Next Level University

#1399 - Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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In today's episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros dissect the age-old saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." They unravel the layers of judgment together and delve into the power of first impressions, the significance of noticing tiny details, and how these can guide our actions. They also discuss whether initially judging others is an instinct or if we can rise above to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Links mentioned:
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Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

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Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-palmieri-5b7736160/
Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

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Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

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Show notes:
[3:39] Turning it into a positive
[7:24] How Alan was judged before
[9:05] We are hardwired to judge a book by its cover
[12:48] Nicole shares how Kevin and the Next Level Podcast Solutions team seamlessly help her with her podcast and provide a fantastic experience.
[13:43] The cover's not great, but you would still recommend it
[16:59] You can decide that people are inherently good or do the opposite
[24:28] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 2:

this. Do you have a story for?

Speaker 1:

this, no, okay. So vulnerable story for me. So vulnerable story for me. I'm afraid to look arrogant.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to look arrogant. You already said that you were gonna do. Of course I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 1:

I will do it. What do you look? I just did next to the nation. Okay, your free call again your free call.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, all right, that's good, I like that. I will do. Hold on, hold on, hold on, are you?

Speaker 1:

a, there it is. I can't really get a good flex because the microphone sweating profusely. Okay, this is some people live. I'm gonna do group coaching meaningly.

Speaker 2:

Group 12 reach out a few. Okay, yeah, if you wanted it on group 11.

Speaker 1:

Here we go. 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 1398. Is fear a red light or a green light for you today? For episode number 1399 happy Sunday. Hopefully it's a self-care Sunday. Don't judge a book by its cover. So obviously we have heard that quote many, many times. Don't judge a book by its cover. We've said this on the podcast, though oftentimes that's all you have to judge. Unless you have, what do you got?

Speaker 2:

real quick, yeah, yeah, not to interrupt me good. If you are watching this on YouTube, you can see that I'm holding up a book. It is a book called essentialism by Gregory McKeehan.

Speaker 1:

This is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable books ever written it's in my top three, but the cover is terrible, so I just want to prove that very, very well done, very well done, and that's the episode. We'll talk to you all tomorrow. I went, so Taryn, who is my wife, myself and two of our friends, danny and Sam, went to a brewery this weekend and, as you know, if you've listened to the trials and tribulations of Kevin's fitness journey, I've been crushing it in the gym. I'm starting to see some really nice results. You can't tell I don't really look very good in this lighting and or at Alan's place and or in the shirt and or in general could be, could be any number of things but I was looking good.

Speaker 1:

I had a nice shirt on, I had nice, nice shorts on, I felt really good and it was hot out and when it's hot the veins come out a little bit more. It's just a thing when you're, when you're vascular. So I was walking around and I got up. I had one beer is all I had, because you were carving up, I was carving out a little bit of carbs.

Speaker 1:

And I was walking around and, for the first time in what feels like a minute, I was getting a lot of negative looks. And you might say why? Why are you getting negative looks? I look like a meathead. I looked like a meathead. I had a nice shirt on and it was somewhat tight, so it was showing off my physique.

Speaker 1:

Well, now, here's the interesting thing. I don't really have a negative association with that. For me, that actually suggests that I'm on the right path, because I haven't been getting that lately, because I haven't been as as in, I haven't been in as good a shape as I have in the past. So for me it's interesting don't judge a book by its cover. Can you actually turn that to a positive? Because for me, that suggests I'm actually making progress towards a fitness goal. Now, full disclosure I have had this feeling for most of my life, because for most of my life I've been, I've been pretty good shape. I did a bodybuilding show and I'd walk around in a tank top and I get a lot of attention. Not, I won't say not all positive, I'll say not mostly positive. I remember mostly not positive, mostly not positive. Yeah, I remember one time I was in the supermarket post.

Speaker 2:

You have tattoos and I have judges, people judge.

Speaker 1:

I was in a supermarket and there was this older lady who was trying to get a pack of water like maybe a 24 pack, 36 pack and it was on the very bottom shelf and I intentionally went out of my way to help her because I knew she probably wouldn't ask me Based on my. I was wearing a tank top, I was, it was probably right after the gym tattoos and she was super sweet. But I'm kind of always going through my life with the understanding that I'm very potentially going to get judged more than the average person based on some of the decisions I've made. I've thought about this a lot, so I've talked about this on the podcast. I want to get a hand tattoo of the cats Fudge and Ace. I want to get them on my hand to finish out my sleeve.

Speaker 1:

But there is a part of me that is wondering what kind of judgment that we'll get In terms of is somebody not going to have us come in and speak because I have a tattoo on my hand, even though it's of cats? It really makes me wonder. So I wanted to share that story. That's a vulnerable story for me because I don't want to seem conceited or I don't want to seem arrogant, but I noticed it and that's something that I've been dealing with for a long, long, long long time. When I was in high school, I got accused of being on steroids and it was literally like on the. There was like a forum where all the baseball players from our district would be and there was like rumors of me being on steroids back then and I've never taken steroids, so that was a very- and that was back during the Mark McGuire era.

Speaker 2:

That was With steroids and all that, and I wasn't.

Speaker 1:

I mean in high school I was pretty. I guess I was somewhat jacked, but not to that point.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course not.

Speaker 1:

It's like everybody's when you're in high school, all the hormones flow in. So it's just something that I've experienced for a long time and it's weird how I kind of missed it in a way, and I know that that might not be the experience for you out there, but that's what I wanted to share for this episode and we'll see, kind of where it takes us.

Speaker 2:

The story I want to share. For this I went from 160 pounds skinny, fat, very lanky, very tall to 220 pounds in six months. I do not recommend gaining 60 pounds in six months. Cheeseburger diet it was a lot of food. It was a lot of food and a lot of lifting. I was lifting every single day and a lot of it was muscle but a lot of it was fat. But the point is is that I got very muscular very fast. You actually came up to me and said whatever you're doing, keep it up Trying to be a pillar of support. I appreciate it. Yeah, that was before you and I really knew each other. Obviously we knew each other, but you know what I'm saying. Kevin and I knew each other in middle school. For the new listeners, it's been the bottle in the basement.

Speaker 1:

We pissed what we pissed. I kissed the popular girls, Alan kissed the popular girls. I peaked early. He went. We went to high school together. He was arrogant, I was insecure. He went to college. I didn't go to college. He went to one of the best technical schools in the world. At that same time, I was pumping gas at a local gas station. Pretty much polar opposites.

Speaker 2:

Well done, thank you. That was a fire around. Yeah, wow, and that's the end of the episode. No, so I gained 60 pounds in six months and I went from tall, lanky, skinny, not getting a ton of respect from men, not getting a lot of looks from women, to in shape and much larger, six foot two and just 220 pounds of more muscle, and it was noticeably different how I would get treated.

Speaker 2:

I also, back then, was in corporate and I was dressing really nice. I was working for an industrial automation company and I was you know a bunch of different companies. I was working with GE some of the biggest, and I was very young and I look very young. For those of you on YouTube, you know I still look pretty young, and so back then I looked really young because I'm 34 now and back then I was in my early twenties to mid twenties and I was dressed up, but I used to purposely wear glasses and I used to purposely dress up because I was selling millions of dollars of equipment in some cases to these very large manufacturing facilities with these people that were executives, and I wasn't taken seriously unless I dressed really nice and knew my stuff, because who is this young kid coming in type of thing.

Speaker 2:

And so you know, don't judge a book by its cover. The first thing I want to say is everyone does, unconsciously, whether they know it or not, and I can prove it. I can prove it. You are at a stoplight and all of a sudden a car pulls up to your right and you turn to your right and it's a cop car and there's someone who appears to be a police officer in a uniform, to your right and, you know, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, most like a duck. Your unconscious brain says, oh, police officer, that easily could have been someone who stole a cop car, stole a uniform and is just in a police car. That has happened and that has happened.

Speaker 2:

And so you do judge a book by its cover because the brain is designed to take very little data. There's a book called Blink that proves this, by Malcolm Gladwell, and he talks about how the human mind can take in data very, very quickly and draw snap judgments. And we've had to do that to survive. You know, ruffle in the bushes, the person who went and checked it out ended up not living, getting eaten and didn't procreate their genes. And so, from an evolutionary perspective, all of us are hardwired to judge things, to judge books, by their cover. That's why everyone's social media looks a certain way. That's why our backdrop is a little bit unique.

Speaker 2:

To me, you know, and it's because I'm a business consultant, right, this backdrop is very different than Kevin's because I'm a business consultant, ceo coach, peak performance coach, and I need to be seen as a peak performer.

Speaker 2:

So I have books and trophies and you know, awards and degrees in the background, because the target demographic that I'm working with in some cases are multimillion dollar business owners and they want to see that I've got the credibility behind me.

Speaker 2:

And, at the end of the day, you do judge books by its cover more than you think we all do, but, but make sure that you're still reading the books and make sure that you're looking for more data, and so, yeah, you're going to make a snap judgment, just like all of us do. But there's more. You need to know that there's more than that cover. You need to know there's more beneath the surface. There's always more to the story. There's always more to the person. Sometimes there's people who look amazing on the outside and inside there's not a lot going on, and there's other people that don't look very good on the outside and there's a ton going on on the inside, and I've seen every which way, every type of person from all over the world at this stage, and I'm always pleasantly surprised sometimes and quite alarmed other times, and I think that's just human nature and the way it works.

Speaker 1:

When Tara and I went to Colorado to get married, we did a bunch of photo shoots but it involved us going downtown in Telluride, colorado, with her wedding dress on and my suit on, and it's interesting. We went and got breakfast. Interesting there it is again damn Sorry, I called it out. We went and got breakfast and I was wearing my suit and she was wearing her dress and we got treated completely different, completely different, completely different. And that's a benefit of that.

Speaker 1:

But my intention and my next level nugget for this episode is for you to understand To Alan's point. It's most likely gonna happen and maybe you're the only person who really knows what's in the book. That's always. I've always tried to have that thought of yeah, when I get a sleeve, I know I'm probably gonna get judged Right. I mean, one of the things on my arm is like a goblin or something a demon. I knew that was probably going to bring potentially negative feedback, but my thought has always been I'm very sure of myself and my character and who I am as a man that if you do get to know me, I do believe it would be beneficial.

Speaker 2:

There can be good to this, too, because you have a tattoo that says never quit, and I took that as very, very positive, and that's your Instagram handle as well, at Never Quit Kid, and that is one of the reasons why I decided to work with you quite frankly, and so people are watching.

Speaker 1:

People are judging, people are observing.

Speaker 2:

And we all have to. I mean, we go on a date.

Speaker 1:

I wish it wasn't that way and we could spend our entire lives trying to get the message out there that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and that's been out there for a long time. I'm hoping that you can continue to work on the internal side of yourself and you can change your relationship with how people are gonna view you. If you know this is the interesting thing, you'd still recommend that book, though. Oh, definitely, because it's a great book. The cover is not great no, it's not good at all, but the inside of that book is yeah, that's really what matters. Now, again, I understand.

Speaker 2:

It's not that simple it's not what matters at first. Yes, that's true.

Speaker 1:

When you're at the bookstore. That is true.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's Sorry to interrupt you None of your good. I just recently. So Kevin goes on a lot of podcasts. We've talked a lot about that. We have a podcast production agency. How many clients do we have with?

Speaker 1:

this thing.

Speaker 2:

Oh man, 42-ish. No, no, it's more than that. You said you got like four clients recently.

Speaker 1:

I don't know 46?

Speaker 2:

We'll say 45., okay, 45. So we produce 45 other podcasts. Awesome, because now it's like personal development. And awesome, laura, shout out to Laura, she gets us you on other shows via PodMatch, matchmaker, these different platforms. It's kind of like a dating app for podcasters to link up for guests. And I was going through that process with her because we're considering creating one in our department software solutions and us creating a better one and we're learning from. So I got on the phone with Laura and I was like okay, what do you love about Matchmaker, what do you dislike?

Speaker 2:

We did a SWOT analysis strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. I'm not going to go into it, but the point here is I was looking at these avatars, these podcast avatars, and I was going through the website and, of course, some of these podcast avatars, these artwork is amazing. Some of the artwork for a podcast is unbelievable, but that doesn't mean the podcast is good. And, honestly, at the beginning of our journey we had a cartoon and we weren't taken very seriously it's hard to take seriously a cartoon and then we over swung the pendulum and now we are super, super serious, next level university, probably a little bit overly serious and professional.

Speaker 2:

So we went from not professional at all, to like overly professional. And now we're actually rebranding. It's still going to be next level, university, level up your life, love, health and wealth, but the avatar is going to change. If you go to the website you can see that it's going to start to evolve more towards a warmer, more inviting branding. We know that branding matters, packaging matters, what you look like matters, but it's not everything, and I think that there's implications to this. I think that's important and I think everyone kind of knows this on some level.

Speaker 2:

But it has been alarming at times to realize how much people treated me differently when I was dressed nice versus when I wasn't, and even though I'm the same person inside. You know and Jim Rohn says this I've always liked it. He says people shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and he says they do. He says they do. I hate it, love it, dislike it. People do, and when they have nothing else to go on, that's what they're going to do until they read the book, and so hopefully, people give you the benefit of the doubt To me.

Speaker 2:

I like to. I've gotten burned by this a lot and this will be the last thing that I share on this episode. This is my next level, nugget. You can decide that people are inherently good and be disappointed, or you can decide that people are worse than you think out of the gate, and then you'll protect yourself from disappointment. But you're gonna have to judge and not trust. And so you can decide to trust and get hurt or not. Trust and stay. Stay in. You know no opportunity land for lack of better phrasing. And so, for me, I like to trust, and you know, until you prove otherwise, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. You know, and that has gotten me very hurt, by the way. So that is a. That's a choice.

Speaker 2:

Make sure it's a conscious choice, like, if you choose to see the best in people, you will be hurt because, you're gonna see, you're gonna be very disappointed a lot, but you're also gonna be pleasantly surprised and you're gonna trust people and it's gonna be amazing for every, for every time I was hurt. There's also a Kevin that ended up persevering for every, for every relationship that didn't work out, that I gave a shot, that I believed in. There's another one that did end up working out and so, whether it's a friendship or an intimate relationship, I think I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I like to say people are amazing and good and virtuous, and then they have to prove otherwise, and a lot of people are the other way. They assume everyone's evil and bad. And then you know you have to prove that you're good and it's up to you. But I think you should choose hyper consciously, hyper conscious.

Speaker 1:

This is what I would say. You most likely will get judged by the outside stuff. If you make the content of the book so damn good, you're gonna over deliver. You're gonna surprise people. There is a. That's why there's like a little part of me that I kind of like showing up to a podcast with my hat backwards, with my tattoo showing, because I wonder if people are thinking, ah, this probably isn't gonna be that good. Of course they're.

Speaker 1:

I've worked really hard on the inside of the book. I've worked really hard on the outside of the book too, but I also understand that the outside of this book isn't for everybody. But what can I do to make the inside of the book really, really, really good and something that surprises you and inspires you and makes you question your own perception of how you look at things? That's that would be my next level nugget, because we could. We could sit here and say you know, I really wish more people wouldn't judge a book by its cover and I do. I wish more people wouldn't. But I can't necessarily influence people to do that.

Speaker 1:

What I hopefully can do, through our stories and our experiences and content and sharing our vulnerable truths, is maybe help someone get to the point where they say you know what? Yeah, that's true, but I've really been working on this. I've been working on my character. I've been working on my communication. Yeah, maybe somebody is going to sell me short. Maybe I'm gonna be treated like an underdog. That doesn't mean I have to be one. That would be my long drawn out next level Fire. Anything to say.

Speaker 2:

I think, the house analogy is really good here. There's some houses that look gorgeous on the outside but when you get inside the cellar has mold and the roof leaks and the bones what's referred to as the bones of the house in real estate is not good. And then there's other houses that on the outside it's like nothing special and then you get inside it's like, oh, the bones of this house are rock solid. This is good, and I think that hopefully all of our listeners are working on the outside of their house the landscaping, the gardens, the paint job, the blah blah and also the inside of their house as well, which is the character and the cellar and the redoing the floors and all that I don't know houses.

Speaker 2:

But at the end of the day, I think, are you working on the inner work and also the outer work? It's really good. I know some fitness models that look amazing on the outside but there's not a lot going on on the inside. And then I know some people that on the outside maybe they're not as fit, but on the inside their character's rock solid and hopefully we all are helping everyone to work on both. I'm certainly trying to work on both, for sure, and I've had periods in my life where I was only working on the outside and not the inside. And then there's periods in my life I was working on the inside and not the outside, and now I'm trying to do both.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. As we mentioned in a previous episode I think it was two or three episodes ago we are blessed to be able to do this every single day, seven days a week. We have built a business from this and it's wonderful and we're truly, truly grateful. But we wanna make sure that we stay with what the roots were. So in the beginning we were chatting with the community. All the time I was giving out my phone number, alan was jumping on calls. We wanna make sure we continue that, because that is one of the reasons we are where we are today.

Speaker 1:

So there will be a link below for a free 30 minute next level breakthrough session with Alan. It's not a sales call. It's not any of that. It's just maybe you're going through something and you need a little support. Maybe you just wanna connect with Alan behind the scenes. We have built everything on getting to know you at a deeper level, adding more value and hopefully making you feel safe and like you belong, and that's something we wanna do with this as well. So link will be below. All you have to do is go on there, grab a time. It'll go right to Alan's calendar. There'll be a Zoom link that gets sent, you won't have to worry about anything else and you'll go from there.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people are transactional in life, unconsciously. They don't necessarily know that that's the case, but it's like here's this money for this product, here's this money for this, here's this time for this. I want to be transformational, not just transactional, and so that call you're basically investing your time on a call and hopefully that investment will pay off with transformation, not just transaction. So that's my goal with everything. It's more than meets the eye. I try to have it be anyways and I hope that I over deliver. I hope that I over deliver. Also, we just so huge shout out to group 11. We filled group 11. As of recording this and as this is launching, we have officially done the first session of the stage.

Speaker 2:

Okay, if you did not get into group 11, there were several people who wanted to be in group 11 that I'm not sure we're able to make the cut. We only take 10 people. I send some messages to hey, reminder, reminder, reminder, and then sometimes people are like hey, I am in. And then it's like listen, sorry, you missed the cut. First come, first serve here at NLU. But don't worry, next quarter we are going to do group 12. So if you want to be on the waiting list for group 12,. I have several people on the list already that asked me personally. Hey, reach out to me in October when group 12 starts. I want to be on that list. So reach out. You can email me. Allen at nextleveluniversecom or Kevin at nextleveluniversecom, just say hey, I want to be in on group 12. And we will send you the promo code and we will be sure to reach out to you as soon as that onboarding is happening.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to make a little pivot here. You won't know this if you're listening, because you can't see the episode list, but we're actually going to switch the order of the episodes because it's episode number 1400 next. So I feel like it has to be a, it has to be something. Oh yeah, so for episode tomorrow, for episode number 1400, which is wild we are going to do one of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself. I want to do it because it's hyper conscious and I think it fits with episode number 1400. So tune in tomorrow for that, and thank you to each and every one of you for allowing us to get to 1400 episodes.

Speaker 1:

I don't know how we got here. Most of the time Seems like we just recorded episode 100 and then 1000, and it's wild. It's weird. I have to pinch myself daily. So we are eternally grateful for the amazing community that we have, because, at the end of the day, we couldn't do this without you. We tried for a while and when nobody's listening, it's very hard to do almost anything else. So, very grateful. As always, we love you, we appreciate you. We are extremely grateful for each and every one of you, because at NLU we do not have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow for episode 1400.

Speaker 2:

Work on the inside and the outside, next sublimation.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host