Next Level University
Confidence, mindset, relationships, limiting beliefs, family, goals, consistency, self-worth, and success are at the core of hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros' heart-driven, no-nonsense approach to holistic self-improvement. This transformative, 7 day per week podcast is focused on helping dream chasers who have been struggling to achieve their goals and are seeking community, consistency and answers. If you've ever asked yourself "How do I get to the next level in my life", we're here for you!
Our goal at NLU is to help you uncover the habits to build unshakable confidence, cultivate a powerful mindset, nurture meaningful relationships, overcome limiting beliefs, create an amazing family life, set and achieve transformative goals, embrace consistency, recognize your self-worth, and ultimately create the fulfillment and success you desire. Let's level up your health, wealth and love!
Next Level University
#1512 - Consistent 70% Days Are Better Than Spotty 100% Days
Ready for a reality check? There's no such thing as a 100% productive day. The moment you grasp this concept, you'll find yourself empowered to unlock new levels of personal growth. In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about understanding the power of consistency and habit tracking. It's about knowing that it's okay not to be perfect and that your best efforts, done consistently, will yield results. The path may not always be easy, but with the right mindset, consistency, and a supportive community, you can overcome the challenges and achieve personal growth through sustainability, consistency, and improvement.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level Monthly Meetup - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
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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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Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
- Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
- Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - ​​https://bit.ly/3xffver
- Next Level U Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/
- Next Level Monthly Meetup: https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/monthly-meetups/
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We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email.
Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/
Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
[3:38] What you've practicing remains to be seen
[3:56] Peak Performance Tracking
[6:08] You can't lift the same weight and expect to get stronger
[9:21] Are you trending in the right direction?
[11:20] Eddie expresses his satisfaction with Alan's support in his and his business' growth through the Next Level Business Solutions
[12:45] The math behind
[17:00] Sustainability, consistency & improvement
[21:54] Outro
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. It was episode number 1511. What does purpose mean to you? It was a very reflowing conversation today. For episode number 1512, consistent 70% days are better than spotty 100% days. It says who kev. Lory harder said it and you said she might have said consistent 60%. I don't remember. I would trust your memory far more than mine, but when we had lory harder on for episode 34, I remember she said this and this is something I have thought of Fairly consistently For the last however many years it's been since then.
Speaker 2:Last night, but did you only think about it 70%? I thought about it 100%, 70% of the time.
Speaker 1:Whatever, that is 185% of the time. Last night Taren was out and I was having one of those nights of reflection so I was looking back at old clips and I went back to the first clips we ever made and I even saw one of the clips of lory and it really highlights the fact that when I look back, two things come up. One I Don't know how many 100% days I've ever strung together. I'm sure I had Some really, really, really, really good days, but by definition, I don't know if there really is 100% day, because we could do another episode after this if we had to. We're not going to because we don't have to. So 100% is kind of subjective. That's part one and this is the takeaway. My early next level nugget, early early, my super early next level nugget for this episode if you have a 70% day today, that 70% might be Two times what your 100% days used to be that is really the the season of understanding and awareness that I feel that I'm in Today.
Speaker 1:It's so it's Saturday. Recording this on Saturday I got up at five and I've been hammering it's 420 as of the recording of this and I have worked straight through pretty much. I'm it's been awesome, very productive, very productive. I Got more today. I got more done today than I used to in a week, for sure, even though and this is the challenging part a lot of it's not measurable. A lot of it's not gonna show up on a piece of paper, it's not gonna show up on a spreadsheet, it's not gonna show up as a dollar amount, it's not gonna be recognizable tomorrow. So that's another important thing to understand that sometimes the consistency that you're practicing remains to be seen, because the results are days, months, weeks and years behind. But the effort you're putting in it might be way more productive than it's ever been. And that is my early next level nugget.
Speaker 2:So if you're a long-term listener, you know that we do something called peak performance tracking. It's just habit tracking in a Google spreadsheet. We also have an app that you can have it track on now as well, but we didn't start there. And if you're a new listener now, you know that I've been coaching now for five or six years I forget which probably in between there five and six years and I track habits. I always have in my coaching. I needed some sort of feedback loop. I needed to know that my clients were headed somewhere great, and habits the best way to do that. And so, now that I've had some clients and team members for many, many years, what really is cool is that we end up with this graph in Google Sheets that looks like a staircase, and this is kind of how it works. So I'm going to use Brandon as an example, showed it to Brandon, and Brandon first came on the team in December of 2020. He had never tracked habits before, and so we started him with let's just hypothetically I don't know the exact numbers, I'm not in the spreadsheets right now but let's say nine habits. Okay, we started him off with nine habits and let's say he's getting 60%, 70%, 75%, 78%, 72%, 78%. He's doing better, little worse, little better, little worse, little better, little worse, little better, little worse. But the trend line is up. So the slope of the trend line is up. In other words, he's doing his new worse is better than his old best, if that makes sense. But then what happens is every other week we jump on the phone coaching and I say, okay, I want to get rid of one, I want to change one, I want to add one. So then you're still at nine habits. But then over time we do, we add more than we get rid of, because eventually he starts getting to like near a hundred percent, and at one point I remember he was like 96%, 97%, 98%, because I aggregate this every every other week.
Speaker 2:And once someone starts being in the high nineties for a really long time, I get frustrated and it's like listen, we got to up the ante, we got to. You can't squat the same way and expect to get stronger. You can't lift the same way and expect to get stronger. So let's, let's up the ante. What else? What else can we do? What else can we do? What else can we do? It can be very exhausting, but the point is growth and if your system is easy, then it's time to up the ante. But when we up the ante, what we do is we add a couple new columns, add a couple new habits and then redo it so that those all count as zeros, so that ultimately and I remember in the beginning of coaching people would be like, well, why do I get all zeros? Those are new habits that shouldn't count. And I say trust me you know, why?
Speaker 2:Because a year from now, when you look back, you're going to see a staircase graph of your. I want the graph to show what Kevin had originally opened this episode with, which is Brandon's old 80% is actually only 40% of his new run rate and it, I swear to you, I could show a screenshot of this. A lot of my clients have this staircase going. I do too.
Speaker 2:I'm not included because what we do is we hide. We hide everything prior to the quarter that we're on, because we try to do 90 day increments, just like in group coaching. And when you unhide it, all of a sudden you see this whole graph and you go back from 2020, all the way to 2023 tail end of 2023. And it's like holy crap. Look at this staircase. Look at where you started and your old, let's say, you got a 80%. That 80% is actually only 30% of your system now, and so it. It looks like a staircase, and I think that's a great analogy because His new, worst, least productive day ever is literally mathematically better than his old, best day, and that is such a cool analogy for how much we can grow.
Speaker 1:When I went back, it was wild. Going back to old posts, it was wild, but there was one thing that came off. It came off the page. For me, we were very, very consistent. There was we were doing teaser clips every day or quotes every day. There was something going on every single day and I also realized how different Instagram was back then. Just looking at the engagement, it was drastically different in 2017-2000. Which is weird. It was weird to look back on. Instagram was the place. It was the place back then.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, it just really highlighted the fact that I definitely do more in a day than I used to in a week, and I'm certain of 100%, just because that's what's necessary now. It's not necessarily what I want to do. It's not that I chose to put my. I did, I did choose to put myself in that position, but that's just what's necessary. Well, your goals require it. Yeah, and as you get clear on the goals, you get clear on the approach to accomplish the goals. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1:Back then, I didn't really know. I didn't really know what it was going to take. Transparently, there wasn't a lot going on back then. There wasn't. I didn't have a wife and a household and cats and a business, and we didn't have a team. There's a lot of things going differently, but this is the point I want to connect.
Speaker 1:How do I say it? You might be doing 70% in one arena and you might be doing 10% in another arena and you might be doing 50% in another arena. You have to understand how the arenas are stacking up. So, as you know the trials of Kevin's jujitsu journey, I want to go to jujitsu but I'm thinking to myself well, how do I figure out how to lift and do jujitsu at the same time? I have to figure this out now. It has to be right this second. I cannot go another day without knowing how to, what my schedule is going to be like. And in reality the jujitsu is 80% right now and me going to the gym. I'm still doing that four times a week. That's still like 60% of what it used to be. So if you add the 80% and the 60% up, that's more than 100%. If I was just doing 50, 50.
Speaker 1:I know the numbers might not make sense. This is how I think of it in my brain. So for you, if you're out there, it might not seem like you're doing enough in one arena and maybe you're not. That's always a possibility but are you checking in with the other other arenas too, to figure out how much you're actually doing? That's really my, my main, my second main point I talk to clients about that all the time. Well, we have this ready and we're ready for clients and we're ready for this. And I said, well, you're not posting on social media, so you might be doing more than you've ever done when it comes to this thing, but you're doing less than you've ever done when it comes to this thing. They're not going to even out. Everything has to be trending in the right direction to your, to your original point. So just make if it's important.
Speaker 1:If it's important, yeah, just make sure you're checking in on health, wealth and love. If we said health, wealth and love, specifically, are you trending in the right direction and are you having consistent? Let's just say, are you having consistent days, cause I would argue that consistent 50% days are better than spotty percent nine, spotty 90%s.
Speaker 2:Well, let's do the math. Let's what let's do. Two weeks of data 14 days 14 days. Multiply that by call it 70%, so 0.7, that's 9.8. Now, in the 14 days, what do you consider spotty? How many days? So, like every other day, I would just consider 70% every day versus 100% every day Goodnight. You know what I mean? No, no, I know. So I took 14 days and multiplied it by.7, which comes to 9.8, versus if you were to do seven days straight.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I got you, I got you, yep.
Speaker 2:So if I do one times seven, it's only seven. Okay, let me explain. I apologize for being confusing here. Imagine for two weeks Kevin and I are up against each other head to head. I do 70% every day in the gym and he does 100% every other day. All right, so I take 14, I multiply it by.7,. I get 9.8. He does every other day, which is only seven days times one, which is seven. So I can crunch the math on how much quote unquote better or more productive I am than you. Okay, well, so let's do this 9.8 divided by seven, multiplied by 100. I am 40% more productive than Kevin, even though I'm less right. That's the mathematical proof of what Kevin's been saying about I would rather you do 70% consistency than 100%. Spotty, yeah, yeah. And that's the mathematical proof of I. If him and I both go head to head for two weeks in the gym and I'm consistent and he's I'm consistent 70% and he's only every other day 100%, I am 40% more productive mathematically speaking, and it's momentum too.
Speaker 1:That's the other thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and self-esteem, yeah, when you. What's a good, what's a good example for this? Okay, think about it this way I don't ever plan on owning a boat. Maybe you do, I don't know. I don't. Whatever boats are, I don't know, that doesn't really interest me that much.
Speaker 2:Emilia loves sailing, love sailing.
Speaker 1:She was a sailor, so we will have a sailboat, good sir, so imagine this Imagine you leave it in the water versus you take it out every single day. If you took the boat out every single day, you would never get. You'd just never go number one Every time you use that. You just took it out Like all right, let's put it in, we'll take it out, and if you want to use it next week, we'll put it back in and then we'll take it back out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a ton of time and effort every time versus you just keep it in. You think we'll have like an NLU sail.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:No, probably not?
Speaker 1:No, I don't think so. It'd be a weird thing, a weird fiction.
Speaker 2:Weird thing to have.
Speaker 1:The only thing I'm saying with that is it's it's very hard to build momentum Like you're probably not going to be a. It would be really hard to be a professional fisher person if you're literally every day you have to go put the boat in. All right, let's, let's take the boat out of here, let's go put it in. We'll get everything set up. Then we'll go. Versus someone who lives on a body of water and has a boat there, it's going to be way more likely that they're successful. Or why do you think? I was watching a video on some snowboarder yesterday and he was. He won his first competition at six. He was raising them up.
Speaker 2:He was raising them up for no respect on it. Who was it? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, he wasn't a good person, not like he was a. He wasn't necessarily a good person, but he lived on a mount, so he was there every day, right? So same thing. Even if he went and did five runs that day and that was his 70% that's probably five more runs than most other people were going to do on that day because they don't live on a mount. So that's just my example.
Speaker 2:So Kev not valuable. But I meant like the NLU logo on the sailboat, not we're going to do an NLU sail like we go out and sail.
Speaker 1:You said on the sail. I thought is what you said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like imagine in the wind the NLU logo on one of the sails On the body of the boat.
Speaker 2:I can't have it. I'm going to call it the SS Minow Johnson. No, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:SS Dingo Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we could talk about it, we could talk, we could have conversations.
Speaker 2:We could have some marketing out there on the water.
Speaker 1:We could have a conversation. Maybe some other boats will listen to podcasts. Sure, the dolphins will appreciate it.
Speaker 2:They will, they will.
Speaker 1:What's your next level nugget?
Speaker 2:man. My next level nugget, good sir is consistency. At NLU we have three words that we value very deeply. Kevin and I had a argument about the syntax, the order of these words, but I actually agree with him now, so yeah he was more optimal.
Speaker 1:We'll get that and save that somewhere. Save that. I'm going to need that for proof of the future.
Speaker 2:He was more optimal in hindsight. Emilia as well. We both I actually I talked to Emilia about this had a healthy discord, talked to Kevin about this, had a healthy discord, and then I eventually, reluctantly, gave in. So the three words are sustainability, consistency and improvement. Sustainability is first, for a reason, even though I was wrong about putting consistency first.
Speaker 2:So one of the reasons why this is my next level nugget, one of the reasons why I'd rather you do a 70% consistent day, is because when you're shooting for perfect, you can't do it consistently. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable and if it's not sustainable, it's not gonna work. It's just gonna crush your self-esteem again. So Emilia and I, coming up on two years soon I say soon, it's like 100 days out but we've been exercising every day. But remember we're only doing 30 minute walks every other day and then 45 minute weight training every other day, and at the beginning it was only a half hour weight training. So I'd rather you be consistent and sustainable and improve along the way than constantly do these starts and stops too hot out of the gate and then lose your momentum. So if you can't sustain it, don't start it.
Speaker 1:An extra next level. Nugget, if you're living with an all or nothing mentality, understand that it's probably drastically easier to do nothing than it is to do all it's easy to do nothing.
Speaker 2:It's hard to do, it's real good.
Speaker 1:It's hard to do it all. That was real good. I appreciate that very much. My next level nugget was better than your next level nugget.
Speaker 2:Well, technically that was your second one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first one was probably better too, though I think right, what was it? No way, yeah, probably, yeah, maybe it could be.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's for the listeners to decide.
Speaker 1:Like we got lost in the math there a little bit. You and I were talking about the math 40% more.
Speaker 2:That was good stuff, usually the way I do.
Speaker 1:It is I don't. I don't know. You're really good at dividing stuff. I don't really understand the whole thing. Honestly, it's kind of it's kind of escapes me. Usually I'll do. Let's just say you do 70. You do 70 70% days. You do 90%. 7 times 7 is 49. It's easy, it lands when I say it to people. I'm telling you, or you do, or you do 400% days, then you get 400% output.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so okay, I don't know. As long as you take the percentage off of there, you're good. But you can't have 490%. What if I want to? Well, you can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a whole.
Speaker 2:it's a whole mathematical debate we're not going to get into it but I think if it lands for people, do it Okay.
Speaker 1:So my next level, nugget. The second one was the best, that's agreed upon.
Speaker 2:Of the three next level nuggets, I think the last one was the strongest.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, next level nation. We're going to go. We're getting a little loopy here on a Saturday, you can tell Alan and I it's been one, it's been a wonderful week that was a week.
Speaker 1:It's been a wonderful week, grateful, grateful. What's the? What's the word? Privilege pressure? This is the pressure we asked for, so grateful for it. If you have not joined our private Facebook group, next Level Nation, please do so. Amazing group of amazing people who want things similar to you Dream chasers, people who are trying to figure out their ego, people who are trying to practice vulnerability, all of that stuff. It is a place where you belong. Link will be in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Next Level University, and all that we do is a safe space. To Kevin's point of where it's okay to be struggling. It's okay to talk about your struggles, but it's also okay to succeed, too. You know it's safe to talk about where you're great and where you're struggling, which is really important. Speaking of which, we do monthly meetups Every single month. This is our 24th meetup in a row. Two years that's the two-year mark. This is going to be the two-year mark, will we?
Speaker 1:celebrate. Definitely not Most likely.
Speaker 2:Get some broasted chicken. Alright, that's my celebration. Love it, love broasted chicken. Three things holding you back from your in all caps version of success. Okay, a lot of people think of success. They think of money. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about what you believe is successful, aka your vision for your life in your unique flavor. The three things holding you back most from your unique version of success. The link to register will be in the show notes and we hope to see you there.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow for episode number 1513. Alan doesn't know this. We're going to do an episode on an open conversation about heartbreak. Here's my thought. We did the open conversation about overwhelm. Maybe what we'll do is we'll name it something different after we record it. I don't know yet because I don't know where the conversation is going to go. For now it's an open conversation about heartbreak. When I was going through our old content, I just remember you and I had a lot of heartbreak back then. We were talking about it a lot. I feel like we could do a blast from the past and check in on what happened, how it felt and what it created. That was my goal for tomorrow's episode. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and an NLU. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Stay consistent and sustainable Next level nation.
Speaker 1:Even said consistent first.
