Next Level University

#1463 - 1 Skill We ALL Need To Be More Successful

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Taking action is integral to achieving success, but fear of judgment and perfectionism often hinder us from moving forward. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the transformative power of messy action. They discuss how messy action, self-belief, and humility can be applied to relationships to help them thrive. People often hesitate to start small because they fear how they might be perceived. Overcoming this fear is critical to building momentum and harnessing the power of messy action.

Link mentioned:
Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - ​​https://bit.ly/3xffver
Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/

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

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Show notes: 
[2:30] Messy action
[7:41] Momentum
[10:09] Certainty in messy action
[13:38] Bianca, the co-founder and COO of Evolve Ventures, talks about Alan's unwavering support as her coach and the profound impact of mentorship on her life
[14:31] Messy action becomes more organized with practice
[18:35] High humility helps build self-belief
[22:56] Risk being judged
[27:10] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, episode number 1462 how to improve your relationship flexibility. Today for episode number 1463, one skill we all need to be more Successful. All is in all caps, so you know this is serious business. Also, they might be mowing outside, so if you hear a mower, that is what's happening. So I also have a plane outside that. You have a plane outside. It's a. It's a lot of noise outside today. Mm-hmm, it's a lot going on in the world.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, of course, always I do a lot of podcast breakthrough sessions, as you know, and and I'm very maybe I'm strange in this, I don't know, but when I talk to someone, I usually follow them on social media and then I creep on them pretty consistently. I want to. I want to see what they're up to. I want to see what they're doing. Got it? One of the yeah, you got to do it. One of the reasons I creep is because I give a lot of advice on what I suggest doing on social media. Now, do I have a million followers? No, but We've been using social media for a minute now and we have an idea of what works and what doesn't. And really, social media isn't a giant focus for me, but I like to keep an eye on what people are doing. One of the reasons is you can predict with a fairly high level of accuracy how successful someone is going to be, based on how quickly they take a thought and they turn it into a practice.

Speaker 1:

We call it messy action there's a lot of other terms for it but I did a podcast breakthrough session with someone recently. His name is Eugene great guy, I think. He lives in Scotland or something and I Suggested switching up stuff for social media. I said you should post videos from your podcast on social media. I think that would help you. And he said, okay, that's something I can, I can start doing. And Two weeks later he started having videos on a social media from the podcast and they're really good videos and it's like, okay, good way to go.

Speaker 1:

Eugene way to go. Eugene messy action. I would bet on Eugene Mm-hmm. But there's also been people right. And here's the other thing too. I just want to make sure it's not necessarily that Eugene has a ton of money and is paying somebody to do all this. He's probably taking messy action on his own because that's what stage he is at when it comes to podcasting. I've had other calls with people where I tell them a bunch of stuff to do and Nothing changes now Transparently. Maybe they don't think I know what the hell I'm talking about. That's totally understandable and totally fine, and maybe they just don't want to do what I said. But I wouldn't bet on those people. I've been, I've talked to people for years and every time I talk to them I'm checking in and some of them haven't done anything different in the last three years and one of the reasons they're not Achieving the level of success they want is because they're not taking any action. They're definitely not taking any messy action. Maybe they're taking the same action over and over again and wondering why they're not getting a result. Then someone will come in and say, hey, have you ever thought of trying this? Then you can use that as an opportunity to take messy action One of my favorite stories of all time.

Speaker 1:

Allen and I spoke. We actually interviewed someone on stage and Evan Carmichael, one of our mentors, was the keynote at this presentation, at this event, and after the event, we went out to dinner with Evan and Eddie and Taryn was there and a bunch of people people from the team. It was awesome Several of the other speakers and we sat with Evan and Evan pulled out Alan's laptop and went through our YouTube channel and he was just tearing it apart in front of everybody and he said I am doing a meet-up tomorrow at the hotel that I'm staying at. Kev, he was directing this towards me. I don't know why.

Speaker 1:

For some reason, kev, I want you to create new thumbnails and bring them to me tomorrow and I will give you feedback on them. And I was like hell yeah, oh, my god, we're gonna be famous pretty much. This is great. This is amazing, this is great. So we went back to the Airbnb and Alan went to the beach like a butt head. He's like I need to go into the ocean, man, to to really lock in. What's happened here today.

Speaker 2:

It's like no we got to do the thumbnails. Man Evan's gonna know we went to the gym first you say that no, no, I don't remember that.

Speaker 1:

We went to the gym.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to do the thumbnails because I knew Evan was gonna ask about him the next day and Alan was like he's not gonna remember. I said no, no, he is Evan's like me. I'm like Evan, he's gonna remember and he's gonna ask and if we don't show up without, if we don't show up with new thumbnails, he's gonna be mad at us. And Alan was like dude, no way, I didn't know how to do it on my own. I didn't really have an understanding of how to create thumbnails really, or create them well, at that point Not to mention it was a long day, it was a very long day.

Speaker 1:

So we go to the meet up the next day and the first thing he said like hey guys, what's happening? Where's the thumbnails? And I looked at Alan. It's like dude, evan man didn't do him. He said why didn't you do the thumbnails? And I said because Alan went to the beach and I didn't know what to do. And pretty much he probably said a lot of things and Evan's a really nice guy. He's not, he's not mean, he just he wants us to do better and he knows we're trying to have a large action.

Speaker 1:

That was it. He was like I don't care if you didn't know how to do it, just figure it out. I would rather you come with three stick figures than nothing. Take messy action. Just go, take action and you'll find out what works and what doesn't, if you really want to learn. You got to take action. So I don't know if I have a better example for that or for this than that, because if we took messy action, who knows what would have happened? He would have looked at us a little bit differently. I don't know. Maybe we would have got a different opportunity than we did. So messy action is the answer.

Speaker 2:

I would say Messy action leads to momentum. Momentum leads to results. Results lead to more belief in yourself and then more belief in yourself leads to more messy action. It's momentum, it's it's the analogy, it's overused, but it's wonderful. A train, how much steam it takes to get a train going, versus when it's already going 80 miles an hour. You cannot.

Speaker 1:

I know so much, yeah, I know so much about trains. I don't know that, though, because these were trolleys, but I do know a lot about locomotives.

Speaker 2:

You're funny, I know a lot about trains. I don't know that, but I but I do know a lot about trains. So, as I was saying, if a train is going 80 miles an hour, you can put a steel reinforced brick wall. I don't know if this is true and it'll blow through it like paper, but that's the idea is, when you have momentum, you got to keep taking messy action, you got to keep keep going.

Speaker 1:

So I want to tell him yeah, man, never let the truth get in the way of a good analogy Just rips right through it like paper. Maybe we don't know, but it definitely could, and you can imagine what it would look like.

Speaker 2:

Put it this way, it could definitely go through. Hey, you know, in the beginning of a football game, when the team runs through the I don't know what is that called a banner, I would say, yeah, probably.

Speaker 1:

They rip through the banner.

Speaker 2:

You ever see Little Giants, of course.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and they try to rip through the banner and they fall down the annexation of Puerto Rico.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Okay. So for the people who do know that reference, little Giants is a movie in the late 90s, early 90s, and there's two football teams and one of the football teams is the Little Giants and they're not strong enough and they don't have enough momentum to get through the banner at the beginning and they fall down. It's like funny. That's kind of what it's like when you don't take messy action, you don't have momentum, you can't break through, and so I want to shout out two people right now. The first one is Jesse. So Jesse on the NLU team. I was on a meeting with her yesterday and Kev and she shows up to the meeting.

Speaker 2:

She runs Next Level Social Media.

Speaker 2:

So if anyone needs help with their social media, reach out. She was in one of the schools that she works at and there was some sort of a, so everyone had already gone home. It was the end of the day. It was like 3 pm or something. School day was ended and over the intercom they were doing practice rounds for lockdown. And this is during the meeting with me and she's like hold on one second. I gotta figure out if this is real or not. Is this like a drill? Is someone here? Is something going on? So much uncertainty. But she still carried her laptop around with the meeting while doing the meeting, while uncertain whether or not they were going into lockdown, and they kept going over the loudspeaker during the meeting. She's pivoting from that to meeting to that to meeting. Looking in the parking lot is there a fire truck? What's going on? I said, jesse, this is why you're gonna win. Most people would have canned this meeting the moment. There was uncertainty and you are still here talking to me about how to improve this department. This is why you're gonna win.

Speaker 2:

One more story about Jesse. Jesse runs Next Level Social Media. We have clients that we do their social media. One of the clients, which I am also a client she didn't have Wi-Fi. She was traveling I think she was adventuring somewhere, hiking mountain, most likely camping, something like that and she didn't have Wi-Fi and she needed to post this client's post for Next Level Social Media to succeed in the department. Messy action, messy action, messy action. And she couldn't find Wi-Fi. She drives 45 minutes out of her way to find Wi-Fi to get this post up so that she doesn't let a client down. That is why Jesse will succeed.

Speaker 2:

I said, jesse, you've gotten so many opportunities. She's crushing it. She's about to be a basketball coach. She's doing all these wonderful things. She's making a good amount of money. And I said, jesse, this is why you win. Everyone has certainty that you're gonna follow through. If we need something at NLU, we go to Jesse. Jesse always gets it done. That is why some people always seem to succeed when other people don't, because she's the obvious choice when we need something to get done, because we know it's gonna get done no matter what happens. Heller, high water. One more person I wanna brag about right now is Brandon. Brandon came onto the NLU team five years ago, four or five years ago, I think it was December 2020, I wanna say which would be four years ago.

Speaker 1:

I think it was yeah, december 2020.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so, almost four years ago, brandon comes on the team, he interviews us. All right, we interview him right there and we say what are your skills, man? What do you wanna bring to the table? What do you got? He's like, dude, I don't have any skills Not really, but I'm willing to work really hard. And Kevin and I were like holy crap, you're in. Yeah, you're in.

Speaker 2:

That took courage and that took vulnerability and, most importantly, that took humility, which I believe is probably the most important character trait ever. So since then, brandon has tracked habits. He just went over a thousand days in a row of tracking habits and he's been doing relationship talks, coaching with him and Hannah, myself and Emilia and he's just taking so much messy action. Him and Hannah are saving for a house there, doing all of these amazing things, and Brandon has been failing forward. Messy action, messy action. He is the director of book club, he's the director of speeches. We've pivoted him several times and every single place that we put him in, he just starts taking action. He was actually responsible for one of the best interviews we ever had on this podcast when we interviewed Stephen Kotler. Brandon was the one who reached out and connected with Stephen Kotler's team, and then Stephen Kotler came on and we talked about the book the Art of Impossible. You've never heard that episode. I don't remember what episode it is.

Speaker 1:

It was a long time ago, but I don't know if it was my best work, but no worries, go check it out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, Stephen Kotler, next level university. We will come up very, very powerful interview. But the point I'm making is about Brandon taking messy action. He never came in. Hey, I know how to do everything, I have all these skills. Instead, he came in saying I don't have any skills, but I'm willing to work hard and develop skills and I'm willing to take messy action and he's proven that time and time and time and time and time again. And, honestly, we go to Brandon when we need someone to hold down the fort of a department, and so you're gonna get more opportunities when you can take messy action. People believe in people who take action. People do not want to jump on a train that's stagnant. Everyone wants to be on a winning team and a winning train, and a winning train has to have momentum.

Speaker 1:

Messy action also gets more organized as you practice it, because you become more competent. The analogy that popped into my brain is probably because I'm very hungry right now. But imagine if Alan and I are at the Airbnb and the team is in because we're doing an event and I say we only have eggs, we only have like three things to make breakfast. I don't know, I'll see what I can come up with. I don't know, I'll make something. I'll try to find a way. Eventually. If I do that for long enough, I'm gonna be able to have a really good recipe with minimal ingredients. Just that's messy action. But your messy action gets better as you go. It might be.

Speaker 1:

All I have is an iPhone. So if you're a photographer, in the beginning you have to have the perfect shot and you have to have the perfect timing and you have to have the perfect weather and all that. Eventually, your messy action is well, I have an iPhone, let me see what I can do, and you end up creating really, really powerful pictures or a video or whatever it may be. But it will never get that way if you're always waiting for it to be perfect. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. I remember Alan in the beginning we got our first NLPS client and so next little podcast solutions. And he lived local. He was in Massachusetts. I lived in Massachusetts at the time and he said, hey, can you come to my house and help me set up stuff Still with us.

Speaker 1:

Still with us. Yeah, yeah, to this day, 300 and somewhat episodes later, and I was like, yeah, I guess I don't know sure, where do you live. And he sent me his address and I was like, all right, what's up, you want me to be there. And I went to this gentleman's house great guy, his name is John, great guy and I helped him set up his stuff. It wouldn't work. So I was on Google all day and I was ordering stuff and I was like I don't know, man, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 2:

And it got to those were brutal, it was brutal.

Speaker 1:

And it got to the point where he's like, all right, I gotta go to a meeting, are you cool with just staying here and then locking up when you leave. And I was like, yeah, I guess, and that was the level of messy action that we were. I was hanging up with his dog. It was weird, it was a weird day for me, but all of that was built on messy action.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is the point, the big point I want to make here, and this would be my next level nugget, I would say if I just say, take messy action, that's almost like someone saying just believe in yourself, because, yes, I know I should take action, but I'm struggling to do so the level of messy action is most likely gonna be directly connected to the level of belief you have in yourself. So if you only have a little bit of belief and you doubt yourself often, your messy action is gonna be smaller, maybe it's. I don't know if I am even going to, if I'm even what's the word I'm looking for? Not certified, if I could even get this job. What's the word Qualified? Qualified, I don't certified, qualified, it's all the same.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if I'm even qualified Based on that, you're definitely not. I know it's a story of my life.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if I'm even qualified for the job that I'm applying for, but I'm gonna send five messages that maybe that's messy action. The level of messy action is most likely to be connected to the level of self-belief you have, because if you don't have that much self-belief very much like me in the beginning your messy action is going to scare the hell out of you, and you might. You're not gonna do it if there's too much uncertainty. So figure out what an appropriate amount of certainty is for the messiness, and that's probably a way to be a little bit more consistent with it is what I would say.

Speaker 2:

Long next level.

Speaker 1:

nugget, that's a next level. Rock Next level rock. Yeah, builder.

Speaker 2:

Do you remember when Evan had you take a video while the plane was taking off? Yes, I do. That was another example of a messy action. He was testing me.

Speaker 1:

You get tested. Nail thing, you get tested by your mentors. Yeah, he was testing me and I wasn't gonna fail that one. The first video didn't work and I had to do another one. I did do two videos.

Speaker 2:

The and then you sent it home. Of course, excuse me, I had to burp, so If you're not taking action, okay, I have a theory and I'll go quick about this. I have a theory. My theory is that People with high humility are better at building self-belief. Here's why I have some clients who come to me and they're really, really, really humble and they're like listen, I have no idea where to start. You've been doing this for a long time. Tell me what to do and I'll work hard, like Brandon. Brandon's a good example that People that have high humility are willing to start small.

Speaker 2:

They're willing to say you know what? I've never done this before, this photography thing. So, yeah, why not start on an iPhone? I'm not above that. And Then they get momentum because Because they lower the bar enough to where they can actually take messy action.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, and I think that, as someone who used to Struggle at times with overconfidence or arrogance, I think, in hindsight, humility Allows you to get momentum quicker. I Would much rather you come to me and say, hey, how do I squat? Let's start with the bar, and then let's do 10 pounds, and then let's do 20, and then let's do 40 and let's do 80. Then be like hey, how do I get to 200 pounds? It's like you don't, you're brand new. It took me Six years to get there. You're not gonna do it in six minutes. This is stupid.

Speaker 2:

I think that humility helps people lower the bar, but here's the problem. You can be really humble and I know a lot of our listeners are but if you're afraid of judgment, it's scary to be just benching the bar or squatting the bar Because you're afraid you're gonna look weak. You're afraid you're gonna look weak, and so I think a lot of people have the humility they need to start small, but they're afraid of judgment. Understandable, understand. And so I think, if you want an answer to how do you build messy action and build momentum, I think it's have humility to start small and then and then be willing to Overcome the fear of judgment, of being seen as someone who starts small. In other words, if I were to ride a bike with training wheels at 35 years old, that would be embarrassing, but if I've never ridden a bike before, that's a good place to start, and I think there's something about that that's so powerful.

Speaker 1:

Honestly, somebody commented on one of my fitness pictures on Facebook and the. The question they asked was it was pretty much, why do you only see pictures of people who are in shape or have decided they don't want to be in shape, like the question was pretty much, why don't I ever see progress pictures of people as they're getting in shape? And I I was like that's actually. I Mean there's a lot of layers to that. I said that's actually a pretty good question. I said because it's there's a lot of judgment. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of judgment. If you're, if you feel like you're not where you want to be and you don't feel like you're making progress, and we're always waiting for like when I look this way, I'll post about it, or when I have this, I'll post about it. So I said it very much to your point. I said it's mostly judgment. I would say I mean yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm very used to posting myself on the internet because of the podcast and everything, and I said I'm not in the shape I want to be. I don't. I don't feel like I'm super inspirational right now. Now that's a me thing and that's based on my own standards and what I know I'm capable of and how I've looked in the past. But I can understand why someone who is just getting into the gym isn't thinking I'm going to make a social media profile page about my experience in the gym. I can go inside, ron, I could. That would crush. There's people that have many other people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah that feel the same way they don't resonate transformation.

Speaker 2:

I I show a transformation picture of me when I was at my worst, drinking regularly, unhappy, unfulfilled, and then I have the picture that I See as my best I've ever been physically, physically capable, and I'll do a transformation post of the journey. But when I felt like crap, I didn't want to take pictures. Right, right, understandable. Yeah, you only want to take pictures after you're in shape. But what's ironic is, in some cases, if you took pictures along the way, you might actually get in shape faster, because then you'd have support or you'd have momentum or you'd have a deeper why. But at the end of the day, you do have to risk being judged, no matter what you do. I'm convinced that's why people don't take action more than not believing in themselves. I think they believe in themselves enough to take a small action. I think they're embarrassed to start small.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's understandable it's my next level nugget, I was gonna ask you for your next level. Nugget, there it is. You're most likely not gonna get judged by the people who have taken the messy action that you're taking. Yeah, that's it. That's the reassurance that I would give. If you're a podcaster who's trying to podcast, cool, good for you. I'm not gonna crap on you for taking messy action to start. Good, good for you. Probably starting way better than we did. We do have to go because you have a call in two minutes.

Speaker 2:

Oh my god, yeah it's. It's kind of. I think it's inspiring. You know, I see occasionally an overweight person at the gym. I think it's really inspiring. They're working hard, they're sweating. I'm like hell, yeah, like I think it's awesome. I really do. I think you can inspire a lot of people that way. But I get it, I. The last thing I wanted to do was take a picture back then too.

Speaker 1:

Judgment is a fickle creature, my friend. Next elimination if you have not downloaded our free course. The next level five to thrive. I believe it's what it really takes to. What was the actual name of it?

Speaker 2:

what it really takes to get your dream life the next level. Five to thrive.

Speaker 1:

Okay, cool.

Speaker 2:

What it really see um.

Speaker 1:

I really have a finger on the pulse of everything over over at NLU.

Speaker 1:

I know exactly what's going on at all times. It's a free course. We sat down and said what would be the most valuable free course we could possibly create. Alan and I sat in the studio for, I think, eight hours Together and we said what are the five things that have really helped us? Have really helped our self-awareness, helped us be more consistent, helped us find the right people, and we packaged it into a Video course so it is free on the website. We would love for you to download it if you haven't yet. And yes, it is free, but it doesn't mean it's not valuable. So please, please, please, be committed to actually going through the entire course.

Speaker 2:

So those five things that you're gonna learn in that course. I'm very grateful. So Kevin and I realized something about ourselves we never, ever, promote anything that we're not leading by example in. And while Kevin might not know the title of that course Does not surprise me, he does practice all of the five modules every single day. I Can say wholeheartedly we are 10 out of 10 in all. Five of those things and that is what got us here and I'm gonna give them to you now. Please still download the course.

Speaker 2:

I dare you okay, the first one is clarity, the second is consistency, the third is confidence, the fourth is Commitment and the fifth is community. We do all five of those Consistently because we're leading by example. And those five, if you were to take those away, take those out of our equation, take those out of our journey, there's no way we'd be here. Particularly consistency, okay, also speaking of consistency, book club is coming up on its 130th week. We just wild, awesome, awesome, awesome. We are reading a book called limitless by Jim quick, and I think we had 15 people last weekend. So thank you all for attending. This has been awesome.

Speaker 2:

We do polls, we ask questions, we cherry pick three of the biggest Next-level nuggets, so to speak, from each of the chapters and we talk about them. And everybody contributes, not everybody. Some people contribute, some people don't. Some people are in the chat, some people are not, some people have cameras on, some people don't Contribute as much as you'd like. You don't have to have read the whole book. You can come in for a chapter. You can even come in and just listen in if you've not even read the book.

Speaker 1:

So the link to register will be in the show notes it's a party on a Saturday afternoon every Saturday, 12 30 pm Eastern standard time. Be there or B square. I will not be there because I again I don't even get invited to these things. I don't even know what's going on at these things, but I hear good things. I do.

Speaker 1:

Not invited, not invited tomorrow for episode number 1464. The hardest thing to learn about Love Alan I that a lot of real deep talks behind the scenes about what we're witnessing in relationships and our own relationship Experiences. So another relationship episode. Well, technically it's a new week because the last one was on Sunday. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we run a fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Take messy action next definition.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

Host
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Kevin Palmieri

Host