Career vs. Calling: The Near-Death Pivot that Changed Everything (bonus)

In this bonus episode, Speaker, coach, and Next Level University CEO Alan Lazaros joins Lauri for a raw, high-voltage conversation about fear, intensity, and the courage to be “too much.” From a high-school speech panic (and a hypnotist’s snowboard hack) to a near-fatal car crash at 26 that turned a career into a calling, Alan traces the inner rewiring that let him own his truth on stage and in life. They unpack the peak-performance “Goldilocks zone,” why “slow down” isn’t always smart advice, how shame hides at both ends of the bell curve, and why accurate thinking—not people-pleasing—creates real impact. If you’ve ever been told to be less, this episode invites you to be true.

Takeaways
1. Your sweet spot isn’t “calm on the couch”—it’s alive, engaged, and just-challenging-enough.
2. Early speaking anxiety can be reframed: pair fear with a domain where you feel powerful (Alan used snowboarding via hypnosis).
3. Being “too much” is often code for “you’re triggering the status quo.” Own it with discernment, not apology.
4. A career becomes a calling the moment you stop diluting yourself to fit in.
5. Alcohol (and other numbing) can mute a future-oriented brain to “blend”—notice what you’re dampening.
6. Boundaries require recalibrating your “respect Richter scale,” especially after chaotic upbringings.
7. Principles beat templates: pauses, tone, story—apply them to your unique style, not someone else’s.
8. Truth vs. social performance: accurate thinking liberates your voice and your life.
9. Shame clusters at the edges of the bell curve; compassion + honesty dissolves it.

Soul Sucker Quiz

Take the Soul Sucker Quiz to learn which Soul Sucker screams the loudest in your mind so you can release them from being in charge and set your voice free!

https://voice-matters.com/soul-sucker-quiz/

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Transcript

Meet Alan Lazaros

Lauri 0:32

Hello and welcome back to Soulful Speaking. My guest today is Alan Lazarus. I'm gonna save most of his story for his voice to tell you, and I'll give you a glimpse. He is the CEO of the Next Level University Podcast, a global top 100 podcast with over 2100 episodes that's listened to in 180 plus countries. And at age two, his father passed away in a car accident at age 26 after getting into a nearly fatal car accident himself. Alan questioned everything he was doing in life. Welcome, Alan.

Alan 1:10

Lori, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. You very clearly take your show very seriously and very intentionally. We did a little breathwork situation grounding exercise before we hit record. And this is the most present I've been all day today. Today's been a crazy one. So thank you for having me.

Lauri 1:28

You're welcome. Thank you so much. I love to dive right in. So let's start with where did your speaking journey begin? Mm-hmm.

Alan 1:38

Mm-hmm. So the earliest I remember my speaking journey was when I was a freshman in high school. I had a this actually came full circle. So I had a guy named Mr. Parcells, a teacher named Mr. Parcellus. He was a history, he taught world history. And I remember being very popular in middle school, and then everyone else hit puberty and I didn't. So I'm 36. I often joke and say, I'm hoping to hit puberty at 37. And but if you think I look young now, imagine me at 14, right? So I was 14 years old. My stepdad had just left. I was having a really hard time at home. Birth father passed away at two, you know, dealing with all that. And I was went from popular to basically all the girls developed and all the guys developed. And I went to high school. My sister was a senior, she was the most popular girl in the entire school, and I was this sort of red-faced, prepubescent little kid who went from the top of the social status hierarchy with the bowl cut as sort of a backstreet boy to you know this awkward stage of just sort of chubby and short and didn't hit puberty yet. And I had to do a speech for that class, and I was freaking out. I was very scared because the final project for that class was to speak in front of the class. And I remember there was a girl I had a crush on, her name was Amy, and she was in that class, and I was so scared. So scared, in fact, that I actually went to a hypnotist to help me work on my anxiety with public speaking.

Lauri 3:15

How were you experiencing the anxiety? What sort of physical symptoms do you remember having?

Alan 3:22

Red-faced. I would get really red in my neck. I'm actually surprised I'm not now. I think I'm very grounded right now. But I would get really red-faced. And uh I'm a very pale man and and I would get really red and when I get nervous. And I still do. I still get blotchy and red sometimes when I'm sharing certain things. Yeah. But I went to a hypnotist and I was really good at snowboarding. And the hypnotist now, I understand all this. I didn't back then. Hypnotherapy wasn't something I had studied, I was just a kid. And now I understand I would listen to these, it was uh little cassette deck tapes, and I would listen to them before bed, and it was this meditation where it would associate speaking with snowboarding because I was such a confident snowboarder, and it would be these tapes saying, Alan, you're flying through the air, and everyone's watching, and you're this confident, and it would it would just be these affirming sort of and it and now here I am uh at 36 years old, and I'm a professional speaker now, so it's it's interesting how one of my biggest fears back then has become literally. I I told you I have something called the 25 impact points of effective communication, and I've become you know 1,100, 11,109. It's written right over here. I track it every day. Coaching sessions, trainings, and podcasts.

Lauri 4:43

And so yeah, I love that.

Alan 4:46

I haven't told that story in a long time. Thank you for uh asking and pulling that out of me.

The Goldilocks zone: intensity vs. panic vs. “too chill”

Lauri 4:50

Yeah, yeah, thank you for sharing. I I love your hypnotist, I love your raw authenticity in sharing because I I feel like a lot of people in the public speaking world, I don't know if it's the pro-public speaking world, but a lot of the focus in the world is on calming down. And I'm like, it's not supposed to feel like you're on your couch watching Netflix, it's supposed to feel a little bit more like a roller coaster ride or skiing or snowboarding, something that does have a thrill and an aliveness, and it feels like that hypnotist really normalized what you were feeling and then kind of refocused it. And now look at where you are now.

“Too much” & the intimidation score: the hidden fear of being fully himself

Alan 5:35

Well, so there's a peak performance curve, too much, too little. There's something called an optimal stopping problem, and that's what you're referring to. And if we all remember back to math class, I was a big math and science guy, and there's an upside-down horseshoe, and the peak, the optimal performance, is when you're in the sweet spot, the challenge skills sweet spot. So you're not supposed to be chilling on the couch, but you're also not supposed to be full on panic attack either. And you're supposed to be in that sweet spot, and so now I try really hard to and a lot of people consider me very intense, especially when I've got caffeine in me. I am, I play life very seriously. I do. I'm very, I'm very intense. But too intense, and you're maybe panic attack holding on too tightly to the outcome, but too relaxed, and hey, you gotta put on a show. What are we doing here? And you and I have talked off air about that.

Lauri 6:30

So Yeah, yeah. So we know where you are now. You love it, you do it all the time. We know where you were then, and I know in the middle you mentioned something about at one point being too scared to be extremely unique, which may have been both on stage and off. Can you tell us about some of that too scared to be extremely unique? Period.

Alan 6:57

Yeah, so this is vulnerability time. Some people I think vulnerability is different for everybody depending on what you're afraid of. So everyone else would say, I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of failure. And we eventually figured out that I'm not. What I'm afraid of is actually being too much or too intense or checking too many boxes or being too intelligent or too too much. And Kev says, my business partner, he says, you check too many boxes. We actually have something called the intimidation score, where it we did research on the top 30 ways that makes you you intimidating. And I told Kev, I said, this might as well be a leadership qualities checklist. Like I've been working on dialing these up, not down. Direct in your communication, high standards for self, tall, uh having a powerful presence. There's a bunch, and tall isn't on there, but I I basically told him I he and my beautiful girlfriend Amelia, I sent it to them, 30 character traits, and I had them rate me from zero to ten on each, and I got a 9.5. I averaged it all together, I got a 9.5. And I said, and being six foot two and bigger isn't even on the list. Yeah. Because what was happening is I I was this prepubescent little kid who was not triggering, I was not intimidating. I couldn't get a girl to look at me, never mind one of you with me. And and I didn't trigger any guys because I was this tiny little guy, and now I've become this like really apparently intimidating thing. So to answer your original question, vulnerability time. I look back, I'm 36, I have re-watched the movie of my life over and over and over again. I have a therapist named Carol, and obviously, through thousands of podcast episodes, we do a lot of self-reflection, self-awareness, and it I was a weirdo. I was a weirdo, and I didn't know I was a weirdo. So everything from straight A's through all of high school without really trying that hard in hindsight. I tried harder than the average bear, but school always came really easy to me. And I I one one good example of this is I was at the kitchen table with my buddy Kiki at the time. His name's Keith Corton, he was my best friend growing up, and I was Alan Lazarus, and we were gonna start a company called Lazcore, L-A-Z-K-O-E-R. So his my last name and his last name, and we're gonna go to the same school. It's kind of like a mini MIT in Massachusetts, it's called WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and I was talking about goals and dreams since I was a little kid, and this is the part that's really vulnerable. I genuinely thought everyone meant it the same way I meant it. And again, I had a bunch of the children, you know, Abercrombie model and pro snowboard, all that stuff, but I also had two really sincere career paths that I was intending on. And I don't say intending on lightly. Yeah. I vividly remember I'm gonna be lawyer, politician, president, or I'm going to be engineer, MBA, CEO, like my hero at the time, Steve Jobs. So me and Kiki built our first computer when we were 12. We used to argue who was smarter, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, Apple versus Microsoft. Like, you don't realize how weird you are until you look back and see how weird some of that stuff is. And now I coach 23 individuals from all over the world, all different cultures, all different backgrounds. One is four times a week, two or three times a week, one is twice a week, and then bi-weekly, monthly, and uh weekly. And I've coached hundreds of people at this stage: men, women, all different cultures, all different countries, the whole nine. And now I go, oh. So I have something called the next level wealth builder. It's just an exercise where you go back, okay, when's the first job you had? How much did you make? How long did you work there? And it it has gross income, it's got your total assets and total debts. And it's just a way for you to re-watch the movie of your career so that we can start making better choices now.

The car accident at 26: the pivot from career to calling

Lauri 10:55

Yeah. Yeah, I want to go back to because I'm noticing like you were so small that you were weird and everybody overlooked you. And then at some point you grew up to 6'2 and all the to this, to that, to this, to that, and you almost accidentally said too tall. And I feel like that must have been one hell of a transition when it happened to be weird but invisible is super frustrating, and there can be a safety in the invisibility. And then when all of a sudden you're weird and you're 6'2, for you to have chosen to own that you were 6'2 and stand tall must have really been something. Can you tell me how you found your way to that?

Why he diluted himself: achievement, alcohol, and fitting in

Alan 11:51

Okay, so at from junior year to senior year, I grew like a foot. I think between sophomore and senior year, I would say I grew a foot. But I was tall and lanky, so I still wasn't super intimidating. When this really changed for me, I got in a car accident when I was 26 years old. Head on collision, my fault. My birth father died in a car when he was 28 in 1991 when I was two. Died suddenly in a car. I this was not a fender bender, this was head-on collision. Fortunately, no one was killed, no one was permanently injured, but it would have been my fault if if people had died, including myself. And it was it was bad. That was the moment when I decided to own all of who I am, and I went to the gym after that. And I'm talking, I dialed fitness up to a to 11. And I I have these bodybuilding trophies behind me. I mean, I did the whole nine fitness model. I did 43 photo shoots slash video shoots. I did fitness coaching and fitness modeling and fitness competitions, and I was six foot two and I gained 60 pounds in six months. Not all muscle, there was a lot of fat, but my transformation was very drastic. From 2015 to 2019, I put on an insane amount of muscle mass.

Lauri 13:14

Can I ask what about the car accident? Like, what was it that it woke up in you?

Alan 13:21

The fact that I was not reaching my full potential. I wasn't owning who I really am. That's really what it woke up because a lot of people saw me and they're like, well, you're so successful. I was a 1% global earner at that point. I made almost $200,000 a year. In the US, the top 1% is $465, uh globally, though, it's much lower than that. So I was a top 1% global earner in my early 20s. I had $150,000 in a Vanguard account. And and I paid off $84,000 worth of college debt in a single year in 2014. And again, I didn't know any of this was weird. I had no idea this was weird. I was just being weird. I was just being me. And and I drank a lot too. And that for me, I'm an extremely, extremely intense, future-oriented, goal-oriented person. So in March 1st of 2024, I researched. We did a we do a monthly meetup. We've done them every month for 44 months. And in March January 1st, uh, January of 2024, I researched only 3% of people have clear written goals. When I found that out, I was like, are you kidding me? I have never not had clear written measurable goals ever. When I went into high school, I said, I'm gonna get the president's award, I'm gonna get straight A's, I need a 95 or above GPA, every report card for 16 report cards straight. I'm gonna go to WPI, I'm gonna get my MBA, but you saw my trajectory. I've never not been super future-oriented, and I've I've never not been achievement-oriented. I used to play Halo 2, it's a really famous online game way back in the day, and I used to be on bungee.net at night trying to get to top in the world. I was 20th in the world at one point. And then I joke, I say I got a girlfriend who went to college. But my point is, my point is, is that I, as a super achiever who didn't know he was a super achiever, I grew up around a lot of alcohol, and I think what alcohol did for me, and I've now since researched this, there's something called the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex, which is essentially it's the part of the brain that's associated with willpower and your ability to project into the future, and then so everything is reverse engineered. So my number one skill in life is reverse engineering goals and dreams. That's what I do for everybody now. We have metrics and habits and skills and all that stuff. But I've been doing this since I was a kid. And what you come to realize is alcohol essentially shuts off the prefrontal cortex executive function function parts of the brain, which makes me more normal, which makes me fit in more. And so I think I diluted myself with alcohol to try to fit in. And once 26 hit, I realized I was squandering my true potential. Because people say, like, you work so hard, you think too much, you work too hard, like why can't you take it easy? I had an ex-girlfriend who said dating you is like dating a fucking stairmaster. Um, and what she was trying to say is slow down. Like, why don't you slow down? I said, Listen, I want to speed up. Yeah. Like this is me dialed down. People think this is me dialing up and pretending. No, this is me dialed down.

Lauri 16:29

Yeah. You're you're making me think because there are so many parallels between speaking and how we live our lives. I some of my pet peeves are when people tell speakers to slow down.

Alan 16:43

Yeah.

Lauri 16:44

Because I'm like, that's that's going to make them feel like something is holding them back. So it's different to have a conversation with your audience that includes pauses. It's also different, like I think about you came in, what you said your day was like. We didn't go, well, your day is wrong. Yeah, I'm so grateful you didn't uh we just want a moment of rest. And then we're gonna get right back into you being you. So that happens in life, and then it also happens on a stage.

Alan 17:20

Well, Lori, you have a core belief that you want to help me be me. I can tell. But that's not other people. Other people say, okay, so I'll give you an example. And I really don't I don't like to say this because then people think they can just tell me how to live. So I know you're not gonna do that. And if you do, I'm actually have the courage to say, honestly, you know, just cut cut the shit, right? But I said one time on a podcast, her her name was Deborah, and I said, Deborah, the truth is I haven't taken a full day off in 10 years. And all she heard was, Oh my god, that's so bad for you. And I said, Deborah, with all due respect, that's bad for you. Sometimes it's only an hour a day, sometimes it's 18 hours a day. Usually it's somewhere between 10 and 12. This is the life that I want to live. I agree with you thoroughly. I am not supposed to be less. I I am intense, I am dialed in, I am focused, I am that we got a comment on YouTube recently that said, How much Adderall is that dude on? The reason why is because this is the metaphor that I use. There's a species called canine, also known as dog, and there are 500 recognized breeds of dog. There's a book called Sapiens that talks about Homo sapiens, and there's 500 breeds. Again, there isn't, but it's the same concept. We're not all supposed to be the same. We're not all gonna beat LeBron James at basketball, we're not all gonna scream into the mic like Eric Thomas, we're not all gonna be Tony Robbins. We're gonna be Alan Lazarus and Lori Smith, and we're gonna be who we're meant to be. And the world is very quick to try to tell you who you should be, and it's very, very hard to repel that when you have low self-worth and low self-respect, especially when you're the weirdo. I have had goals and dreams my entire effing life. I had bigger dreams at seven than most people do at 70. And that's just the truth. And it's scary to own that because you get attacked and you get chopped at, and it's like, well, you work too hard and you think too much. It's like, well, what if you don't work enough? And what if you think too little? I'm not telling you how to live, and by the way, I'm way more fulfilled than you, person B or person A. So it's like, listen, I tried the other way, it didn't work. And by the way, I'm more successful than you. So you're trying to give me advice, it's that whole thing. Go ahead.

Lauri 19:46

Yeah, it feels like it's back. So I took a neuroscience coaching class where they had that, it was called the Goldilocks zone in their coaching methodology. It was that peak performance upside down, U-shape. And as you're talking, that's coming back up again. My peak performance I I could not live in your peak performance. I can for periods. And I I like the variety of like I go and go and go, and I'm working a day job and doing theater at night, and you push and push, and you get the play open. And then the day after the play is open, you're like, and then on Thursday you get back up and you go back into it and do it again. We have a different peak performance fingerprint.

Boundaries & belonging: recalibrating self-worth after a tough upbringing

Alan 20:32

100%. And it's different at different stages of your journey. Yeah. I also say this because someone came at me recently and said, You gotta stop working Saturdays. And I said Emilia, my beautiful girlfriend and future wife, her father's a successful business owner. And he's he's awesome. I respect him deeply. But I said, Nate, I would love to see what you're doing at 36. It's I'm 36 years old. These are the grind times. I don't have children yet. I'm preparing for that. Like you're not supposed to hang out in your 30s, you're supposed to build. Now, again, supposed to is is the wrong terminology. At the end of the day, you need to honor what's in here and what's in here. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And I spent too many years. I spent too many years listening to people who, quite frankly, in hindsight, didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

Lauri 21:19

What did it cost you when you were too scared to be extremely unique and you were listening to them?

Alan 21:26

Fulfillment. It cost me self-respect, self-worth, and fulfillment.

Lauri 21:33

Which sounds a little bit like a hamster wheel. If it's hard to advocate for yourself when you don't have self-worth, but you're hearing all this stuff, how did you find your way to where you are now? Where if somebody is shooting all over you, as my coach used to say, Yeah, you'll stand up for yourself.

Alan 21:52

Well, I I think that, and I I help my clients with this as well. I think that for anyone who had a tough upbringing, who has been mistreated and uh disrespected, you your your Richter scale is probably off. So I'm gonna keep this as vague as I can on a public medium, but there's something called an ace score, adverse childhood experiences. Birth father died at two, stepfather left at 14, mom and stepdad did not get along, that's a polite way to put it. Holy shit. And everything in between. A lot of alcohol, the whole nine. And when you grow up in an environment, the metaphor here is if you grow up in California and there's earthquakes every other day, when you come to Mass and there's a little earthquake, you're not even gonna notice. And everyone in Massachusetts is gonna be like, oh, what the hell is going on here? Well, the same is true for your respect scale. So if you've grown up being disrespected and there was no boundaries and you were beaten and whatever, growing up, you keep getting disrespected, but you don't even notice because you're so used to being disrespected. So my girlfriend said, Alan, I just witnessed your friends all make fun of you. You joined them in making fun of you, and you're 10 times more than every one of them. And I can't witness that again. She has been advocating since the moment I met her six years ago, six years ago in October. She's been advocating for me to be who I'm meant to be. Because the truth is I surrounded myself with losers.

Lauri 24:29

Yeah.

Alan 24:30

And those losers felt insecure around me and they made fun of me. I got bullied a lot. And so there's two types of people I don't tolerate. One is spoiled brats who are entitled and want big rewards for minimal effort. And number two is bullies. I don't, if you're gonna chop people down for your own personal gain and to feel better about yourself and pad your own ego, you can kindly F off.

Lauri 24:50

Where was the car accident in relation to the girlfriend? My my math brain is not here. I got a five on the AP calculus exam. And it's not always your index.

Alan 25:03

Okay, good for you. Good for you. That's awesome, that's awesome. Uh so I also took AP Calc, big fan. So 26 years old is when I got in the car accident. Okay. The quote that I use is from Jeff Bezos. Like him or hate them, the quote's fire. Some people have a job, some people have a career, some people have a calling. Before 26, I had a career, very powerful career. After that, I had my calling. My calling is helping, it's written over here, to reach my own unique potential and help others do the same. Everything else is secondary. I do that through coaching, training, and podcasting. Now, I met her at 29 almost 30. So it was October before my 30th birthday.

Truth vs. the social world: accurate thinking + the three circles of ego

Lauri 25:41

Yeah. So it feels like the shift to answer your calling also drew this person into your life.

Alan 25:51

There's no way she would have wanted to be with me. And the truth is, I wasn't the man capable of being with her.

Lauri 25:58

Yeah.

Alan 25:59

First of all, women tend to mature faster than men because they do inner work and they're humble. And she, I always say this: I say, I'm 36 and she's 30. She's gonna be 31 in October, I'm gonna be 37 in November. So I'm six years older essentially. The 31-year-old version of me, she wouldn't have wanted to be with. And that's the truth. And when I met her, she was 25, almost 26, I was 29, almost 30. And I'm not kidding. Me at 30 was ready for her at 25. If that's me at 25, exactly. And that's when you know it's a good peer. Usually there's mentor student, or there's mentor student the other way, or there's peers. And I think one of the biggest mistakes we make in life, I certainly did, was having the wrong mentors. Holy crap. She was an actual peer. And some of the people that I've been around in the past that were friends or that I dated definitely were not peers. It was it was very much me being a mentor and and not really knowing that any of this.

Lauri 27:08

How has answering your calling, continuing to answer your calling, changed your relationship to speaking?

Alan 27:19

Well, first of all, I say things now that I never had the courage to share in the past. So right now I'm s you can hear there's certain reluctance to say certain things. Because there's two worlds. There's the real world, which is what's true, and then there's the social world, which is horse shit. And in the social world, there's the wedding photos, and in the real world, there's the actual marriage. In the real world, I know I'm brilliant, I know I'm hardworking, I know I'm attractive. In the social world, you're not allowed to say any of that. So I'm working really hard these days to own what is true because I actually can't stand the fact that there was so much deceit growing up. And I don't mean conscious deceit necessarily, I mean just lack of awareness. And for anyone out there who might have kids listening, please put in earbuds andor pause this or whatever. I think true personal development is basically hearing that Santa Claus isn't real on repeat. Because I was devastated when I found that out when I was a little kid. It's like, well, Santa Claus isn't real, and neither is the Tooth Fairy, and neither is the Easter Bunny. And it was it's like, why were you lying to me? Why, what what else can I trust about all this? And I get it, the magic and blah blah blah. But when you research the history of all this stuff, it's like, God, we we really should be more honest. But again, the lack of honesty and integrity in my upbringing, all the hard truths that no one wanted to face caused so much pain. Like no one wanted to admit that they had an alcohol problem. I was one of the first people to admit it in anyone that I grew up around, and I had the less of a problem than everyone I was around. It's interesting. So my relationship with being a speaker and owning it and owning who I am is basically, I call it the three circles of the ego. The outer circle is what you want others to believe about you. The next layer in is what you want to believe about you, and then the layer in the in the center is what's true, what's real. Yeah, what's accurate. And to me, that's my intention that I set in the breath work that we did. The intention I set was I am here to help these listeners or viewers reach their full potential through seeing themselves, others in the world more accurately. I don't think the reason you're not achieving more isn't because you don't believe enough in what you already believe. I think you think inaccurately, and I do too, but I think way more accurately than I did at 26, and way more than at 16, and way more than at 6. At six, you're hoodwinkable, you know, you have heroes you shouldn't, and then you become an adult and go, Whoa, that guy was a dingus. And you just hopefully get smarter and smarter and smarter, and you start to see yourself more and more and more accurately. So you know, if you're tall, own it. If you're short, own it. Yeah, I think the truth sets you free. I really do. But I I'm accurate thinking is my thing, accurate thinking. And so to answer your original question, owning it has helped me speak more truth into other people's lives, even though it's very triggering for people.

Lauri 30:25

Yeah. And so I'm I'm a yogi, I love yoga, and I've always loved the idea that we're not that we are coming home to our true selves. And I hear a parallel, even though we use different words to describe it. I hear the parallel in that of like it's a shedding of anything that isn't you that's coming from society, that's coming from your upbringing. So that the truth is revealed if you let it be, if you choose it, if you shine a light on all the stuff that's in the way, we come home to ourselves. Scariest thing in the world.

unknown 31:00

Yeah.

Lauri 31:01

Scarest thing in the world. And the most liberating. Scariest thing world and the most fulfilling.

Alan 31:06

Most fulfilling, but scary. I was that's actually why I was rattled. I got off an episode, and Kevin had asked me a lot of stuff about my it was about environmental design, and he was like, Well, what's something that I wouldn't understand? And I I basically went through my entire household and how everything is by design. Everything is optimized for a purpose, every room is optimized. And he's like, Well, what do you mean? And we went through the details. So the contrast between me and other people that I usually try to Hide was very much revealed. In other words, my super weirdo was highlighted.

Lauri 31:39

Yeah.

Alan 31:39

And whenever the super weirdo gets highlighted, it triggers the do I belong? And what we have to remember is we belong here. But yeah. You know, when you're proving the textbook wrong at 16 and the entire statistics class is against you vehemently, including some of your best friends, and then you go to the AP Calc teacher, prove it on a whiteboard, and then the whole class was wrong and you were right, you learn very quickly it's not safe to be more intelligent than other people. It's very socially unsafe to be the smartest in the room because everyone else wants to swim in BS and they know that you're gonna find them out and they're afraid and it triggers their fight and flight response. Like if you came in here trying to pretend to have the most successful podcast of all time and we have 50 million, I would know because I I produce uh 64 podcasts, we have 112 podcasting clients. Like, do you know how many people are so full of it in this space? They're buying followers, they're doing bots on their YouTube channel. Like, I and they know that I know, so they're triggered, so they have to do this with me. And I I sized you up the moment I met you, and I knew you weren't gonna do any of that. So I'm very grateful.

Lauri 33:51

Yeah. I love it. I love how different we are. I love that we're both weirdos. You know, there's a like there's there are amazing differences and amazing similarities to us that I hope people are like, in some ways they could not be more different, and in other ways they're incredibly aligned, and there's something very powerful about that. And I'm incredibly glad that you did come into my world and that you're here. What final words what would you like listeners to know?

Alan 34:30

Okay, so in statistics, there's something called a bell curve. And I think that we usually have a lot of shame when we're on the very low or very high end of a bell curve. So with IQ, I know that I'm on the very, very, very, very, very high end of the bell curve, and it separates me from other people. There's a great book called Flowers for Algernon. It's a fiction book. Have you have you read Flowers for Algernon?

Lauri 34:56

I've heard of it. I don't think I've ever read it.

Alan 34:59

So there's a character named Charlie, magnificent book. Uh, and it's a fiction, science fiction book. And they do a he goes from a 65 IQ to a 185 IQ and then all the way back. And that is a spoiler alert, by the way, for anyone who hasn't read the book. Because the going back part you don't know is gonna happen. But everyone he thought was his friends were were actually making fun of him because he was mentally challenged. And then he, you know, he he went from he went from liking a woman named Alice to falling in love with her as a peer to outgrowing her and thinking she was an idiot. And and that is so the growth journey in a nutshell. And we all go back too eventually. I watched my grandmother, 94 years old, lose her mind. She thought that I was my mom's husband. She's like, oh, you picked a good one. And and it's it's right, funny but also sad.

Lauri 35:51

Yeah.

Alan 35:51

And and the truth of the matter is, is the growth journey as you become more and more and more and more, the thing I would leave everyone with is if you're on the very low end of any statistical bell curve or the very, very high end, there's usually shame. And wherever there's shame, you're avoiding truth. And there's something, there's some level of compassion and acceptance that needs to be there. And so for me, getting a therapist helped me own all of who I am, and I'm still on that journey, of course, obviously.

Lauri 36:22

Yeah.

Alan 36:22

And I I liken it to the Lion King, which is, you know, birth father dies, you know, scar, stepdad, you go back to Pride Rock and realize everything is a lie, and you have to kind of own your truth and f face all of what is true. So I'll leave everyone with this. There's a lot of truths that I could I've even shared here on a public medium. I couldn't even talk about my dad until I was 26 years old. No one talked about his death. Yeah. I didn't. And and now I I've had to face, you know, a hundred more truths that were very painful emotionally. But every time I faced them and accepted them through breath work, meditation, therapy, it's made me own more of who I really am. Because ultimately, a lot of that stuff was covered up. You know, I I'll give you one example. I had an uncle pass away, and the the guy at the altar said, I think we all know Uncle Joe lived lived a magnificent life. And I it took everything in me not to stand up and go, Are you fucking kidding me? He drank himself to death for 30 years. Why can't we own a lick of truth? Yeah. The truth matters. And a lot of people would be upset for me to even say that on a public medium. I don't care if you're listening. I care about the truth, and that is the truth. And the truth will set you free. So um, that's what I would end with.

The "Pivot Pivot" Final Questions

Lauri 37:54

Fantastic. If people are drawn to you, I know you have a re a resource for people, and if people are drawn to you, how can they reach out?

Alan 38:04

I should just remember that. So you can reach out via email. Lori and I talked about this. So I have something called the 25 impact points of effective communication. I have a short story that goes with it. I was coaching someone named Udit. He and I went to college together, and we we partied, we're both math and science guys. I went to an engineering school, and 10 years later I started coaching him, and he had a company he was trying to start, and he was gonna pitch to investors private equity in in Boston. And he's like, dude, how do I speak like you do? And I thought to myself, even back then, like, brother, English isn't your first language. You've never been good at speaking. I don't think you can speak like me, but I wasn't courageous enough to say that back then, right? So instead I drew up this list, all the ways he could speak better and work on his I came up with 14 on the spot of how to effectively communicate more. And eventually I worked on it, worked on it, worked on it. It's been seven years since then, and I now have what I call the 25 impact points of effective communication. And I will share with each and every one of you if you reach out, Alan at next leveluniverse.com. I'm not gonna sell you anything, I'm gonna give it to you totally free, and it's gonna have the 25 impact points of effective communication in a brief description so that you can learn how to be a better speaker. But here's the key these are all principles, tonality, storytelling, powerful pauses, a whole bunch more, but you have to apply them based on your unique personality because if you're trying to be some robotic speaker, it's never gonna work.

Lauri 39:33

Yeah, a robotic speaker, or part of what I love about your story is everything in it was true. He was not ever going to do it like you, and you helped him improve his way. So it's not a robotic way, and it's not trying to follow someone else's style that isn't yours.

Alan 39:58

Yeah. It's principle-based. These are principles. Pauses and no filler words is a principle. Yeah. These are principles. None of them are blanket statements for how you should be. These are principles that you can need to apply to your own context and your own uniqueness and your own personality and your own goals and your own medium podcasting, coaching, training, speaking. So, yeah, this has been amazing, Lori. Thank you so much. And again, that's Alan at next leveluniverse.com. The website is nextleveluniverse.com, spelled just like it sounds, and the podcast is next level university. And uh reach out anytime.

Lauri 40:34

Awesome. All right. Now it's time to slide into our Pivot pivot.

Alan 40:40

Alan What's Pivot Pivot stand for?

Lauri 40:43

Um, so this is stolen, borrowed, paid forward. I loved the TV show Inside the Actors Studio when I was a kid. And when I was gonna start this podcast, my first title for it was Inside the Speaker Studio. Right. Because I run something called the Speaker Studio. And then I didn't want to box myself into that. There are episodes that are titled Inside the Speaker Studio. Uh the who what was his name? James Lipton was the person who hosted that show. And he did a questionnaire that was his version of a questionnaire by Bernard Pivot. So for the first, I don't know, 10 episodes of the podcast, I said that, and then eventually it would be like half the time someone was in tears, and I would say, and it's time for our pivot pivot because it felt like I love it. So we're doing the pivot pivot.

Alan 41:38

Thank you for the story behind it. I appreciate it.

Lauri 41:39

You're welcome.

Alan 41:40

So this is like rapid fire? You're gonna give me the rules and all that? Yeah.

Lauri 41:43

Yeah. Do your best to answer with quickly with one word or a short phrase. Okay. What is your favorite word? Potential. What is your least favorite word?

Alan 41:56

Mediocrity.

Lauri 41:58

What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

Alan 42:02

Helping people reach their potential. What turns you off? Average, ordinary, mediocre, normal. What's your favorite cuss word? Fuck. Nice.

Lauri 42:21

What sound or noise do you love?

Alan 42:30

Uh running water? Birds near water. And peepers. We call them peepers. So uh growing up I had bullfrogs. I grew up on a lake. Peep we call them peepers, and we have them we have them here too. It's yeah, when when the whole last night the whole orchestra was playing, it was unbelievable hot, hot day. What sound or noise do you hate? Uh someone who is belligerently drunk.

Lauri 43:05

What profession other than yours would be fun to try? Acting. What profession would you not like to try?

Alan 43:25

Mechanic. Not interested in cars at all. Except that I loved them, I was forced to watch him put together engines, and I hated every second of it.

Lauri 43:34

And Alan, what do you hope people say about you on your 100th birthday?

Alan 43:42

That dude did all he could with all he had to aim at the highest possible good. And that is the male role model he never had.

Lauri 43:57

Thank you so much for your honesty, your vulnerability, your openness, and for sharing the truth and your truth today.

unknown 44:06

Thank you.

Alan 44:07

Thank you, Lori. This was amazing. Thank you so much. If you ever want to do a round two, just let me know.

Lauri 44:12

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm doing my best to remember this, people. If you love this episode, please do all the things, share it, rate it, come back for more soulful speaking. I'll see you next time.