that you can't have those things together but I also really don't understand like how do I make this so simple for you? How do I make this so such a natural extension of you and how you share with people you care about in your life, that marketing is not even marketing. It just becomes a natural extension of how you share.

And I really hold this distinction that when enrollment is registration it becomes natural. So when people are jazzed, inspired, and bought in on what you're doing, the natural next step is to collect payment, to collect deposit to do the registration act and so often we shortcut enrollment and we only focus on registration. Here's my link. Go ahead and pay and they eventually walk up like some girl Barbie, like they want to come home with me without having an enrollment part before you would go too close. It's the same thing.

So I empower my stars. I really empower them in the art of enrollment and how do I be a champion with them such that they feel they can share in a way that's natural to their extension such that when they go to register or close, it becomes a natural byproduct and I really hold that distinction in that value.

That's great. When value is present, registration is the next natural step. I like that. Very cool. I'm curious, your own goals with your business. You know what's next? You know, you have an event in Egypt but beyond that like what is your next big goal you have with unconventional life?

Yeah. Well my vision for unconventional life has always been to bring together some of the most extraordinary minds, creators, artists, musicians, and visionaries in the world and have a space where you feel like peers, a space where you get to take your mask off and you show up, and the level of connection. It just is these moments of like you to, like I feel like I've met you before and then from those places extraordinary business, and life.

I've seen couples get engaged and millions of dollars generated and all those things that those things get to happen and there's a methodology behind that. And I've learned over all these years that methodology and I call it the pattern interrupt methodology. It's the byproduct of creating micro state changes over the course of unconventional. It takes five days that whether it's in food or what people are learning or the types of conversations they're having, they create these lasting shifts and I like to say I'm in the business of transformation. At scale that is the through line, whether it's my music, my real estate, unconventional life. It's true.

Patient at scale and I'm in this space listening to how do I amplify and make transformation at scale more mass applicable? And so for me, I've, you know, developed an additional company where we're actually teaching this methodology and being able to white label it behind other brands. Artists, we were just chatting, we just did a private Jimmy Buffett show. It took to be open to Antarctica, you know, and one of my other companies that has a business partner in and being able to see more of what makes people light up and shift.

Shift work. That's what really lights me up and that methodology of doing it in this co- collaborative way doesn't matter if the juice comes out of your mouth or my mouth, as long as it gets set in the room. We're all winning, that I really do believe is what is here for the future, and we all can leverage our parts to really make that greater whole. And so I look forward to seeing how that methodology gets to keep rippling and these other trips that I white labeled with different celebrities organizations and things like that. And then a potential life.

We got our two family meetups. These are these accelerators that we do. So I see here. So we'll have another one coming up in November-December, we haven't officially announced the location yet stay tuned, but I know New Zealand's on the roster. Zanzibar possibly, we got a couple others that we’re considering.

Thank you for sharing that. What I heard from that was the transformation at scale of their partnership with the methodology that you'll be able to White Label with other other people in your testing in your other company, which is great.

Yeah, totally. So, having a lot of fun in the process is also a value. If you're not enjoying it, don't do it.

So, Jules, we have our listeners here. If they want to learn more about you, I know you prepared a gift for our listeners. You want to share that little bit about that now.

Sure, absolutely. So, one of the values that I hold, especially from my near-death experiences, you can either create in a linear reality and a linear timeline. Meaning, you can just show up, get a lot of stuff done and then get the results from that show up.

Grades get a good job, following your timeline, or non-linear reality creation in the sense that you can take these certain actions that follow alignment and then you can get these huge swings of results that it's like the secret menu. It's the stuff that you didn't know that you didn't know that begins to become possible. And how I've had a lot of success doing that, I called going into the field, or into meditative activation types of states and bringing what you discover there into form.

And when you think about just the laws of energy things, move way faster, when you're in those states and then in the 3D, the physical world, we definitely are a little bit slower and so take some time to catch up. And so a lot of how I teach unconventional life, how I live, how I can solve that is really based in that, that reality. And so I've got a meditation that if you're interested in starting these events, doing it from a nonlinear way, all the time, I hear people say how did you just do that? Or what, how did you do that?

And this is our right and so I've got a meditation in a workbook which will put it's the art of and it's Retreats.com/workbookartofexperience. Retreats.com./workbook will put that link there for you. You can go there, it's free to download. They'll be a meditation for you to start to visualize your first event. And if you've done a lot of events that will connect to the audience and a whole nother way. And this meditation is actually what I did with the dear friend of mine coming out of my first, actual dream. And I literally, that last day of the five-day event in Vale, like everything came to life from the details of the tablecloth and all these things in the most serendipitous way.

Good plan, but if you ask top performers around the world, and I do my top best all the time, when you can see it and access it and experience it, even if it hasn't happened yet, we've already made contact. And then we're just allowing our timeline in the physical to catch up. And so, you know, that's definitely something that I practice. So check out that workbook, if you'd like, and that'll give you both the meditation and then a tangible applicable way how to work with the meditation into the practical and get you off on the races.

Awesome. That's a great gift and I will be sure to include that in the show notes. That's the art scene, art of experience, Retreats.com 4/4 workbook, and I'm a big fan of meditations and visualizations. I've done some work with Joe Dispenza and I've seen the benefit of that in my own life and highly recommend for our listeners to download that resource and practice that next level of creation manifestation. See it in your mind's eye and then create it.

Thank you so much for sharing this. And before we wrap up for today, any final words to share with our guests?

If you're listening to the show, just go for it. You got it. Like if you're waiting for that nudge or that permission or that voice, the moment, you just decide. We forget the power of our decision power and if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. Meaning, if you don't take a choice and say this is what I want, life gives you a bunch of other material and so you're staying power. Your decision power, your ability to hear this conversation. Be in this conversation. Like if you're waiting for that final confirmation. Like you got it. Like this is, it's all yours for the taking and strap in and enjoy the ride because it gets to be a really great one. When you intentionally experience design.

Awesome Jules. Thank you for sharing those comments. Listen to this episode. Be sure to share this episode with someone, you feel would be a great listener to hear this message from Jules. And also share the resource that you provided here as well. Anybody you know that is wanting to create their next, unconventional type of retreat. Be sure to share this episode with them. So thank you again Jules for being with us today. It's been a pleasure.

Thanks so much everyone.