Next Level University
Confidence, mindset, relationships, limiting beliefs, family, goals, consistency, self-worth, and success are at the core of hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros' heart-driven, no-nonsense approach to holistic self-improvement. This transformative, 7 day per week podcast is focused on helping dream chasers who have been struggling to achieve their goals and are seeking community, consistency and answers. If you've ever asked yourself "How do I get to the next level in my life", we're here for you!
Our goal at NLU is to help you uncover the habits to build unshakable confidence, cultivate a powerful mindset, nurture meaningful relationships, overcome limiting beliefs, create an amazing family life, set and achieve transformative goals, embrace consistency, recognize your self-worth, and ultimately create the fulfillment and success you desire. Let's level up your health, wealth and love!
Next Level University
#1373 - Overly Abundant VS Overly Scarce
What if the key to unlocking your financial success is understanding your relationship with money? That's what hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros are exploring today as they dive into the concepts of abundance and scarcity and how they impact your financial decisions. They share stories to help you view yourself as an investor and consider the long-term returns of your investments, setting you up for greater prosperity in the long run. They discuss the importance of investing in yourself, your time, and the right tools for success. By acknowledging your tendencies towards abundance or scarcity, you can make more informed decisions and ultimately enhance your wealth-building efforts. As you navigate the balance between abundance and scarcity, they share the idea of asking yourself what you can gain from investing in yourself before spending money on anything else.
Links mentioned:
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Show notes:
[3:31] Misconception about spending money
[8:17] Scarcity bias
[12:58] Alex highlights how Next Level Business Solutions helped him optimize his time for maximum productivity
[13:36] Invest in tools for improving productivity
[17:44] When you're overly scarce, you don't invest in yourself
[22:20] Investor's mindset
[28:15] Outro
I'd rather.
Speaker 2:Sorry, alright, come on, alright, sorry.
Speaker 1:Ready, here we go.
Speaker 2:Next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University, where we teach you how to level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode. It was episode number 1372. What does fitness mean to you today? for episode number 1373?
Speaker 2:Overly abundant versus overly scarce, aka. Is your relationship with money hurting you? We did a group coaching call recently and the second to last session is on wealth creation. We talk all about the amount of money you earn, how to earn more, how to spend less, how to optimize the difference, how to invest. You know all that happy jazz, and one of the things we start with on that call is what's your relationship with money? We can give some really powerful tactics and tricks and habits that you can practice, but if you have a negative relationship with money or you have a money block or you have a scarcity mindset, a lot of the stuff we're talking about is not really going to matter that much. So we were talking about abundance, overly abundant.
Speaker 2:You are potentially the type of person who you don't make a ton of money, but you operate like you do. So I've used the example many times where I made $14 an hour and I went and bought a $30,000 car. I was overly abundant with the amount of money I had. The opposite of that is overly scarce. This is somebody who might make a good amount of money, but they do not invest the money properly. I would say, just as an example if you have $20,000 in your bank account right now and you need a new laptop and you have needed a new laptop for the last year but you don't want to spend the thousand or $2,000, maybe you're overly scarce. It would really benefit you. It's a great investment. Maybe it'll help you make more money because you're, you know, able to work more efficiently and product Productively. What's the word Productively?
Speaker 2:More productively Tough one. So that was something we brought up in Group Coaching and somebody wrote in the chat. they said hey, i don't really know if I've ever thought about this. I don't really know if I've ever put conscious effort into understanding myself at that level. Is that a bad thing? And Alan answered and he said it's not a bad thing. It's definitely room for improvement, though, right. I mean, if you don't know how you operate, how do we improve the way you operate? at the end of the day, our goal in this episode is to talk about that.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of us have a misconception that spending money is bad, and I can understand why, because if you don't know where the money is going or you don't feel like you're in control, that's understandable. But for many of us, we need to invest in nicer things. Maybe it's a new laptop, a new phone, whatever it may be. For me it was a nice bed. right, it was an expensive bed, but it was going to help me sleep better, which is going to help me be more productive, make more money, have more impact all of that. I was definitely nervous to do it. Alan gave me a gentle push, we ended up doing it and it ended up paying off. It has paid off and it will continue to pay off. So that is the jam. That is the goal for this episode.
Speaker 1:So this is something that I believe will end for everyone, because we've all been there to some extent. Okay, let's say you are coming up on December and it's the holidays, and whatever you celebrate, there's gifts usually involved. We learned the hard way one time that it's more challenging to sell group coaching In January. We thought it's going to be easy to sell it in January because New Year's resolutions it's going to be awesome, invest in yourself. Better you, better tomorrow. That kind of thing Turns out it was actually harder than we thought because most people are feeling the overabundance that they experienced in December.
Speaker 1:So in December, whatever holiday you do celebrate, the holidays are a very abundant time, kind of everyone is spending a lot of money. Remember, in corporate, i used to go to these manufacturing facilities and a lot of them would talk about how 40% of our company's revenue is all in December, like that kind of thing, and it's crazy. All the goods go crazy in December. November and December are big months for a lot of companies because a lot of people are overly abundant. They're spending money, a lot of money, and I love the thought behind it, the generosity, the everyone's more generous during the holidays. It's a thing. It's a thing And then it spreads. You see someone be more generous and then someone else is more generous. You donate more to good causes. There's a lot of that going on.
Speaker 2:We have a holiday event.
Speaker 1:For that reason, people are more generous. It's a good thing. So I take nothing from that. But when January hits, you go from very abundant, very maybe overly abundant, to uh-oh, i'm behind on my bills, uh-oh, i got to really get it together, and then You wanted to focus on all these long-term New Year's resolutions and All of a sudden, you're in a spot where you got to go focus on short-term profitability, short-term money. And so Kev asked me before this episode What do I want to land? What is my intention? My intention is to Get everyone to see themselves.
Speaker 1:I don't think people identify as investors not enough people, in my opinion. When I say investor, what do you think of Listener, listening, do you think of like some person on Wall Street, like with graphs and phone calls? or do you think of? This iPhone 14 that I got this weekend is an investment in my own productivity So that I can add more value and generate more revenue at NLU and And. So, whether it's buying a new laptop so you can be more productive, or buying a $14 book that you know will help you be more valuable, help you grow, or Or investing in a course I'm taking a leadership course right now. That's 275 dollars a month. Right, and I know that long term, that investment in me will definitely produce a lot more than 275 dollars a month long term. But we get tripped out because, well, it's not making me money yet, yeah, and so that's what it is.
Speaker 1:If you could go to Vegas and you could put in a dollar and You could make three back, how long would you play? And the answer is as much as possible, if you could guarantee it, obviously. And so You have this overly abundant or overly scarce when you have no money, and it's like cookies in a cookie jar When there's only one cookie left, there's nothing more you want than that last cookie. But you also want to be sweet and you're like well, sweetheart, do you do you want the last cookie? Do you want this last pizza? pizza, because if you don't, i'm gonna hammer it, are you sure? right, that scares. But when you have you've experienced this you buy oh my God, these new cookies are amazing, these new snacks are so good. And then you buy a bunch of boxes of them and then, all of a sudden, it's like eh, Doesn't really happen with me.
Speaker 2:You know, it takes me a while to get really sick of something. So if we buy a couple boxes of something, i'm gonna hammer through them. Okay, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, interesting. Okay, well, the listeners will relate, i'm sure they will yeah, but the level of scarcity bias.
Speaker 1:essentially, when you have an abundance of Ben and Jerry's in the fridge, usually you value Ben and Jerry's a little less than if it's the last carton, and you know this from being in show prep. when you're very scarce with calories, God, ice cream tastes better because you're so used to starving yourself, for lack of better phrasing. And that's abundance and scarcity. If you've never thought about this before, it's very important to start self-identifying where you are in all of this.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also a very interesting thing because obviously we have a lot of products and services at NLEU group coaching, one-on-one coaching. there's a lot of different stuff And oftentimes we'll hear I can't afford that right now and nothing, okay, no worries, no worries at all. But I pay attention to that and I pay attention to the person's behavior after that, because I've heard many times I can't afford that or whatever it is. and then I'll see somebody on social media out somewhere. It's like hmm, i wonder if that's what's best for you. Again, i want you to do you, i want you to live the life you want to live. but oftentimes I think living the life we want to live is based on investing in the right things, not just for now, but for eventually. And I've just seen this time and time again where somebody will tell me because here's the interesting thing when you coach people, you get to see behind the scenes And I've worked with people where they say, hey, is there any chance we can hold off and I can pay next week or whatever it is, but then I'll see them out at the bar spending money on drinks and dinner and looking really, really successful. It's like interesting, interesting, okay, i see what's actually happening here. This is the interesting. the other interesting piece of this Oftentimes the people who are the most abundant are the ones who are going to end up most scarce in the long run, and oftentimes some of the people who are the most scarce in the short run are going to end up the most abundant in the long run.
Speaker 2:But it also crosses a chasm where it can do more harm than good. So, just as an example I've used this before a buddy of mine would literally only go to the store and buy extra meat and stuff when there were deals. So if there was like a buy one, get one chicken, he'd buy. he literally bought a freezer so he could have a bunch of extra meat, and he was just just save money, save money, save money. Eventually it got to the point where one day he was like hey, i got to go mow the lawn, i'll see you in a couple hours. And I was like hey, man, when are you going to pay somebody to mow your lawn? They're wasting your time. And he was like nah, man, i'm going to save money. I said no, no, no. you got to understand. For those two hours you might be able to make $1,000,. why don't you just go do that? That scarcity is great, but it also there is a downside.
Speaker 2:The abundance is of saying I'm going to go buy, i'm going to go hire a coach, and it's $300 every month, and I'm going to hire a coach. it's going to be amazing. That can also put you in a tough place in the short run. Right, i'm going to hire this coach. I'm going to hire a trainer, i'm going to get access to this course. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2:Your money can go pretty quickly, but you're investing in the future. So there's a lot of things that go into this topic Your ability to delay gratification, how far out you can see into the future. Is this something that's going to pay off today, tomorrow, next month, six months from today, a year? Is it going to pay off forever? There's a lot of layers to this, but to Alan's original point, the goal that we want to get across, or the awareness we want to get across, is what side of five are you on? Are you the type of person who you will spend it the minute you make it and then you say I probably shouldn't have done that? Or are you on the other side, where you will not spend it, no matter how much you have, and you understand that's a bottleneck to your long-term growth. That is layer one. And then under that layer there obviously are a bunch of other ones, but without that awareness you're not really going to get to that deeper understanding.
Speaker 1:I tell this story because I think it will help everyone reframe the way in which they see I was in Book Club and I forget how this came up. There's a member of Book Club who has an iPhone 8 or something like that iPhone 7, iphone 5, iphone 8. I forget, and if you're listening, tongue in cheek, it's all good. I convinced her to get a new phone, and the reason why is because this person is a business owner and it's like think about how much time you're wasting waiting for things to load on a slow phone. And we just crunched the numbers. It's like okay, let's say it's. You know you're wasting five extra minutes a day. All right, five times 365. That's 1825 divided by 60. That's 30 hours. So you're I'm showing on YouTube my calculator. So you're wasting 30 hours a year waiting for stuff to load on an old phone. Now multiply how much do you make an hour? And is what I asked her. Let's say it's, i don't know, 50 bucks an hour. Okay, that's $1,500. That you are not. You're waiting for your phone to load. So go buy a $1,500 phone And now that phone will be more useful, which will help you be more valuable, which will help you make more money. It's just that's one of the things that I I hope I can get to land here. Technology is designed to equip you.
Speaker 1:Kevin and I used to have to drive, for him an hour to the studio, for me a half an hour. That's an hour and a half of our time. How many times did we, how many times a week, did we, go to the studio? So let's just do some numbers here. Probably three, 1.5 times, three times 52. So we were wasting 234 hours in the car. Now we now how much money do we make to coach?
Speaker 2:It's actually times times two, because that's only one way. It's an hour and a half each way.
Speaker 1:Okay, so 1.5 times two, which is three hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Times, three times a week, which is nine hours times 52. So that's 468 hours of our time per year. Now let's multiply that by how much we make an hour, which is currently an average of $150 an hour, so that's $70,000. So why wouldn't we pay for StreamYard and deck out our home offices, not to mention the amount we're saving on? So everything's a bit of a math equation.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go down the math rabbit hole, but when you start thinking this way, it will change the way you operate. So everyone think about how much you make an hour and then all of a sudden start calculating things you waste time on in that frame. And here's the truth. I made $7 an hour when I was a kid, when I was 16, i was a cart kid in a bus boy, i talk about that. So when I made $7 an hour, it made sense for me to mow my own lawn, because if I pay someone $12 to mow my lawn and I go make seven, i'm actually losing money. But now if we make $150 an hour coaching, which is our genius zone and we pay someone 12, then we're making a lot more money, which is good for the economy, which is good for the high school kid. The high school kid needs that. It's just an awesome positive thing for everyone, assuming you're doing it ethically And I just don't think people think that way So hopefully that helps.
Speaker 2:And just as long as you're intelligent with the time, you're buying back also, if you're playing Angry Birds, it's not really going to work. Alan's against Angry Birds.
Speaker 1:today It's the second one I've heard.
Speaker 2:I've never played Angry Birds. I don't know what all the hype is about, but this is a really important understanding because if you're overly scarce, it's very, very hard to invest in yourself And I understand that at a very deep level, which keeps you scarce, definitely. I remember Alan and I went to a Brennan Bershard event And Brennan Bershard had a course on how to make courses And I remember thinking, when he was talking about it, i was like I don't know, i think we need this, i feel like we need this, i think this would be super valuable, but I don't know. So I think it was $3,000. And I was like I don't know about that, that is a lot of money And I don't have any money. And I think you and I talked about it And you're like you got to do it. If you feel like it'll be important and you think it'll be valuable long term, you got to do it. So I remember I went to the table Because you had to go out of the room outside to a table And I remember going through I think I went through my wallet and I was like what credit card maybe can I put this on? And I think it was the Discover And I was like here we go And I ended up buying this course. Luckily, one of our mentors bought it. I sent a refund in immediately And he gave us access to it because he never ended up using it. But the thought process was will this be worth it? not today, not tomorrow, but over the length of time. I'm not going to make $3,000 today. I'm not going to make my money back today, but I will eventually, if I use this correctly. Right, this is the interesting thing. It's almost like are you overly abundant or overly scarce with your time and your money? because that's a really interesting thing. If you're super scarce with your time, you have to kind of be abundant with your money in a way, because it allows you that option. Advice versa.
Speaker 2:Somebody asked me recently. They said who do you work with at Next Level Podcast Solutions, your podcast thing? And I said it's usually busy people who are gonna hire somebody anyway because they don't have the time to do it. They're scarce with their time, but they're more abundant with their money because it's buying them more time, which helps them make more money in the long run. Now, that's not every client we work with, but that is many of the clients we work with.
Speaker 2:This is something I've also noticed. The clients who have the most money are usually the clients who are the best at investing in themselves. I'm not talking to Stockmar or any of that. The clients who are struggling to grow are usually the ones who are the most scarce. Now I understand at that stage in the journey, sure, but I've also had clients who are not quote unquote crushing it, who are very, very abundant because they understand that's what's best for them long term. And I've had that conversation. They say I know this isn't gonna work for a year. I completely understand. It's like interesting, you're very abundant even though, when it comes to your perspective, you understand you're probably gonna have to be scarce for a little while. So I just want to add that, because that again, that's another layer, but I think it's a valuable one.
Speaker 1:And when Kev says investing in themselves, I also want to say investing in tools for success. I found out recently someone who is a dear friend of mine, actually, and he doesn't have a laptop, And in my mind it's like, ooh, like technology, like computer skills, right, I mean, think about it. We take them for granted, but if you don't have computer skills, you're in some serious trouble in the 21st century. That's just a fact, And I remember I was gonna donate my laptop to them. But tools for success is my sort of hashtag. Tools for success.
Speaker 1:This bottle was expensive, but it tracks my water. And this phone was expensive, but I use it every single day for business. This laptop was expensive, but it's unbelievable and I use it every single day. You know, a gym membership is expensive, but it's an investment in yourself, And so it's not just investing in yourself, it's investing in tools. You know, Emilia and I are gonna have a home gym one day and it's gonna be very expensive. We're already talking about it. We're already actually preparing for it. We might spend $25,000 on a home gym, but not yet.
Speaker 1:But it's all part of the investor's mindset. So before we go, Kev, let's boil this down to something really simple, that someone can take away One thing each. You first, son, Invest in tools that make you more productive And if it's not gonna make you better or make you more effective, try hard not to invest in it. I invest good amounts of money in food because the right food not only do I love it, but it fuels my body, It fuels my mind. I think of everything as an investment. You know so sushi Saturday is expensive, but I'm telling you, I feel like a million bucks on Sunday, Thank you, And I just think that people would benefit from that.
Speaker 2:I would say anytime you're spending money, ask yourself what am I looking to get out of this? And sometimes you're going to spend money for comfort, other times you're going to spend it for investing in yourself and your future. Yeah, just ask yourself that. I just think that's a really good question to ask because it'll help you become more aware. It's almost like you're either investing for right now let's say this you're either optimizing for right now or you're kind of optimizing forever. In a way. If I go buy Burger King today, i'm investing in right now. I want it right now.
Speaker 2:It's not what's best for the future. Most likely I have food at home. I could save the money, i could save the time. I could eat more healthily. I could track my calories better. There's a lot of things I could stack to make that more positive. That would be a very in the moment purchase.
Speaker 2:But when you're spending $1,500 on a cell phone, that's not in the moment, that's forever. That's a long, long, long-term investment that's going to pay for a long, long period of time. So if you can say that for a purchase, you might be in a really good place. Now again, don't spend more money than you can afford to. But if you have money and you're thinking I could spend $1,500 on a vacation or $1,500 on a laptop, the laptop's always going to be the best because it's going to pay off for a longer period of time. Productivity, competence, opportunity versus a vacation great, you're going to have pictures on the beach and you'll get some R&R and make some memories That's great. But if we're talking purely the most beneficial use of your money, i would say it's probably the laptop. I know that's not one thing, that's like 50 things I said, but that's what I would say.
Speaker 1:Strong work. And the cool thing is, if you buy a laptop and get good on it and you develop really good computer skills, now you can go on 50 vacations.
Speaker 2:Nice. Hold on Later on, maybe 30 years down the road. Yeah, yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe a vacation once a year or whatever. There's always ways to generate more revenue too. So it's good, generate more income. I should say Revenue is for business, income is for personal. They're the same thing. Money, they're the same thing, it's money.
Speaker 2:If you are listening and you haven't joined our private Facebook group, next Level Nation, please join. The link is in the show notes. The reason it is private is not because we want it to be an exclusive club and you've got to pay money and have all the right answers to get in. It's because we want you to be safe, and I know social media is sometimes a scary place to put yourself out there. Next Level Nation is not that. It is a very safe place, so please join. We would love to have you And the link will be in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Speaking of safe places that you can be yourself, group coaching starts in 22 days, one hour and 24 minutes and 24 seconds. This is our 11th round. Speaking of investing in yourself, here's what I can promise you. Number one we have a promo code. If you're a listener of this show, email me or Kevin, both of which our emails will be in the show notes. Alan at nextleveluniversecom. Kevin at nextleveluniversecom. You can copy and paste it. Email us, say, hey, i want the promo code. We'll send it to you.
Speaker 1:The price goes to $96 per month for the three month program. So it's a three month program, $96 per month, and here's my promise You will learn something that, over any extended period of time, will earn you a lot more money than that, and that's my promise. And if not, if you absolutely hate it for whatever reason, reach out to Kevin or myself and we will give you your money back. Okay, click the link in the show notes. There will be a video. Everything you need to know is in there. And if you really want to know what this program is like, we will send you the Instagram handles of people who have graduated from the program and they will tell you their experience, which will give you, hopefully, more certainty.
Speaker 2:Tomorrow for episode number 1374. I feel like we've been in the 1300s for a minute.
Speaker 1:I'm ready to be in the 14th.
Speaker 2:I know I feel like forever, man, maybe I've probably been messing the numbers up. Who even knows For 1374, one thing so many of us want but aren't getting. Kevin said something very, very interesting to me during one of our podcast episodes And I was like you know what? That would be a really, really valuable episode to dig into that. So I'll leave it at that, a little cliffhanger for.
Speaker 2:You think I said something good, rarely happens, but it did happen that time, that one time it did. But yeah, that's why it stood out so much to me and I remembered it. No, you say many valuable things very, very often. As always, we love you, We appreciate you, Grateful for each and every one of you At NLU. We do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Invest in yourself Next motivation.
