Next Level University

#1441 - Here's Why You Don't Want To Get Lucky

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Success isn't about getting lucky or going viral but understanding the processes leading to your results. Today, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the importance of knowing how to achieve what you want - whether it is building a billion-dollar business or feeling accomplished every day. They discuss how the secret to success is awareness and knowledge, traits that are far more reliable than luck.

Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Download the app: Optimal - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/optimal/

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Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com   

The best way to track your habits is here! Download the app: Optimal - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/optimal/   

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

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Show notes:
[2:47] Not knowing how you got results
[8:02] Fast money does not last long
[12:24] You need the recipe
[14:48] Austin shares his top-notch experience working with Kevin under Next Level Podcast Solutions
[17:58] Learning how to fish
[25:50] Be cautious
[29:46] 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 and help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, episode number 1440,. The pain that comes with new awareness. We did a blast from the past in my DMs Today for episode number 1441, here's why you don't want to get lucky. We live now in a go viral, get lucky, get the right shout out, just get giant opportunities without having to put in effort. Civilization. There's a lot of that going on right now. My goal in today's episode is to dissuade you if that is a word from wanting to get lucky or go viral or get to where you want to go very, very easily.

Speaker 1:

I have a group of clients who are in the coaching industry. I went on their podcast a long time ago. We ended up working together. When I started coaching them I said, hey, how is business? I want to talk about the podcast, I want to talk about business. Where can I add value? Pretty much, they said we're not making almost any money with the business. I said, okay, let me figure out how I can help. I asked questions. We dig deep. A couple of calls. Later we get to the point where I said, okay, I want to focus solely on business. I don't care about the podcast, let's just focus on the business right now, because that's what we need to do.

Speaker 1:

What did you do at the beginning in order to get success in your business, aka? What are the things we can point to that brought you results? What are the inputs that you were putting pressure on to that gave you outputs? They said, oh, nothing really. When we started, people just came. It was a lot of word of mouth. I think we just got lucky. I said, ah, there's your problem, that's your problem. Your problem is you got results that you don't know how you created. This is what I told them. You've heard me say this before if you're watching or listening.

Speaker 1:

Understanding how you get a result is just as important as actually getting the result, because if you don't understand how you got the result, you might not be able to get it again. If you couldn't teach someone how you got your results, how do you teach yourself to get those results again in the future? That's what I've been working with these clients with for a while now. Now I've given them a bunch of different tactics books to read. Our coaching calls are purely on hey, how do we get more business? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? This is what's working for other people. This is what's working for us. If you get lucky, it seems really good because you might get a lot of results that you didn't expect to get, or you might get a lot more results than you have right now. The downside of that is, if you do not understand how you got those results, it's very hard to replicate in the future.

Speaker 1:

The lottery we've talked about that. There's a reason. People who win the lottery end up with less money than they had before. When you win the lottery, they don't send you a book that teaches you how to keep the money. They don't care. They probably don't even want you to win in the first place. They're probably frustrated that somebody actually won. They give you a bunch of money and if you don't have the processes or the understanding or the awareness going back to the previous episode of how to make that amount of money, you probably also don't know how to save it or invest it properly.

Speaker 1:

That's another one of those examples of luck. Last thing if you go to the casino and you walk up to a slot machine and give it a pull and on that pull you win a million dollars. That is pure luck. If you go to a game that requires some level of skill and you think you're going to get lucky, you might end up losing all of the money you just won, because there's a lot more strategy that goes into other games. I'm not saying luck is a bad thing. I'm not saying aspiring to be a lucky person is a bad thing, but I know a lot of people who got very lucky early on and they lost it all because they had no idea how they actually accomplished those goals. Alan, you and I can probably think of 10 people off the top of our head.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying that to shame them or I'm not happy that happened to them. I just don't want it to happen to you, low key. I've said this before. I wasn't grateful for this at the beginning, but I am grateful of it now. I'm very happy we didn't get lucky and we didn't go viral, because if we did, I wouldn't know a lot of the things that I know. I wouldn't be able to coach at the level I coach. I wouldn't have a lot of the awarenesses I have. In the beginning I was hoping for that. I did a video.

Speaker 1:

I remember when I lived with Matt I was like, dude, hey bro, what do you have on the calendar today? Man, I have an idea and this could be it. I mean, I'm serious, man, this could be the thing. And I said this is what's going to happen. I'm going to run it's so snowing, it was a snow day. I'm going to run and do a front flip off of the porch. Okay, listen, hear me out, hear me out. I'm gonna land in the snow pile in the front lawn next to a protein shake. I'm gonna hammer the protein shake and ready. Imagine this. Just think of this man ready. The title at the top of the video is when the new girl you're talking to says she lifts. What do you think about that man? And he's like dude. Yes, that is it.

Speaker 2:

So we pretty much spent Were you guys high when you came up with this?

Speaker 1:

I don't. No, probably not. I mean, it was probably. I was gonna say it was probably 11 o'clock in the morning, that really wouldn't have mattered, but no, no, I don't think so. I think I was actually working that day and I was trying to think of creative ideas for social media, so spent an entire afternoon doing this video, editing this video, and it got a little bit more reach than usual, but we didn't go viral.

Speaker 2:

Now the lesson, folks. Yeah, if you spend your time chasing butterflies like that, you're. I was thinking about this earlier. Incremental progress is what eventually can lead to virality. You know, I can think of dozens of businesses that they were just trying to get a little better, little better, little better, little better, little better. And then all of a sudden they hit a tipping point. There's a book by Malcolm Gladwell called the Tipping Point. It talks about this. It talks about how consistent, small, innovative improvements over time eventually reach a tipping point and then you go viral, can I?

Speaker 1:

add something real quick.

Speaker 2:

Of course it is a song.

Speaker 1:

you may have heard of this artist, may have not have heard of this artist by the name of Lil Wayne. You ever heard of Lil Wayne? He has a song and in that song he says and you've heard me say this slow paper is better than no paper.

Speaker 2:

So that's what you interrupted me for. Yeah, nice Slow paper is better than no paper, I think.

Speaker 1:

Then it's fast money don't last too long, learn to pace it. So kind of what you're saying Fast money don't last too long, it'll learn to pace it.

Speaker 2:

And slow paper is better than no paper, it's true.

Speaker 1:

It was, it's true. It was Lil Wayne, not me.

Speaker 2:

Okay, no, but I appreciate the reference.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate you appreciating the reference.

Speaker 2:

I'll quote academic books. Kev will quote rappers. It's a good combo. Where was I going with that?

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, that's my bad.

Speaker 2:

No, it's okay. It's okay. This is what I was thinking about with Kev earlier. Getting lucky, I've had I had a client who made $450,000 in one week. I had another client who went from six K a month to 30 K a month in a really short amount of time. I had another client who made $20,000 in one hour at a webinar. What I would tell you is that that was not repeatable. I've had so many clients. I had one other client who made 25 grand in one month.

Speaker 2:

I know that sounds like life changing money and in some cases it is genuinely okay, but it's not repeatable, it's not sustainable and it's definitely not what's going to get you wealthy long-term. And whether it's wealth, health, love, it's the same concept. It's the compound effect, it's incremental focus on improving every single day over time and eventually you do reach a tipping point. Maybe there will be a time where you and I go viral, but what's ironic about that is it's not gonna happen because we're trying to go viral. It's gonna be happen. It's gonna happen because we learned how to speak properly on the microphone. No, it's gonna happen because we put in consistent effort and we tried to improve every episode every time, and I do believe that to be true.

Speaker 2:

I don't want people out there chasing quick fixes and magic bullets and get rich quick schemes because they're mostly full of it. It's a fugazi, it's all smoke and mirrors. A lot of that stuff's not real. I've had coaches. I've had mentors. I've had some really famous coaches and mentors. I've had some multimillionaire mentors and coaches. I've coached people that have a genuine level of fame. Okay, I'm telling you it was decades of work behind the scenes that no one ever saw, and sometimes it was work in front of the scenes that brought the fame, but it was decades. It wasn't overnight, it was never overnight. It just appears that way because you didn't know about that person until suddenly. And so short-term success for long-term failure is what luck is. Luck is a quick win at the expense of true learning and true growth and true personal development and skill development. Getting lucky. You don't develop skills. If that were to go viral and we were to have a successful podcast because of some protein shake front flip video brother, think of how many lessons and skills you and I would not have had to develop.

Speaker 2:

We've met some people who have really successful shows that we asked them how did you grow your show. How did you do this? 12 million lessons, how? How did you do it? Seriously, like taking notes, we have our notebooks out. Kevin and I are like how'd you do it? Well, you know, you got to interview the right guests and they don't really have any answers. They were consistent and they interviewed successful people and that was all they could give us. That's because they went viral. They had the right place at the right time, with the right name, with the right marketing and it worked and that's awesome. But it's not repeatable, it's not sustainable, and whether it's the client who made 450 grand in one week or the client who made $20,000 in one hour, both of those clients are still on the struggle bus the majority of the time, because it sounds like life changing money, but it's not it's. It's a giant lucky breakthrough that you can reinvest in the system that actually creates sustainable growth.

Speaker 1:

It puts you in a position of perception, not power. It looks like you're really crushing it and you might have results. It gives you a lot of results, but it doesn't give you the recipe. Results without the recipe. Imagine if I came to Alan and said hey man, I got 50 cookies for you. You want to? They're yours. You can have my tower and I were baking we're going to a family thing and we cooked 50 too many. I Jeff the math. You want them?

Speaker 1:

And he said yeah, yeah of course I'll take the cookies. You, alan, if all people never let some meal go to waste, ever, ever, and I respect that, I respect it, but I'm not going to. I can't tell you how we made them, though. You can have them, but you can't ask me how we made them. I'm not going to give you the recipe.

Speaker 2:

Totally fine.

Speaker 1:

What happens when Alan runs out of cookies, not going to be able to make them, you're not going to make them. Now, yes, in this analogy, you can go buy other food, but if that's the only meal he had access to, he'd be Jeffed. You'd be in trouble. You'd be in trouble where he might be able to say and again, I know this is like very hypothetical, but he could say yeah, what if I gave you $50 for the cookies and then you taught me how you made them? Could you do that? Is that something you'd be willing to do? No, because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I actually bought these at Shaw's and I just told you we made them.

Speaker 1:

But whatever, yeah, I come over and whip together a recipe real quick Three and a half cups of butter, three pounds of sugar here, mix that together, see what you get. But one is a position of Possibility. In going back to one of our previous episodes, awareness If you're not aware of how to succeed in a relationship you're going to, it's not going to last very long. I remember I felt with one of my partners I felt like I got lucky. I met this beautiful girl who I was like this is awesome, I got super lucky finding this person. I just didn't. I didn't have the skills to sustain the relationship and it didn't last. Right that I can imagine.

Speaker 1:

There's people out there that feel like they're lucky when they get a job, but they don't know how to actually get the next job because they didn't decide and then design, shout out to the brand and if you're listening, that was the name of your podcast. They didn't know how to do that. Luck seems like a really good thing. It does, but In a vacuum, in a very short period of time. It is, but not in the grand scheme of things. It sets you up for failure later, unfortunately. I wish it wasn't set up that way.

Speaker 2:

But it is. I have a client who wants to build a global multi-million dollar business and her dream is to one day be a female billionaire. And and she came to me one time I've told this story before, but it's one of the most powerful ones I have she said I'm just not self-aware enough. And I said that's not it. That's not the issue. You're one of the most self-aware people I've ever met. Obviously, you can always use more self-awareness. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be more self-aware, and it's very humble of her to say that. I appreciate it. You know, only an unself-aware person would be like I'm so self-aware, so it's ironic that she said that. But I'm like that's not it. You know what it is. You just don't know how to build a billion dollar business. You just don't know how. It's not an easy formula. Building a billion dollar business is not easy. That's why there's only 3400 of them, or whatever 2500 I I said you just don't know how. I'm let me teach you how, and, as arrogant as that might come off, I've been studying business my entire life. That's all. I just know the recipes and NLU. If if we're different than other podcasts, it's because we built a real business underneath it and a lot of these podcasters don't know how to build a business and that's okay, I'm not. I hope that they ask for help. But to your point, kev, that cookie analogy, all right.

Speaker 2:

Person three people walk into a room. Kevin offers them all 50 cookies. Person one says, f yeah, man, throw him in this bag, I'm out, mm-hmm. And they hammer the cookies that night it's a great night. Second person says honestly, what if I let you keep half the cookies and Then the other half you sell to someone else? Or I sell to someone else and I pay you for you to teach me how you made them All right? And then the third person says honestly, I don't want to single one of your cookies, I'm gonna pay you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna Know, I'm gonna take all the cookies, I'm gonna sell them, all All right, and we're gonna partner up and you're gonna keep making these cookies and I'm gonna sell them for you and we're gonna build a business and tell you a pound sand, okay, but I'm very persuasive, because my one skill is sales and persuasion right.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay, but the point is, is that? Third, it's it's give a minute, give a man a cookie. Give a man a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk for sure, because milk's delicious. No, if you give a man a fish, you teach a man to fish. If you give a woman a fish, you teach a woman to fish. I don't mean the man woman thing. The point is is that it's way more valuable to learn how to fish and To teach others how to fish and build a fishing company. Then it is to just eat 50 cookies. I did a lot of dancing around there, but I hope that that was valuable. The other is cookies. You name it.

Speaker 1:

The other thing with this is you cannot fix a problem that you don't know. You don't know why it exists. There's this weird thing in my car when you Put it in reverse, the passenger Mirror automatically goes down in case you're backing up and you don't see. You don't hit a curb or something, and I hate it. I can't see what I'm doing. I don't like it. I'd like to look in the mirrors. That's just, though I've always driven that way. I can't, I couldn't stand it and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I could not figure out how to fix it. I had no idea how to fix it. So I googled it, and you would. There was a list of of names under this question that said hey, does anybody know how to fix this? Nobody in the world seems to know how to fix this. Somebody said, yeah, you just turn the mirror to the other side and I'll never do it again. Okay, now I know Tara asked me that question when she was driving the car and I said no, yeah, you, just you got to put it to the other side, just put the switch on the other side. I'll never do it again. That's just awareness.

Speaker 1:

Imagine if I went through the car and I was just hitting buttons. It's like, yeah, I don't know, turn the. I'll turn the steering wheel a quarter of the left and turn the left blinker on. I'm gonna hit the windshield wiper fluid. That fix it. It fixed it. Okay, what was it? I don't know. I just did a bunch of random stuff and it fixed it.

Speaker 1:

Then I wouldn't be able to teach it. So again, I know it's a silly analogy or story for this, but the next level nugget for me is think of, think of the things that you could teach other people. The reason you can teach them is because you actually know it. You probably didn't get lucky. Think of the things that you can't teach other people or you feel you would struggle to. Maybe those are the things that you haven't really Come to fully understand yet. There's a lot of things I I couldn't teach people. I Made steak for Taryn when we were up in Vermont on the grill and I literally said to her I said how is it?

Speaker 1:

And she says it's really good and I said I don't feel in control of this at all. I have no clue what I'm doing. I don't know how long. I don't, I don't feel in control. I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel like I got lucky and I said it's not a very good position to be in because I don't know if I'm gonna get lucky next time and You're gonna get food poisoning because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Speaker 2:

So Another, another analogy this is the way I want to go with this quickly to make that point land, and then we will bounce Emilia and I on the conscious couples podcast. We we talked to couples about how to make their relationship flourish. But I'm very honest with our listeners and with our event attendees I don't know how our relationship is flourishing because she's doing things that I'm not. I don't have the recipe. So, for example, emilia and I, three and a half years, we've never fought. I'm certain and I'm not just saying this to be humble or to self-deprecate I'm certain it's because of her emotional regulation. I didn't even know what emotional regulation was. I didn't use that word. I hadn't studied it. Emotional intelligence I hadn't done a lot of study around that. I've now read a bunch of books. I've had to learn this stuff in order to hang in the conscious couples podcast and to be able to do these events. So these events are for the people who attend and, if you ever want to attend, they're amazing but they're content. That Emilia's been studying since she was a kid. But when we talk personal development, professional development, career development, business development, I've been studying that since I was a little kid, so I know the recipes and so I coach Emilia, my own intimate partner, my life partner, my future wife. I coach her on personal development, professional development, business development and career development. When she was at Alchemy's, I was coaching her on career development. It was unbelievable. I was always coaching her behind the scenes on that. I know how Alchemy's works. I know how the board of directors works. I know the ins and outs of the company. I know their org structure. I just know that stuff. That's always come very natural to me. So if you're out there listening to this, what is the thing that you do have all the recipes for? And then what are the other things where you did get lucky? I got lucky with Emilia, kind of she's the reason we don't fight for sure, more so than me. I obviously didn't fully get lucky because I developed myself into the man who could attract that, but at the end of the day I'm really being coached by her in that arena way more than I can.

Speaker 2:

And then the last piece of this is you see these people online with these results. They didn't get them because of their recipes. Imagine if I was on here saying the opposite. I have the best relationship ever. Imagine an infomercial ready. I'm on social media, facebook.

Speaker 2:

If you come to our paid webinar, I'm going to teach you how to have an intimate relationship where you never fight. Can you imagine? I'm four and a half years into a relationship and we've never fought once, we've never stormed out, we've never raised our voice, we've never had a problem. And I just said I have my three simple steps to have a relationship that's magnificent, that you never fight. That would sell. I could make a video that sells. That would be a lie. I'm not the reason and, by the way, there are no three simple steps. The way you do it is become more emotionally mature every day for the next three decades and hopefully you can emotionally regulate in those trigger moments and then hopefully you have a partner who's really good at stopping you before you blow your lid, because that's the truth. That's the truth that these infomercials aren't telling you. It's like, of course, the lure works really well when you're a professional bass fisherman.

Speaker 1:

And then you buy the old banjo, minnow the old banjo minnow, I am still salty.

Speaker 2:

I got hoodwinked, man. It turns out you have to be a really, really, really good fisherman with fish that have been starved for obviously weeks in that infomercial. If you've ever been hoodwinked by the infomercial of a Wonder Mop or anything that whole, set it and forget it. It turns out if you don't know how to cook, that thing doesn't work. Or the eggs in the microwave for Kev.

Speaker 1:

Just don't get me wrong. No, no, no. Eggs in the microwave work, bacon in the microwave bag, not crispy like they said.

Speaker 2:

They lied to you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're supposed to be able to throw fish, just fish. Throw fish with some breadcrumbs and crisp that some be right up. No, no, no, false. Now this was also. I was in middle school, so this is a long time ago, so now maybe you could get bacon in a bag.

Speaker 2:

I don't know, but I do know that low awareness is dangerous.

Speaker 1:

I would say so.

Speaker 2:

When you're watching these infomercials.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing Bacon in a bag, could you?

Speaker 2:

imagine Three easy payments of $39.99 for bacon in a bag, you know, and then it looks like it came out of the ground.

Speaker 1:

Can I throw a quick awareness out, for maybe for you you might know this already. I don't know, but for you, whether you're watching or listening the reason it takes four to eight weeks For those things to ship To you, the stuff that you buy on TV, is because they don't even exist yet. When you pay for it, they say another one All right, let's make sure we got this and let's get it delivered. I don't think they actually create the product until somebody buys it. That's why it takes so long.

Speaker 2:

So a little awareness there, just be, be cautious. The, the magic bullet, the quick fix magic bullet six minute abs, the all of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

Just be Real, tried, true hard work, smart work, learning, personal development, all of that stuff. I think you're better off if you, you know, yeah, you can play the lottery and buy scratch tickets and maybe you'll get wealthy. But if you learn how to build a business where you help people and you learn how to invest and you learn about money and you listen to the next level University podcast and we talk about money, you're gonna be much better off. And I just I'm, I don't like. I Don't like this idea of huge results with minimal effort. I think it's all BS. I.

Speaker 1:

Had a. I was gonna do this quote on social media but I was like, yeah, it's kind of a lot. The only people who have ever made money by doing less are the people who are making money From people they're telling to do less. It's this weird thing where I could just make a course on how I only work two hours a day and make a million dollars, and you might say this is it, I want to work two hours a day, make a million dollars. Well, the truth is I haven't made any money yet, but if I get enough people to buy this course, I might actually make a million dollars. Then I'll be able to do a course on how to make a course to make a million dollars, because I technically did it and then from there I could do a lot of different things. So yeah, like Alan said, there's a lot of moving pieces behind the. I know that wasn't the exact Topic, but I do think it is connected to what we're talking about here luck is not repeatable correct, correct.

Speaker 1:

Next leaven nation. If you are looking to be intentional not lucky intentional and find more amazing people like yourself who are into growth, self-improvement, awareness, looking in difficult mirrors, all of that happy jazz, please join our private Facebook group next leaven nation. The link is in the show notes. It is not private so we can keep you out. It is private so you can be your authentic self and you don't have to worry about people that you don't know or trust Creepin on you. That really is why we keep it private.

Speaker 2:

Speaking of the opposite of lucky, kevin and I have both been tracking habits. I think for you it's been five years, 26 years. For me it's been five years. For me, I started tracking habits in these little black notebooks that I used to carry with me eight years ago and I can't promise you overnight transformation. I can't promise you you're gonna make a million dollars in 30 days or anything like that, but I can promise you that if you do stick with it, you will wake up one day and your whole life will be transformed. Our team member, brandon shadow to Brandon. He recently surpassed his thousandth day tracking habits and His whole life is so transformed he struggled to believe it himself. It is the game changer. It is the game changer. Habit tracking has changed our life. It's one of those things that's not sexy.

Speaker 2:

No, it's one of those things that isn't easy to sell. But Kevin and I know that if we didn't track habits and the NLU team didn't track habits there's no way we'd have gotten here. There's just no way. We'd be drifting around and we'd not know how we got here and we'd be. We'd be lost. We'd be lost in directionless. So we have an app called optimal and it's a habit tracker. You start with three and then you prove to yourself that you can do three, and then you bump to six and then eventually nine. The link will be in the show notes. Check it out and if you need help, reach out.

Speaker 1:

The biggest difference between the person you are today and the person you want to be eventually is your habits. I Cannot second that enough. Tomorrow for episode number 1442, it'll be a happy Monday how to feel accomplished even when you don't get everything done. You and I were on a call recently and we were going through our to-do lists and we had a really powerful conversation around the to-do lists and the expectations around them, so I thought that would make a valuable episode for the amazing NLU community. We'll do that tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Stay consistent, next civilization you.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host