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
#1606 - 1 SUPER Underrated Word For Success
In the dynamic landscape of life and business, success often hinges not on the abundance of resources but on the ability to harness what we already possess, a linchpin in the quest for thriving amid adversity. In today’s episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros dig into the art of making do with less, exploring how personal anecdotes and cultural references can illuminate the path to success through creative problem-solving and innovation.
Links mentioned:
Next Level Dreamliner - https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
Next Level Live - Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 (10:00 am to 4:30 pm) https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
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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
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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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Instagram 📷
Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
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Facebook ✍
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Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/
Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
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Show notes:
(1:59) Getting everything out of everything
(4:02) Not the sexiest word
(6:17) Personal tale about resourcefulness
(9:22) Next Level Dreamliner: the planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/f1FWAQA
(10:40) How good are you at this
(11:38) The three parts of resources
(13:48) Examples of resourcefulness
(16:39) Gratefulness amplifies resourcefulness
(19:10) 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 1605, which one of these motivates you more. We talked about running from scarcity or running towards abundance. Today, for episode number 1606, one super underrated word for success. I would also say it's not sexy. One super unsexy, underrated word for success. I love the title. Yeah, it's not bad. It's not bad. Quite the hook.
Kevin:I remember Alan suggested a book to me, I don't know, two, three, four years ago, and the book is called Stretch and the book is all about how the most successful companies and we'll get into this and, trust me, this isn't going to be a business episode, we'll make this land for you but how all the successful companies make sure that they use everything to the maximum amount they can. They make sure that they are getting everything out of everything they can and not just saying, okay, we have money, let's throw money at this problem. What are the things that we can do to fix this problem in house? What can we do to get creative? Why don't you take it easy over there with?
Kevin:the audio books. Sorry about that.
Alan:No, I figured that's what you were doing.
Kevin:I figured that's what you were doing. So the underrated, slash, unsexy word is resourcefulness, and let me just read the definition really quick. This is like a throwback to the old days.
Alan:Smallpox. Can you spell it for us and give us its original origin? I?
Kevin:can't, because that isn't here, but the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. That's what resourcefulness is. Resourcefulness is having the same pieces as somebody else but being able to look at those pieces in a different way, and I always use the example or the analogy. The story, however, I don't know which one technically is, but imagine if you were stuck. You fell into a hole and a bunch of tree branches and rocks and logs fell into that hole with you. There's a bunch of different ways you can get out using those materials, but that's going to depend on how resourceful you are, how well you can stack up the logs, how well you can stack up the rocks. Is there a piece of vine that fell down there that you can tie to the branches to make a ladder? That's resourcefulness.
Kevin:Resourcefulness is taking something maybe that a lot of other people have, but using it in a different way. And even in the definition you hear quick and clever. I don't necessarily know quick, clever ways to overcome difficulties. We're all going to have difficulties in our lives. We all have a different opportunity to be resourceful to solve those. So again, not the sexiest word, not the sexiest thing in the world, but over the last seven years, I think mostly due to Alan, we've been really, really good at being resourceful, and we would not be here today in the way we are if that's not something we were practicing. So there's definitely room for growth in all of us, alan and I included, when it comes to resourcefulness.
Alan:I want to be. I'll go brief with this, but I think it's important to provide context of why resourcefulness is so important when so many of the listeners know my story. But for the new listeners I'll give the very, very, very, very short version. So, father passed away when I was two years old, had an older sister who was six at the time. My father was 28 when he passed away.
Alan:I was two and I was raised by my mom and my older sister, but I had a stepfather from age three to 14. And when I was 14, my stepfather left and without going down the huge rabbit hole of my story I didn't realize this at the time, I really didn't. I didn't realize this until my 30s when I was kind of rewatching the movie of my life. But I had essentially lost three families by the time I was 14 years old and I've since and again there's a lot of nuances with that Like I still kind of had my birth father's family there for me, like that kind of thing. But my stepfather left, took his family with him. My mom and her sister got an altercation that ostracized us from her family and my birth father's family we didn't really spend time with because we were kind of trying to be a family unit with my stepdad and honestly, we were kind of pretending to be a family unit with my stepdad. My real name is Macorchal, my last name of Lazarus, I got when I was seven and so the Macorchal family we didn't speak to from three to 14 really much at all, and then when my stepfather left he took his whole family with him and then my mom and her sister got an altercation and my grandparents had already passed. At that point they were kind of the leaders of that family. So I didn't know any of this.
Alan:But by the time I'm 14 years old, I don't know how I'm going to go to college because my stepdad, you know, he got the yacht in the apartment buildings, we got the house and the dog and we were broke and I didn't know how I was going to go to college. You know, I didn't have a family to help really, and again, none of this I really knew at the time I didn't know any different. But now it's very clear and it was like holy crap, what are we going to do? We got to get really resourceful and so that's what we did and that's why I worked so hard in high school to get straight A's financial aid, scholarships. I got every scholarship I could possibly get. I got financial aid. I got no interest loans.
Alan:I remember applying to Massachusetts stuff to try to do whatever I could to get to college, you know. And so then I fast forward, fast forward, fast forward. I went into corporate and all of a sudden I had a lot of money. All of a sudden I was getting paid more and more and more. I went from 65 to 85 and 85 to, you know, 105, and 105 to 125 and then 125 to almost 200. And I remember thinking like I don't need all this. When I was, I was living with nothing for so long, very little. I mean in college I was so broke that I drove a $1,200 car back in college. It was one of those. I don't even remember the name of it. It was one of those Nissan Z's or whatever A little T you know cars. So it's like what's the one where, with the doors that flap open? I don't know.
Kevin:I mean, there was an expensive ones, not $1,200. I don't know, it was a real, it was a real old. It must have been a real, a real old.
Alan:Yeah, it was a beater. The sound system was worth, I think, as much as the car, which tells you what I was doing in college, right, but super resourceful thrift stores, salvation Army, you know just, resourceful, resourceful, resourceful. I got reduced lunch and free lunch at school and our income was so low. And so when Kevin and I were in business and we were struggling financially, we had many mentors who were very wealthy, who I had turned a lot of money down from. For lack of better phrasing, again, there's stories behind that, we don't have time for any of that. But you know, I got offered a job for a half million per year, bonus structure, vp of sales, all that kind of stuff. I got offered, you know, a million dollars, you know, from investors.
Alan:I just told Kev and I remember Kev at one point being like why don't we just go to this mentor, ask for a hundred grand? We'll turn it, we'll flip it, we'll pay him interest or whatever. And I said, kev, I don't want to do that because I want to be more resourceful. Imagine if you can do a lot with very little. Imagine what you can do with a lot. And so now here we are, years later, and Kevin has since come to me and said that was really cool that we were able to do that, even though at the time he couldn't buy Christmas presents for his wife his girlfriend at the time, wife now, and so it was terrible.
Alan:It was just awful. So so being scarce is not fun, it's terrible, but being resourceful is a skill that is unbelievably valuable. And when you do get resources, do you lose your resourcefulness? And if so, you're in trouble, and we've been guilty of this. We playfully say we had our biggest month, and then Kevin and I stepped off the gas and I'm watching my favorite TV show at 11 o'clock on a Tuesday and all of a sudden, the next quarter we're not winning again.
Alan:I don't care if it's fitness, health, wealth, love. I don't care if it's in your relationship. If you stop being resourceful, if you stop being humble, if you stop I'm trying to stretch a dollar You're in trouble, and maybe not right away. Maybe not right away, but this book is called Strange. It's by Scott Sonin-Shin. I apologize for not being able to pronounce that it's unlock the power of less and achieve more than you ever imagined, and I do realize now in hindsight I want to make this very clear that high self-belief is required to be resourceful. So if you have low self-belief, being scarce might just feel scarce, but if you do want to build self-belief, not only does NLU help you do that. But you can stretch a dollar. We always say make every day and every dollar count.
Alan:Kevin and I, you know, we spent years and years and years and years and years trying to figure out how to do this with very little and most companies they get investors and we didn't. And so, to bring this to the listeners rather than a business conversation, like Kevin had mentioned in the beginning, the question I would have everyone ask because this is a self-awareness show, it's an awareness show, but self-awareness is a big part of that is how resourceful are you from zero to 10? And the three parts of resources. I actually have it on my whiteboard. Number one is become more resourceful. That's what we're talking about right now. How do you become more resourceful? How do you do more with less? How do you do more with less? How do you do more with less? And then number two is accumulate more resources. Maybe it's investments, maybe buy a home. That's a great example, buy a home, okay. And then the third one is allocate resources more optimally. In other words, when you make that extra 500 bucks, can you stretch it? Can you go on a trip for 500 bucks and still make it really fun.
Alan:Amelia and I went indoor skydiving recently and then we went to Barnes Noble. The whole trip probably cost us. We went away for a weekend it was more one night and one of the hotels we stayed at was brutal and that was 400 bucks. But the rest of the trip was probably I don't know 150 bucks. Between the two of us we got snacks and we rented a movie and we went to Barnes Noble. We each got three books. She came with like 15 books, and so did I, and I was like sweetheart, let's pick our favorite three, you know, and we did. We came home with three books each and it was Barnes Noble's expensive books, for sure. But we had this awesome weekend. For what? 650 bucks. And again, that is not what it used to be.
Kevin:And that's not what it is a weekend. That's not what it is a weekend either.
Alan:Definitely not, and there's certain things you skimp on, certain things that you don't. It all depends on your core values, but resourcefulness is the key. So a lot of people think resources is the problem. Kev, you thought that we don't have the resources. We don't have the resources, we don't have the resources and I said no, no, no, we are not resourceful enough yet, and when we become more resourceful, the resources will come. And again, that does require self-belief, that requires a lot of competence, that requires having mentors and coaches and being able to do the work. If you can't do the work, it's not going to work. But yeah, that's. I'm a big fan of this topic and I think that resourcefulness, compounded over time, can change your life so much.
Kevin:I would concur with that. This would be my next love of nugget. Ask yourself this question Can you discover a problem when you run into difficulties? How many options do you search for? The best analogy for this is imagine and again, this is a little anxiety inducing, so just tread lightly on this. But imagine you're on the show fear factor For those who don't know, it's a show that was on a long time ago.
Kevin:They used to do gross slash, scary stuff. One of the things they did often is they would have to find a key to a lock and open a lock underwater, which is going to be a pass for the kid. It's going to be a pass for the kid. But if you were in that situation, how many times would you come up and come down, come up for air and then go back down to try to find another key or try to find a hairpin or try to find a needle that would open that lock? Castaway is another really good example, If you've ever seen that movie, the reason he survives is because he's super resourceful. He uses an ice skate to cut stuff and then to remove. I think he's got like an infected tooth or something.
Kevin:Oh brutal, I don't remember it he uses an ice skate to rip his own tooth out and he uses that as an axe to chop down the tree and to open the coconut. Super, super, super resourceful. That's a really good example of resourcefulness. How resourceful are you when it comes to getting through difficulties and accomplishing the goals that you have aimed for?
Alan:Go ahead. He also invents a friend, wilson Wilson. Wilson was the best friend, the best friend. He invented that. How resourceful is that he put hair and a smiley face on a volleyball.
Kevin:I like to think I would have done that Because he wanted a friend. I like to think I would have done that For sure, for sure.
Alan:Do you remember the scene at the end when, again, I love movies, so forgive me on this, but I promise I'll tie it back At the end. When he gets back to the end of the 90s in the US, we're wild. It was dot com bubble. Everybody was winning, Globally really too, Not just the US. I didn't mean to be an ignorant American on that. The point is at the end. Remember when he is sitting there, in that he's sitting there in this room and there's this buffet and all this wasted food.
Alan:I don't remember the movie he gets off the island and FedEx is the company that he works for.
Alan:FedEx is crushing it in the late 90s, the 90s and all that. They have this big conference table with all this food, huge buffet and crab legs and fish. It's all just rotting. Everyone's just thinking nothing of it. He's just sitting there really depressed in the room going. I just spent years on an island being as resourceful as humanly possible just to survive. We're all just sitting here with all this food and we think nothing of it. It was a really depressing scene and I love the moral of that. I love that movie for that reason. It's like we take things for granted so much it bothers me to my core. I filled up my water bottle today. I swear to you we have this little filter spout and I think, thank goodness for running water, we have clean water. There are people that literally walk miles for clean water every day, Every day, and we're so entitled.
Alan:It bothers me Myself included, by the way, when I get entitled. It bothers me so much because we have so much to be grateful for that we just overlook constantly. And resourcefulness and gratitude are one and the same. I mean you cannot be resourceful without being grateful for what you do have, and it's a duality. I understand you gotta shoot for what you don't have too. Trust me, I wanna achieve more. It's the duality. You have to want more and be grateful for what you do have and be resourceful with what you do have to achieve more. And I think that that's a really powerful idea. Is that your next love and nugget? That is Wilson from Castaway.
Kevin:Wilson. All right, we gotta hop, because we both. I have coaching call. I don't know if you have a coaching call. I have stuff to do. You'll probably just hang out, sit around in your pajamas and sip tea, but I'll be up after it.
Kevin:If you have not yet joined Next Love and Nation, please do. An amazing group of humans that will help you get to your goals because you'll be able to authentically be you. I think that's one of the hardest things in the world, but one of the most desired things in the world. Also. Next Level Live 2024 is March 23rd in Groton Mass. Tickets for in-person are $97. Tickets for virtual are $47. In person, you get a free Dreamliner as well as a free catered lunch. We're selling 30 tickets for in-person as well as 30 tickets for virtual, so please get your tickets ASAP, because they will sell out Tomorrow.
Kevin:For episode number 1,607, I don't know. We had an idea. I don't know if we're going to do that yet. So, again, I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow. It's busy, busy, busy, busy over here right now on the business end and, quite honestly, alan and I are struggling to keep up with everything. So I will do better, I promise. It's just been a very, very challenging couple of weeks, so I don't know what we're doing tomorrow, but we'll figure it out.
Alan:We will.
Kevin:That's the beauty of it is we'll be resourceful. We'll be resourceful and we'll figure it out. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow.
Alan:Stay grateful and resourceful Next time. We'll meet you tomorrow.
