Next Level University

#1412 - An Open Conversation About MONEY

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Let's face it - money is a touchy subject. Often tied to our self-worth, our capacity for happiness, and our sense of security, it's no wonder why. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros peel back the layers of their personal money stories and how these shaped their understanding of financial abundance and scarcity. They discuss their current financial realities and the ripple effects of their past on their current relationship with money. They also discuss the importance of empathy in our relationships, particularly when navigating financial conversations.

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Show notes:
[1:57] Why do you have the financial results you have?
[4:09] Their money story
[10:16] What's your money story?
[12:52] Eddie expresses his satisfaction with Alan's support in his and his business' growth through the Next Level Business Solutions
[13:35] We don't see behind the scenes
[16:13] Overly scarce or overly abundant
[20:42] Spend less or earn more
[25:52] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

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, episode number 1411. What are you avoiding right now today for episode number 1412? An open conversation about money. I Didn't have a great story to connect to this so I didn't want to name it Based on a story, because I kind of want to touch on multiple points in this episode. But here's where I want to start. This is kind of my intention. I Feel that many of us, including myself in the past we are far more reactive than we are proactive. So we learn about health when we lose it. We learn about wealth when we don't have enough and we want. We learn about love after pain, usually usually the pain of Not having money, not being in the shape we want, not being able to attract and or sustain Somebody that we desire. That creates the necessity for us to go learn about the things that we're struggling with.

Speaker 1:

My goal in this episode is to have an open conversation about why do you have the lack of results potentially that you have in your life or let's just say this why do you have the financial results you have?

Speaker 1:

Maybe it's not lack of. Let's just say, why do you have the results you have? For most of us, one of two things. One we had some level of pain which facilitated Necessity for us to go, learn and grow to. We haven't had that level of pain yet. That's my thought behind this episode. We use money every day. Most of us are gonna end up in relationships and the body is the vessel with which we Exist in. But those are the three things that we don't really know that much about. We know more about what's going on On our latest reality television show, our favorite one. Then we do about ourselves sometimes and if we can flip the script on that even a little bit, you're more likely to become conscious of it and then have success in that.

Speaker 1:

Part two Even this conversation, an open conversation about money, if that is triggering to you because of the environment you grew up in, or your friend group, or your family, or your culture or whatever it may be, that's another thing worth looking into. Because if you are, if there's resistance With you talking about something, the odds of you creating that thing are very, very, very low. So if you're not allowed to talk about fitness around your family, the odds of you sharing hey, I had a really successful day when it comes to fitness they're not that high. If you're not allowed to talk about relationships, remember when you were younger and maybe you were 11, 12, 13 years old and your parents never wanted you to talk about relationships like, oh, you're not allowed to have people over, you're not allowed to date, you're too young, it's not gonna have a successful relationship. You'd be hanging out in the woods, right. It's not conducive to a successful relationship. I think of money the same way if you're not allowed to talk about it, it's gonna be very hard to succeed in it.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's go down this rabbit hole a little bit and for our listeners, I want you thinking about your past, about money as well. Was there a lot of talk about money for you growing up?

Speaker 1:

The lack of money. Yeah, there wasn't a lot of no no there was conversations about how are we gonna pay rent. Those are most of the Bring you in on any of those, or are you overhearing them?

Speaker 1:

I Wouldn't say I was brought in from a constructive place. It was more hey Kev, what do you think we should do? Well, I've never thought about diversifying your funds. And it was. It was more a scarcity thing. It was more a scarcity thing. And then when I was I don't know maybe 18, 19 I was still working at the gas station. I remember I had to loan my family money. I think I had to loan like two thousand or three thousand dollars and for me I mean that was I was making eleven bucks or twelve bucks an hour. That was a lot for me, but I remember I remember going to the bank and taking out the money and saying, all right, well, we're gonna see what we have to do here and you know, try to provide for the family. So I remember that when I was younger there wasn't a lot of constructive talk around money. A lot of it was scarcity.

Speaker 2:

When was your first job where you made money, earned money.

Speaker 1:

My very first job ever. I worked at a butcher shop for two days and then I quit. I just didn't show up what age 17 I Was. Instilling high school, I believe so 17 or 18 was my first job.

Speaker 2:

So Kevin and I talked a little bit about where we want to go with this episode, an open conversation about money. How open was your family about talking to you about money challenges? I shared my money story. You know I share it.

Speaker 2:

In group coaching we do a specific segment on wealth creation and Kevin and I both go through our money story and Kevin started out very you know scarce and and definitely Developed. We talk about drive to five all the time. So zero is overly scarce and ten is overly abundant. So ten would be someone who grew up with a ton of money and didn't really know where it was coming from Maybe generational wealth or whatever Kevin, your case. You heard a lot of scare like how are we gonna pay rent XYZ? And so we all need to get to five. Some people are overly scarce, some people are overly abundant.

Speaker 2:

But my money story, in a very, very brief nutshell, was Father passed away at two, stepfather had a good income from three to fourteen, stepfather left at fourteen and we went from like the 90s, when the economy was booming, to we don't know how I'm gonna go to college. I'm getting free lunch at school because we're so broke, we have such low income and I don't know how I'm gonna go to college. I have to get every scholarship possible, financial aid, and I'm shopping at selfish an army, which is, like you know, thrift store, for lack of better phrasing and so we went from overly abundant. I got the Dreamcast and the Xbox and Christmas presents and I didn't really understand that that wasn't normal. You know, we had snowmobiles and we had a yacht and we had all of these we all had. You know, my mom drove a BMW and we owned five acres of land on a lake and I didn't understand. We had a. We had other apartment buildings that we owned.

Speaker 2:

Hmm and by we I mean my mom and stepdad.

Speaker 1:

I didn't own any of this.

Speaker 2:

But when you're a little kid you don't really know any difference. So you go to other people's houses. You're like, okay, this is a little bit different. And Kev came to my place when he was in middle school and he said you're rich you know in his head. I don't know if he said it out loud.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure I did.

Speaker 2:

That's what my friends used to say You're rich and it's like, okay, fair, I guess I don't know at the time. And then after that I was making $7 and 25 cents an hour as a bus boy and a cart kid. So I used to take care of the golf carts at a golf course and didn't know how I was gonna go to college. I was gonna afford college all that. So I went from super, super, super abundant as a Young, young, young kid, at least financially abundant, to Do ridiculously scarce, very, very, very scarce. And I guess in hindsight I do remember at 14 realizing the hard truth of all this and it helped me kind of grow up when it came to money. And then I went into corporate after college, did what I could to go to college, and then I made a lot, a lot of money and then eventually I decided you know what, I wanna go all in on this dream.

Speaker 2:

But for those of you who are out there, if I sound morbid right now, it's because I don't know how to articulate this stuff to people and I'm having a really hard time vulnerably trying to understand where people are at when it comes to money. So I guess that would be my question, which is where are you at? Are you overly scarce, where you're just constantly saving and squirreling away money? Or are you overly abundant where you're just so used to it just flowing that you end up with no money at the end of the month? You know what is your financial situation Zero to 10, where are you at? And, more importantly, analyzing where you came from and what the implications of that are, I mean, kevin and I were talking just yesterday about we didn't have cable. When I was 14, my step-to-death left we didn't have cable. We couldn't I don't wanna say we couldn't afford cable, but we chose not to have cable because we were saving every penny we possibly could and I didn't realize how much that affected me. You know, going from like snowmobiles and ski trips and yachts to we don't have cable. That really messed with me and I had said a little bit, a lot of it. Probably I'm probably lessening it, but I remember I just grew up. I had to grow up. I had to learn that I was actually spoiled and I didn't know it, at least financially spoiled, certainly not in certain other regards. But for those of you out there listening, what was your past? What's your money story. I think that's probably the value we could add is what's your money story?

Speaker 2:

You know where Emilia had the opposite. Emilia started out scarce, extremely scarce, entrepreneurial family. You know, no money, eating canned corn and sleeping with her uggs at night because they didn't put the heat on. And then a tiny, tiny little house bootstrap, bootstrap, bootstrap to. You know her family became wealthy. Wealthy is a relative term, but you know, then in high school it's like whoa. You know the upgrades were drastic after that, and that's entrepreneurship too. You know the beginning of entrepreneurship is nothing short of just terrible, and I'm never gonna sugarcoat that. You know, if you can't grind through tough financial times, you should not be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, that's what I've got.

Speaker 1:

I had another thought when you were saying all that. The average car payment is what? $757? That is the exact amount of money that my car payment is. My car is $757. Now here's the thing If I worked at a job that paid me, I don't know why you and I keep having to clear my throat. Now, because you have to clear your throat, I'm like it's weird.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what's going on. Paulin was very, very high yesterday. That's probably it. If you felt anything that was weird.

Speaker 1:

If I worked at a job that say paid let's just say, $30 an hour, so say I'm making $1,200 a week. Say I'm making $55,000 a year. No, even more than that, $60,000 a year, let's just say, and I go and spend $750 on a vehicle, the difference is I can go make more money as an entrepreneur when if you're say you're working 60 hours a week already, it's gonna be very hard for you to make more money unless you do something within your company. So this is really what I wanna share in this episode. I get a lot of love when I post it about the new car and all that stuff. That doesn't mean you should do what we're doing because we're doing it, because it's completely different circumstances, and I've talked many times about how I bought a $30,000 car when I was making $12 an hour and I did. It was not a good idea, because the only way for me to make more money was to work more hours.

Speaker 1:

What you did have that many more hours. I did not have that. I was already working over.

Speaker 2:

I was already working 60 hours a week, and I was miserable and I was miserable.

Speaker 1:

The difference now is, if I go get two clients that the car is paid for really three and a half clients, but whatever you. This is why it's a very dangerous thing, because we see the front of the scenes but we don't see behind the scenes and we don't know. There's a lot of people out there that have really nice things, that are struggling to pay for those things.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah way, way, way more common than you realize. If you're, if you're listening and this is based on working with business owners and Seeing social media posts versus seeing people's actual bank accounts the fundamental Understanding that you have to have is that every time you purchase something, you're in a way stopping yourself from having the ability to purchase other things and you have to ask yourself is it? Is this what I want to do? The simplest example I have for this and I do this a lot in my mind if I have, say, right now, let's just say you have your, you are Saving five hundred dollars a month. Hypothetically, let's just say you're saving five hundred dollars a month. So you get to the end of the month, all your bills are paid, all your checks are cashed and you have five hundred dollars left and Alan's gonna talk more about snowballing. But Now in my mind I'm thinking, okay, and again, this isn't the whole game, but it's just a simple, a simple example. I'm thinking is this Taco Bell experience worth seventeen of my five hundred pebbles? I have five hundred pebbles sitting in the bank. Is this worth seventeen of my five hundred pebbles, yes or no? I don't think so. I don't think it is. I'm not gonna do. It is this I just bought a new mouse.

Speaker 1:

I think it was like 12 bucks, but it lights up and stuff Hold on, lights up. Yeah, cool, it was like 12 bucks and Of course that's worth 12. That is worth 12. Best idea ever from my 500 because that could help me get. I'm gonna make more than $12 Because of this mouse. It's going to save me time. I'm going to be more effective. Boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you're using a touchpad, productivity cheat code would be you got to get a mouse, get a mouse. Well, I already had a mouse. No, I was using it. I wasn't using a touchpad, but my mouse in some ways, oh yeah it started. I don't know the USB port kept Jeffin and it was the mouse.

Speaker 2:

So think about. I want to go one layer deeper, if that's OK which is Kev, how much time was it taking you to keep having the mouse screw up? That's why I bought it.

Speaker 1:

Right, that's why I bought a new one. Yeah, so if you're in the middle of something, and then it would disconnect and I'd have to unplug it, plug it back in, unplug it, plug it back in, turn it off, plug it back in, and then it would work.

Speaker 2:

And it was like it brings me to a simple concept, which is you invested $12 in a mouse that's going to make you far more than $12. Yes, that is the way to think about money, and if I can get anything to land here, it's that Some people are overly scarce and save, save, save. Other people are overly abundant and spend, spend, spend. And there's a middle ground, there's a five that you spend money to make money. You invest money to make money, and I don't like the word spend because it's really an investment. That is an investment in that mouse. That's a $12 investment. How much money do you think you save or make back by thousands, thousands?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, not now. Long term, yeah, long term, it's a time.

Speaker 2:

Now again. If the business were to go bankrupt tomorrow, you would have made no money on that mouse, I flip it Autograph it.

Speaker 1:

You can flip it, flip it, sell it for $2. Ok, my name's Kevin.

Speaker 2:

I used to be a business owner and a podcaster. It's funny, but yeah, that concept of invest your pebbles in the right person's places things and ideas, including yourself so that you can earn more pebbles, that is the cheat code with money.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and no one ever taught us that.

Speaker 2:

It's like wild.

Speaker 1:

No, not really. No. I always have thought about when I used to make. Say, I made $60 an hour. When I made $60 an hour, my old job was just for number's sake. I would literally think to myself OK, I'm making $1 a minute. Every minute I make $1. The coffee cost me $4. It cost me four hours, sorry, four minutes. The coffee I bought today was $4. It's going to cost me four minutes of my day. Is it worth it, yes or no? I used to do that all the time. Now the problem was I usually said yes, yeah, I'll get a shot for $8. It's worth it. It's not that big of a deal. It's only eight minutes of my time.

Speaker 1:

But imagine if you did that, if you thought to yourself OK, I'd make $1,000 a week, $1,000 a week. My car payment is, let's just say it's $600 a month. So it's $150 a week. Ok, I'm down to $850. Now my rent is $2,000 a month. Ok, that's $500. Things are really, really, really going down very quickly here. I like to think of it from that. Well, those are the two big ones is car and this Food. Food is expensive. Wi-fi phone.

Speaker 2:

I think it's living is number one, which is like housing. I think car is number two and then I think number three is food.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And now I mean think about why my internet's $201 a month? Because we pay for the best and it still sucks. In the beginning of this episode it was Jeffin, but I can't. There's no other one to get where I live.

Speaker 2:

It bothers me so much.

Speaker 1:

Same, same, but that's. We spend a lot on internet too, but again, we run online business, so that's an investment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but I'm just saying, just think of if you. So first thing I would say, if you're out there and you haven't done this yet, this would be a very powerful, powerful exercise. Sit down and write out every dollar you're making and every dollar you're spending, and what is it line up as. Is it positive, is it negative? If it's negative, you're setting yourself up for long-term failure. You're going to be in trouble if you don't become aware of that as soon as possible. Because here's the thing you might not make a change unless you're aware of that.

Speaker 1:

If you say, oh, interesting, I'm not making any money. I had $15,000 in the beginning of the year in my bank account. Now I'm down to 11. It's supposed to be going up. Why is it not going up? And I know it probably sounds like a simple fundamental, but we weren't really taught this. We were taught how to balance our checkbook. I don't know anybody who writes checks anymore, so I doubt your balance in your checkbook. You just use your online thing. That is what I would suggest. That would have been so important for me, thank you. Yeah, I never sat down and said oh okay, my car is this, this is how much I'm spending on internet.

Speaker 2:

You okay with her, yeah man, I'm just, yeah, I'm taking it in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was all, yeah, I was here my nose is itchy.

Speaker 2:

You have an itchy nose.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes I think it's from the um, the microphone things, because sometimes my nose gets itchy too.

Speaker 1:

I Don't think my nose touches it typically mine doesn't either, but I think some stuff, some resids, some residuals might pop off of it up into your nostrils. Okay, I, I would sit down and write out every dollar you're earning and every dollar you're spending and you're gonna have a very, very High-level understanding. Now we always talk about tracking finances. That's a little bit different. Where You're not actually, yeah, you're writing it down, but it's different. At the end of the month, I want you to reflect on the previous month and say okay, how much? How much money did I earn? Simple, you can look at your bank account. How much money did I spend? Simple, you can look at your bank account and bank accounts and credit cards boom and see what that number is.

Speaker 2:

You're in control of a lot more than you realize. Yes, there's there's always pivots you can make. You can spend less or you can earn more, and there's a lot of. I have one client who's doing dog sitting on the side. I have another client who's doing uber eats. I have another client who is doing doordash. There's there's a lot of ways that you can. You can drive lift. There's there's a lot of different ways that you can make extra revenue these days and there's a lot of opportunity out there on the internet in person. There's different jobs you can get. You can get part, two part-time jobs, you can get one full-time job and then a side hustle.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot you can do, but at the end of the day, just start small and figure out where you're at, figure out how much you're spending, how much you're earning and if you're above water each month, keep it up. If you're not, you've got to either spend less or earn more. It is a simple equation. I just, kevin and I, do expense audits. We look at every single month, every single quarter. It's the same fundamentals how much do you earn, how much are you spending and what's the difference? That's the, that's the whole equation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then, as you again, business is the same thing, right, the numbers are just bigger. Hopefully, hopefully, the numbers are bigger, that's really all. It is like. We spent this, we earn this, okay, cool. Here's the difference. What do we do different? What do we do the same? Okay, awesome. What do we do cool from there?

Speaker 1:

Really look into your relationship with money, really, really look into it, because if you're hesitant to check your bank account, if you're hesitant to talk about money, if you're hesitant to ask how much something costs, odds are your relationship with money isn't serving you to the level it could Just like. Your relationship with your body is a thing. Your relationship with your family is a thing. Your relationship with relationships is a thing. Your relationship with sex is a thing. Your relationship with everything, everything and Emilia came up with that, I think, where she shared that with you and you shared it with me you have a relationship to everything.

Speaker 1:

Money is one of the most important things to build a positive relationship with, because it is a requirement. We need it. We need it to do, to do better in the world, to do good in the world. I mean, you can do good in the world without money, but you can do better with money, for sure, definitely One of our early guests, chris Harder I don't remember his tagline, but it was. It was like make. When you make money, you can do better or something, do good. I don't remember his thing, but he's very focused on making money. But he's also really focused on doing good with the money he makes. And I know we villainize the money in many ways and people in movies, the rich people, are usually the bad guys, bad girls in the movie. But If that is a roadblock for you, if that is a piece of resistance for you, that is the place to start working. That is the next level nugget for me. I would rate your relationship with money and then start practicing behaviors that allow you to increase the positivity of that relationship.

Speaker 2:

The only thing I'd add. My next level nugget is Know your numbers. I say that to all my clients. I say that to business clients, personal clients, peak performance clients, relationship talks, coaching clients. Know your numbers, meaning, know how much you earn, know how much you spend and know the difference. And if you're going to have certainty, the benefit is just having certainty. It's the best thing in the world. Having certainty that you're headed towards a good direction, that things are increasing, not decreasing, is Mathematical. Certainty is a beautiful thing. You don't have to freak out, you don't have to worry as much. So the more you master this process, the more free you'll feel.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. If you want to rebuild or get clear on your relationship with money, join our private Facebook group, next Level Nation, where you can have conversations like this all the time. We talk about money in there, we talk about love in there, we talk about health in there All the things that we are about as a podcast. So if you want to rebuild your relationship with any of those things, our private Facebook group is a great place for you. Click the link in the show notes and you'll be in.

Speaker 2:

I got a new client yesterday, super excited, and I said to her she said she's struggling with money. So this is a stretch and I said my main focus in this coaching is to have you make your money back immediately. My main focus will be let's make more money, let's earn more money. So if you want help learning about money, I'm offering a free call right now.

Speaker 2:

I've been studying money my entire life. You heard my money story started out with a lot of money, ended up with very, very, very little money, didn't even know how I was going to go to college, went to one of the best colleges, fortunately, after working really hard, and then went into corporate and made a lot, a lot, a lot of money again and then I went all the way back to zero past zero, actually, with Kevin in our business, and then now we're back to making more than I ever have. So I've been on the roller coaster of money my entire adult life my entire life, not just my adult life. I can teach you about money. I've been studying for about money from mentors that are multi, multi millionaires. I've had clients that are multi, multi millionaires. I know money through and through. I hope that you email me, alan at nextleveluniversecom say hey Alan, I want to learn about money. Let's jump on the phone, let's have an honest conversation.

Speaker 1:

I can help you tomorrow for episode number 1413. We are climbing to 1500. Now yet another mountain to climb why empathy is so important in your relationships. I had a very honest conversation on a coaching call recently and it broke some things loose that I want to share with you all, and we'll do that tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you at NLU, we do have fans. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Level up that money Next time. Nation.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host