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
#1600 - What 1600 Episodes Taught Us About “Success”
Achieving success is not just a destination; it's a continuous journey marked by persistence, patience, and the strategic pursuit of excellence. In this 1600th episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros celebrate this remarkable milestone by unveiling the intimate realities behind the journey to success. The conversation takes us deep into what it truly means to achieve and maintain success, touching upon the importance of aligning one's career with one's strengths and passions.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Live - Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (10:00 am to 4:30 pm) https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
Next Level Dreamliner - https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
Next Level Blog - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-blog/
______________________
NLU is far more than just a podcast, and we have so many more resources to help you achieve your goals and dreams.
For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇
Website 💻 http://www.nextleveluniverse.com
_______________________
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/
_______________________
We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or via email.
Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/
Facebook ✍
Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/
Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
_______________________
Show notes:
(2:50) Two fold lesson
(5:44) Reflections on 1600 lessons of success, struggles, and strategies
(14:15) The lengthy and sustainable path to long-term success
(18:08) A continuous process of improvement that doesn't halt
(21:32) Three critical factors for selecting
(23:49) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching.
(26:58) The significance of early career development
(31:36) Take proactive steps towards success
(34:48) The Journey vs The Destination
(41:43) 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 yesterday's episode, episode number 1599,. One of the keys to long-lasting friendships slash relationships in general. Today, for episode number 1600, another milestone has been crossed today that 1600 episodes taught us about success.
Speaker 1:I like doing I don't know legacy episodes. I don't really know what it would be called, but I know we did after the first 100, after the first 200, 300, 400, 500. After 500, we probably waited until a thousand, but another hundred has crossed. So we wanted to do an episode on what we've learned, and I think one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because I feel like time is really speeding up and I feel like I'm learning more between the hundreds that I did in the beginning. I feel like I learned a lot from zero to 100, but I don't feel like a lot happened. I don't feel like a lot of the knowledge that I acquired manifested into reality. Now things are changing week to week where I don't even it's weird, it's very hard to even put your finger on exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1:I told Alan my lesson, in a nutshell, is twofold. My cat is scratching my leg right now. Hello Ace, hi buddy, I'm recording an episode right now, if you don't mind. Thank you so much. I love you. He scooted his butt away. He's going to go back to his bed now. If you told me what success actually was, or the process to accumulate it, if you told me what I know now, if I was telling 27-year-old Kev there's 0% chance I could understand it. That's part one. Part two so much of the success is buried in the day-to-day stuff that nobody will ever see. I did a post on this one time. If I look at all remotely successful to you in any way, shape or form, that's because you see the 100 successes, not the 1 million failures behind the scene.
Speaker 2:Nice, not bad right. Yeah, 100 to 1 million, that's a hell of a ratio.
Speaker 1:It's not great. It's not great.
Speaker 2:I was hoping maybe 100 to 1,000.
Speaker 1:I mean, how many mistakes have we made?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. I would say 10 times the successes for sure.
Speaker 1:That's a big piece of it. This is going to be an open dialogue between Al and I. This was the other thing I said before we get on here. This is a hard thing to explain. When somebody says, hey, you're really good at something, you're comparing what you think they're good at to how good you think they should be or how good you think you would be. Probably that one. If anybody's ever said to me, you are a really good speaker, they're most likely comparing where they are in that moment to where they think I am in that moment.
Speaker 1:My new frame on this is I am only going to give myself credit for being good compared to how good I should be. Am I good? Maybe Am I good for doing 2,300 or 2,400 podcast episodes at this point? I don't know. Maybe I'm probably not as good as I should be, though I definitely could be better. Am I as successful in the fitness realm as I should be? F? No, no. I've been working out since I was 16. I'm 34 years old. I've been working out for 18 years. For the vast majority of it, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I was just f-ing around. There's a big difference between doing something and doing something correctly. Yeah, that's the opening. We'll see where we go from here.
Speaker 2:The purpose of this episode correct me if I'm wrong is for us to reflect back on the 1,600 episodes and try to understand at a deeper level everything we've learned, or the most important things I think we've learned about success. In general, I would say so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, flip a coin, Whatever it lands on, you can talk about it Whatever you're feeling talking about. I'm in a very good mood, as you can tell. Remember the episode we did recently where, when you're down and out what you do, we did the right things and things are trending back in the right direction. I'm giddy over the moon. It's been an interesting day.
Speaker 2:Nice. One of the things in the world about success is when you are feeling the momentum gaining success. When things are going well, it's hard not to let that go to your head. Kevin and I have this pattern that I think is very natural. I don't think it's necessarily anything against us, but when things are going really well, we aren't as dialed in. That's fair. We got on the mic today. We started talking about everything that's going well. It's great. It's very difficult to take everything as seriously when things are going really well as when things are not. I think that that's one lesson that I've learned the hard way too many times, which is Kevin and I talk about having a big month. We had our biggest month we've ever had at NLU is 74,000. Keep in mind that's gross revenue. I need to make that clear. When you run a large business, $74,000 is not going into our bank account. It's very important. That's before taxes, before payroll, before all expenses.
Speaker 1:Kevin and Alan did not put $74,000 into the bank. No, definitely not. They keep all of it.
Speaker 2:That would be wonderful. Maybe one day, maybe one day. The point is, is that, after a big month like that, our best month?
Speaker 2:yet it can be really easy to step off the gas and it can be really easy to lose sight of what created the momentum to actually make that possible. Even right now, there's a lot of really good things happening at NLU and it can be difficult to stay as disciplined. It can be difficult to still do what I'm referring to as the drudgery that comes with success. This is something that I talked to Kevin about right before this episode, which is, no matter what you do toward success, there's a lot of drudgery that other people don't see. Number one it's always easier to talk about something than to actually do it. Number two everything looks easier than it actually is. Everything. Everything sounds easier than it is. Everything looks easier than it is.
Speaker 1:It's everything's more behind the scenes than you think. It is 100%. We used to work out with someone who's very big on social media, very big on Instagram, and the amount of time she would spend doing different exercises so she could put them on social media was like I never realized that I didn't.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, our workouts were three hours because most of it was filming Every single day.
Speaker 1:I never realized that. I never realized that. And that didn't include editing.
Speaker 2:That didn't include the post, that didn't include the links, that didn't include the link tree, that didn't include the thumbnail. Yeah, it's wild. Everything takes so much more than it looks like on the surface. And so, for example, I was on with a client earlier and he loves cars, super passionate about cars. He's actually about to start a YouTube channel. I'm super pumped for him. He's gonna be doing basically self-help while on his motorcycle, truly jealous, yeah. And so he's gonna go to like scenic roads and row ads and he's going to have a mic in his helmet. And I think I forget what he was gonna do Two wheel therapy or something like that. Two wheel improvement. I forget. So I apologize. If you're listening, brother, I should remember that that's my bad.
Speaker 2:But that said, he's like I think my car's gonna shit the bed and I'm like well, what do you mean? You know cars like fix it right. He's like the part is cheap, but the way that you have to insert I don't know what the you would probably know this Kev. There's a transmission, that it's a special transmission. There's some acronym, I don't know. But the point is is you have to take the whole engine apart. So the part's cheap, but the labor's insane, because then you have to rebuild the whole engine essentially. So he's like, yeah, no, and so my point is life is a lot like that. Someone pulls up in a car, but what it took to build that, what it took to repair that, what it took to learn how to drive that, what it took to, it's insane.
Speaker 1:It's insane to think about, and so everything is more than you think it is, and excuse me, and oh there's just a little squeak there and remember where that was like the worst possible thing that could ever happen to you ever, if that happened to you, you had to leave school for the day, way back in the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, such a weird year I'm still hoping to hit puberty at 36. But I think that that over the last 1600 episodes, what I've learned more than anything because I've coached so many people from so different industries, so many different countries is that what they do they make look easy, but pretty much everything else is fairly difficult for them, and so all of us are like really good at a couple things, really good, and everything else is kind of mind blowing to us. When we see it it's like oh wow, that's unbelievable that they can speak on a microphone like that. And if you tried it I mean we tried to get testimonials for a long time and one of the reasons why testimonials are hard to get is just because people are scared of being on camera totally understandable. People don't like to hear their own voice totally understandable. Neither did we.
Speaker 2:I remember at the beginning my very first YouTube video was so bad it's cringe worthy to watch. I will send it to you if you want it. All right, alan at nextleveluniversecom. Email me, I'll send it to you. I have it privately unlisted on purpose because I need my clients to see where I started, because it was so bad. I promise you I'm worse than you.
Speaker 2:At my start I had a notebook. I was trying to read it word for word. I wasn't looking at the camera, the lighting was awful, the audio quality was brutal, just awful. So my point is I was like a little kid, I looked like a little kid, I was still in my mid-20s while. But the point that I'm making here is that everything looks easy because you're seeing it at the tail end. Of course, we're gonna make this look easy at 1600 and I'm still making some mistakes, some squeaks, and everything looks easier on the surface than it really was behind the scenes. Everything sounds easier and is easier to say than to actually do. And so this drudgery thing. Everything has a lot more drudgery behind the scenes than you realize. And whether you see someone on YouTube, just remember, you're seeing the 5%. You're not seeing the 95% that made that happen.
Speaker 2:When you watch a movie, you're seeing the finished product. You're not seeing the costume design. You're not seeing the casting. You're not seeing all the interviews. You're not seeing all the debates on the contracts, the agencies. You're not seeing all the actors and actresses. You're not seeing all the bloopers. You're not seeing the writing of the script. Oh, that must be awful. There's a director friend of mine who writes scripts, and it just takes him years to finalize these scripts. So there's so much that goes into it and it's very dangerous to look at the finished product and to think, oh, I could never do that when in reality you could. But you have to realize that it's gonna take a lot longer than I think you originally thought. Including this, this has taken longer than I thought, for sure.
Speaker 1:It's taken longer than I had hoped. I don't know if I had an expectation. I don't know. I didn't really.
Speaker 2:You thought we might go viral with a front flip in the snow. That was my goal.
Speaker 1:I spent seven hours making it, 300 views. I'm not great. This is another thing that I've been thinking about very, very often and very, very deep, very philosophically. The only true way for us, the collective us, you personally to achieve quote, unquote success is to find a sustainable way to do it. I don't know if there's any other way to do it, because, if I said this, I did an Instagram story today and I said I don't want you to want what I want, I want you to want what you want. As a result, I think this is what success really is.
Speaker 1:Success is the pursuit of an aligned result plus the day-to-day journey of said pursuit An enjoyable, whatever that means, or an aligned day-to-day journey in pursuit of that result. I think they're going back to the episode we did recently, where not everybody's supposed to be a millionaire or an entrepreneur or whatever a parent, whatever it is. The reason is because for some people, that's not sustainable. That would take their day-to-day and make it completely misaligned. Now I'm starting to really, really look at people and say, oh, my goodness, you're not going to win because you're not going to want to keep doing this. It's honestly, maybe it's not good for you, it might not be physically good for you to do this. You probably shouldn't do it. We have a list of all the podcasts. Alan and I have been on all the episodes we've guessed it on.
Speaker 2:I was looking through it recently, same by the way you were looking through it. I clicked on, so I typed in Alan Lazarus on the podcast app. I was looking for we just launched the next level audio blog. I was looking for the new podcast that essentially my written blog is becoming the audio blog. It wasn't there yet because Kevin was responsible for that.
Speaker 1:Kevin was busy with the other parts of the business, not setting up Alan's podcast.
Speaker 2:The next level audio blog has launched. The link will be in the show notes. It's really just me passionately reading each of my blogs so that you can do other stuff while not having to actually have it in front of you reading it. I like to learn while I do other stuff, so I wanted to do that. Anyways, the point is I also looked, I typed in my name and I looked at all. It was like whoa holy crap been a lot of shows, but I digress. What was your point?
Speaker 1:The most interesting piece of that is how many of those shows are no longer around. It wasn't necessarily sustainable for them. When you're thinking of success, don't just think about sustainability, because there are going to be bouts where it's not sustainable. The week I'm doing this week is not sustainable. It's Thursday and I am crashing. It's bad. I'm riding the struggle bus. There's a lot of times that haven't been super sustainable, but the day to day, wake up, do this, do this? Be overwhelmed, be stressed out, move this around, move this around. Okay, cool that. How long can you do the thing? How long can you practice the pursuit of what you actually want? If it's not sustainable, I don't know if you'll ever find quote unquote true success.
Speaker 2:I remember one time you and I had a debate, a healthy debate behind the scenes, and you said, as we do. You said, Alan, if you were to say at the end of this journey, someone's going to get $10 million, but they have to work for three hours a day every day for 10 years, you said everyone, even if they were 100% certain that they would get the 10 million, a very small percentage of people would actually do that.
Speaker 1:That is my belief here, three hours though I don't know I will call it three.
Speaker 2:And I was in book club and I was discussing said debate. So anyone in book club shout out to you you were probably there for this and everyone was like, yeah, no, no chance, I wouldn't do it. And I was like, oh my God, kevin was right, I can't. Well, because in my head it doesn't make any sense to me, because a lot of people have talked my whole life about how they want financial freedom and how they want to be wealthy and how they want trips and all that kind of stuff. For me, mathematically it just didn't make sense. But then I also realized that I'm very mastery driven and I like doing, I like getting better at things every day. So if you want to start a podcast but you don't ever anticipate ever being able to get to 1600 episodes, sometimes I wonder if that person even should start, because I mean maybe not 1600, but because we do an episode a day, you don't have to do that right, you could do an episode a week. And as long as you're going to do it for the long term, because you can't really win that big anymore without doing something long term. I mean I have some. I have a friend of mine who makes 450 grand a year and he codes and he works for a company. He's been there for probably nine years and he'll be wealthy forever, but he's been investing since he was 14 and you know, he's been coding since he was 12. Like, of course, he's going to make that much I. To me, that just makes perfect sense. There's not a lot of people who have been coding for 25 years, right? I mean, there just aren't. So, and everyone in the world not everyone, but most companies need apps and websites and you know they need, they need coders. So it's just. It's just one of those things where you kind of can't win in the short term with anything in a way and I know that sounds really depressing and not empowering, but it is empowering if you choose the right thing.
Speaker 2:One of my clients, 18 years old. I'm so pumped for him. He's got more clarity at 18. I told him I said I was a mess when I was your age, dude, he's tracking habits. He's tracked habits every day for over a year and he's got like 22 a day. The dude's killing it. It's unbelievable. He's written. He's written. He's read 11 books. Right, I mean, I hadn't read 11 books by then I was off the rails, and after high school, same 18. 18. It's unbelievable, I it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Now, my point of that is, though, that that the the time that it takes to accumulate success is so much more than we were ever taught. I have a doctor friend of ours. We have a doctor friend of ours client. Her husband's a surgeon. He went to school for 14 years, and that's only the higher education. That doesn't include high school. It doesn't include middle school. So if you add middle school four years, high school four years, that's eight, plus the 14 additional, that's 22 years. So he went to school for 22 years, and now he makes a lot, a lot, a lot of money, but 22 years of that was being broke.
Speaker 2:I just wonder if people maybe aren't thinking that way, and I don't mean that in a negative way towards anyone. I just do think that way. I never expected a quick hit anything Ever. I genuinely never did. I didn't think it would take this long. Quite frankly, I mean, I wished for it, but I never. I just think it's so empowering for everyone to just go.
Speaker 2:Okay, I can be very, very, very successful if I choose something in these three categories. Number one, something that I can do, that I like enough to do long term. You have to maybe not love what you do, maybe not be passionate, but you like it enough to where it's like I could do this long term for sure, okay. Number two something that you can get paid for, right? I love watching movies. I could be a movie critic, but I don't know. Am I going to get paid for that? Probably, if I really did it for long enough, right, but that's not exactly the best play.
Speaker 2:And then number three, which is what are you genetically gifted at? And that's the one that I think a lot of people don't fully understand, because for the longest time, kevin and I were not doing what we were best at. One of the reasons we're succeeding more in business now is because we just figured out, like, stop trying to be me, I'm going to stop trying to be you, and you know people don't naturally like me. That's okay. It's not a strength for you. People naturally like you. That's a huge strength. Totally fine, let's lean into it. All good. And for me, systems and strategy and long-term thinking and business and coaching and finance, and all that engineering.
Speaker 2:And the last piece, not about me, but just I have an engineering mind. So once I leaned into that, we started winning more. Maybe you don't have an engineering mind, that's fine. Statistically you probably don't. But what if you have an artist's mind? What if you're super creative? What if you're really good with people? What if you're an extraordinary communicator? What if? And? So that's the three sort of circles. One is what can you get paid for? What do you love enough like enough to do long-term, and what are you genetically gifted at? I mean, there are some freak athletes that wipe the walls with Kevin and I and they've worked out half as long, and that's. They just should not be in front of these mics. Maybe they should be on the field or whatever. It is right and that's okay. So I think the intersection of those three is where you can build a real life. You can design a life of success and fulfillment.
Speaker 1:This is my thesis and I had it about a quarter into your soliloquy there, but I let you run it because I didn't want to interrupt you.
Speaker 1:I want credit for that. I want credit for that. Success is very, very challenging because I think more often than not it's reactive, it's not proactive. Something happens and then you want to start something new, for a new level of success. I didn't start this until I was 27. So in my mind I already had 27 years under my belt. I don't think I factored in. Well, you haven't been doing all of this for 27 years. You haven't done any of this for 27 years. It was very reactive. I went from something and I started to completely new, and I think that's really hard. I've seen this so many times with people who are very successful in one lane and then they start a podcast and they have to start from scratch. You're starting over. You might have resources, maybe you have money, but nobody knows who you are yet and they're starting from and it's really hard. I think at an ego level, it's really hard for some people because it's completely different and it's slower. It takes a lot more time because that success was reactive. You're starting something new. You're starting something that has no momentum. I think that's why it's so hard.
Speaker 1:But if you came out as a baby and knew exactly what you were going to do exactly what you wanted to do when you were five years old, maybe like you. This might be like a you thing, I don't know. Then in middle school you knew exactly what you wanted to do. And then in high school you knew exactly what you wanted to do. And then you went to college for the thing that you knew exactly that you wanted to do, and you never pivoted.
Speaker 1:I'm willing to bet success would not seem nearly as hard because you'd have so much momentum behind it. Agreed, I think that's. I wonder if that's why I felt like a giant failure for most of my life, because I only did something for a year or two years and then I canned it and went to something completely new. I never really got momentum at anything I did other than fitness. I wonder, I wonder, if that aided my self belief and self worth. Every time I'd get something down, or not even at the place where I got it down, I'd leave and go do something else. I never, I never really built momentum.
Speaker 2:I want to give a shout out to my 18 year old client. I have him doing. I have him doing. We decided to do DoorDash slash, grubhub and he's kind of doing a split test on which one makes him more money and he's awesome. I just. It's so cool. The experiments, different times, different apps. You know what he's doing. Apparently, uber Eats you have to like, apply and it's like a wait list. I don't know. But the point is is I said this to him earlier.
Speaker 2:I said you're listening to books in the car the whole time, right, and he's like yeah, I said this wouldn't be worth it if you weren't, because minimum wage where he lives is higher than what he's averaging. But you don't have a boss, you don't have a time schedule, you can do it on your own time and, most importantly, you can turn your car into a classroom. And the books that we are reading, that I'm suggesting that he reads, are going to set him up for a lifetime of business success. And you said that I knew what I wanted to do when I was young. I think I knew more than most, but I pivoted a lot.
Speaker 2:There was a time when I was considering pro gaming. There was a time when I was off the rails here, off the rails there, doing this. I went to LA for a time show business the one through line. That's actually very clear. Which is wild and semi-ironic is that business was the one through line, but this is only obvious in hindsight. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an engineer, go for my masters in business and then be a CEO. And ironically, even though I've taken a thousand detours, I was a fitness model. For a while. I was a fitness coach. I have a bunch of detours, but I ended up a teacher, though.
Speaker 1:You've always been a teacher. I appreciate it. That's what I would say. I do terrible at times. I'm sure I do adore, it's so funny.
Speaker 2:When I was a kid, I wanted to be a math teacher, but I love to teach, I love to educate. I do it. I think that's a through line. That is a through line and it becomes obvious later on and now I am a CEO. I wanted to be a CEO of a Fortune 50 tech company and that was the path that I was reverse engineering and trying to do. And now I ended up being a CEO of a company and we do have a department called Software Solutions that will be in the tech space big time later on AI, crm systems, that kind of stuff Super pumped about all that. But being a mentor and teacher, I eventually want to help young people start and grow businesses.
Speaker 2:So there's a whole bunch of cool stuff coming at NLU later on, but that's not what this is about. What this is about is you have to look at your life like a movie and you have to pull out the theme. You have to. You have to pull out the clues are there. If you watch Forrest Gump, what's that movie really about? Is it about some guy who likes running? No, it's about the feather at the end, the famous feather in Forrest Gump. If you've not seen Forrest Gump. I apologize, are we all just drifting around or is there a bigger purpose? And he said maybe it's both, and I think that's a really cool duality. We are all here for a purpose and it's chaos and we're all drifting around. It's the dance between meaningless and meaningful, purposeful and chaotic, and I think that that's the theme, that's the through line. So if you watch the movie of your own life, there's themes. That's a lot of.
Speaker 2:What I do in coaching is just I pull out the themes. Amy Lenny is a perfect example. Shout out to you Amy, unbelievable facilitator of great experiences. I'll never forget being at the Airbnb with the team and I needed to focus and as soon as she got there I knew oh, we're good, she's going to facilitate everything. I just knew that she would rally everybody and she's going to make everybody drinks and she's going to do her thing not alcoholic drinks, but just she has these cute little drinks she makes and she was just facilitating a great experience for everyone and I knew I could just head down and focus after that.
Speaker 2:I think she has an absolute gift for facilitating magnificent experiences and in group coaching she's doing such a good job. So, for the listeners, what is the theme of your movie, because, whatever it is, design your success around that and you're going to find yourself way more successful. Even if it's not as grandiose as being a billionaire, that doesn't matter. What matters is that it's your own unique theme. That is actually who you are and who you're meant to be all sort of wrapped up into one.
Speaker 1:Well said, well said, and any forest gum reference to me is a good one. It's a great, one of the best movies. One of the best movies, one of my favorites. I have to watch it again. Yeah, same, I have to watch that again. But this would be my next level. Nugget, excuse me, don't.
Speaker 1:Don't confuse yourself into thinking you're not successful. No-transcript. If you don't want to do the process that it would take to get the success because that might be a hint, and I don't mean that in the way of you don't deserve it, please do not step on the computer, sir. I have to move up in case Ace tries to walk across my keyboard. I'm not saying that from a perspective of you don't deserve it, you didn't earn it. I don't mean it like that. I mean it more from the phase of you're kidding yourself if you think, oh, I really wish I had blank, blank, blank and blank. But you'd never be happy doing the process. I, I. There's something to that. There's something to. That's not what success probably means to you.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you can really identify with success being something You'd never go through the process of doing. Now we play the lottery. People play the lottery for that reason. But a lot of people that make a lot of money from the lottery are miserable. They're not happy. They're not as happy as you think they are. And there's a lot of people that have really successful Financial careers that aren't as aren't as happy as you you think they are. There are people out there that make the amount of money that maybe you want to make, that want to spend as much Time with their family as you get to spend with your so, but that's what they thought success was to them.
Speaker 1:So my long, long winded Next level nation, next level nation, next little nugget is make sure you identify it for you, because I would hate for you to regret the journey based on an end zone that you don't even want to get to. I think that would be a really, really sad thing. It would be really really sad for that to happen. I'd rather you shoot and this is in quotation marks, I don't mean it that way. I would rather you shoot small, if that's what people would say oh, you have small, whatever. I would much rather you do that and hit it and be happy and fulfilled and aligned and get to do what you actually love, whatever that is. I think that's. That's the most important.
Speaker 2:There's the whole debate around the journey versus the destination. I Was on with a client earlier who lives in New Zealand and I was asking her because it's emilia's favorite place in the world, of all the places she's ever visited, and I asked her the flight belongs that flight? I don't want to hear it.
Speaker 1:I don't want to know New Zealand's in Australia near right, that's a 24-hour flight.
Speaker 2:I looked it up, boss.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine what do you mean? How does it stay up for that long?
Speaker 2:No, so the destination that you choose in this analogy, boston to New Zealand Matters, because it determines how high you climb, how far you go, that kind of metaphor. But If you hate the entire plane ride which I do, which Kevin does then it's not worth it, and so you kind of have to pick a destination that will help you grow, that's in alignment With your core values and how you want to contribute in the world, makes you enough money to thrive on, and one that you like the process to, and that's not easy, you know. I wish. I wish we taught career development better.
Speaker 2:I really do. I didn't learn a lot about career development until I think I was probably 20, 20 years old, at junior in college, and I started doing resume stuff and I did some tutoring and I'm I can make a mean resume, but Back then I didn't know what I was doing and I remember being at the career development center at my school Thinking you guys don't know what you're doing and why am I learning this? Now you know Like this is important stuff. So again, I always feel that way because as an educator, as someone who Just wished I knew these things earlier, and that's what I know you's built on what we wish we knew the whole.
Speaker 2:Every other episode Probably every episode on some level can be in that next level nugget is hey, we really wish we knew this, and now we do, but we learned it the hard way. So maybe you can learn it, but maybe a little less of the hard way that we learned it. Uh, and that's what we do for our clients, that's what I do for my business clients. That was that's what Kevin does for his podcast clients and that's what we do for our listeners. So thank you for listening. Appreciate it. Next up, a nation Uh, 1600.
Speaker 1:That's 1600, pretty cool a lot of episodes, a lot of episodes. That's the other weird thing too is, eventually, I think, you get into a groove where you don't. Things just happen so fast that you don't even really know what's going on. Not not completely, but I feel like we just recorded 1500 last week, doesn't it feel like I next level nation? Welcome back to another episode today for episode, like it feels like it was just yesterday. I can't believe it's been a hundred days since then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's wild Goes by so fast. So that's another thing about quote-unquote.
Speaker 2:But the day-to-day happens really slow. The day-to-day was tough, man I would say hour to hour is tough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, day-to-day it's thursday, I feel like it was just monday. It's, it's wonky, it's just. There's just so much going on.
Speaker 2:There's the next level nugget it's wonky it's wonky.
Speaker 1:Next level nation. As you know, march 23rd 2024, grottin, massachusetts, and virtually via the interwebs, we have next level live 2024. Alan and I love doing live events and we especially love the ones that we get to host, because we can make it however we want and we know the audience and we know what will resonate. It's pretty much just like a podcast, except we're on stage and we're teaching more, which is very, very wild that we have the opportunity to do that. So, if you are local to grottin, grottin is probably I don't know 40 minutes outside of boston, mm-hmm, maybe, maybe a little bit more.
Speaker 2:No, I think it's a little bit more. It's right near where I just was when I went indoor skydiving. It's right on the border of massachusetts in new hampshire. Yeah, that's not that close. No, it's right, I was in Tingsboro or something like that.
Speaker 1:It's not that close to Tingsboro, is it, I think. So, all right, talk about what you're gonna talk about. Let me look it up on the map so I can give an accurate Okay.
Speaker 2:So on this Dreamliner there's a mountain and at the top of that mountain is a star. Said star represents your dreams and the Dreamliner is a journal that's gonna take you from the bottom of the mountain to your dreams. But the point of why I really wanna tie it to this episode is the Dreamliner is gonna help you make sure that you're climbing your mountain and not what your family wanted for you, what your mom wanted for you, what your dad wanted for you. I remember I was giving a speech at Clark University and these two students came up to me and they really wanted to play soccer for a living and they were really good. And I said do you think you could actually make money doing that? And I'm not saying that, imposing that you can't. I'm asking if you guys really feel like you could make it on a semi pro or pro level. And they said yeah, but our parents want us to be engineers. And I said well, you you know.
Speaker 2:They asked me for advice. I said you gotta have the courage to follow your heart. You gotta have the courage to do what you wanna do. Cause I asked, are you gonna regret it if you don't? And they said yes. I said well then, you gotta do it. You gotta do it, and your parents are gonna be upset, and that's. That is what it is, and you have to have the courage. So I don't want you climbing a mountain, kevin, and I don't want you climbing a mountain that isn't your own. So the Dreamliner is gonna take you to your unique dreams. I've been using it every single day since I've gotten it. Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time. The keyword there is your, your dreams.
Speaker 1:One day at a time. Also keywords One day at a time.
Speaker 1:It says 90 days at a time, okay, 90 days at a time, but one day at a time out of the night, exactly that's the way that cookie crumbles. Groton is one hour, roughly one hour outside of Boston. So that is where Groton is. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, it's scenic, it's kind of out in the middle of the woods in a way, but also not. Alan said yesterday that I believe Emilia told him that it's surrounded by conservation lands. I believe so, which is why so we don't know that.
Speaker 1:Don't don't, don't fact check that that might that might not be accurate, but we're taking 30 people in person and 30 people virtual. There is a buffet style lunch and the food is really, really, really good and you get to meet other members of next level nation. It is the 23rd Saturday, march 23rd, and everybody who attends live is getting a free Dreamliner, which I'm super excited about. So, yeah, we'll have the link in the show notes. You can get your tickets, whether they are virtual or in person, via the website and make sure you get them fast, because tickets are already selling and we are still, yeah, a little less than two months out, which is wild that tickets are already going. So make sure you get your tickets if you want to attend. All right, tomorrow we start the climb to the next 100. Tomorrow for episode number 1,601. I'm gonna have to get used to saying that.
Speaker 1:Who convinced you? Asking for help is bad. Somebody asked me for help recently and made me really happy. Made me really happy. I was super pumped that this person reached out and asked for help and I think there's a lesson in that. Definitely a lesson for me, but probably, hopefully, a lesson for all of us. So we will talk about that tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and at NLU we do not have fans, we have family. Thank you so very much for being with us for all 1600 episodes.
Speaker 2:Keep playing the long game next level nation.
