#1789 - Supplement Vs Staple - Freestyle Friday

Could blowing cinnamon across your doorstep attract wealth? In today’s episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delve into the myths and realities of success and empowerment. With so much misinformation floating around, it’s easy to fall prey to false promises and quick fixes. This topic aims to debunk these myths and provide a clear, actionable path to lasting success.

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Show notes:
(1:55) Falling prey to confirmation bias
(7:00) Disguised as empowering
(9:41) Rationality
(12:06) Somebody always wins
(14:09) How to evaluate opportunities?
(15:30) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
(18:24) Success and statistics
(21:19) A surprising truth
(24:13) Turning vision into reality
(26:55) Outro

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

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. Today for episode number 1789, it's Freestyle Friday, and on Freestyle Friday we don't really know what we're going to talk about and we don't have the episode titled. We do, this week, have an idea of what we're going to talk about, but we don't have the episode titled and we're just kind of going to figure it out as we go of what we're going to talk about, but we don't have the episode titled and we're just kind of going to figure it out as we go. I saw a clip the other day that I told Alan about and I said I said, dude, stuff like this makes me really sad and it gets me really fired up. And I'll explain what the clip was. The clip was, I don't know. I think it was a post, I don't think it was a reel or anything. It was a post and it said Make sure you blow your cinnamon across the doorstep on the first of the month to attract wealth. And when I saw this I thought it was a joke.

Speaker 1 1:05

Now I'm going to preface this with I am nervous to talk about this because I'm afraid to get villainized for it. That's one. Two, if what we talk about today is triggering, maybe there is a lesson in there. I'm sure there's a lesson. So please do your best to not villainize us and maybe figure out and sit with and explore maybe what that lesson is. But this is why it makes me so sad. I looked in the comments because that's my natural thing I see content and I look in the comments to see what is the energy of the response. And there were people in there that said, oh, I waited to the second, I'll have to try again on the first next month, or I've been doing this for the last four months and nothing has happened. I'm really excited for when things happen.

Speaker 2 1:48

That doesn't, that isn't real wasn't there some comments that said, did I?

Falling prey to confirmation bias

Speaker 1 1:52

I don't know if I'm doing it right, or something like that there was people saying I don't know if I if I'm doing it right. Do I blow from the outside into the house? Do I blow from the inside out? What if I don't do it on the first? How many times do I have to do it? And it's just, I feel like stuff like that preys upon people who are already down and out. Yeah, like, and again, I know we have members of the community that have experienced this and gone through this and and put time into this. But, like multi-level marketing, multi-level marketing unfortunately preys on certain people. Unfortunately and I'm not, that's another thing that fires me up. I feel bad. I feel bad when somebody's promised something that they're not gonna get. Yeah, because there's only so many people in multi-level marketing that can make money. You'd be way better with the math than I would but there's only so many people that can get 10 people to get 10 people. To get 10 people before you run out of humans on the fucking planet. I don't know the math, but I know 10 to the 10th power is like 10 billion. There's not that many people. I'll let you explain that if you want to explain that. But it makes me sad because I think what a lot of it is is confirmation bias. So imagine this, alan. This is a really good example.

Speaker 1 3:16

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a bank, a bank that I used to do business with. They called me up hey, kev, we just want to let you know that we're going to be closing one of your accounts and you can either call us to keep it open we can send you a check or, if you don't do anything, the government will take the money and then you'll have to call them to get it. And I was like there's money, I have money in my account. Okay, cool, let I have money in my account. Okay cool, let me call them. Call them up. Hey, what's happening? I heard money. Here I am. What do I have to do to get access to these funds? And they said yeah, just let us know. Do you want to keep the account open or do you want a check? And I said I'll take a check. I don't live near the bank anymore and I don't need the bank. How much is it? And they're like $134.17. I was like oh cool, a nice little free payday.

Speaker 1 4:05

Imagine if, on the first of the month, I blew cinnamon across my doorstep. I would think that's why the bank reached out to me. When the bank was going to reach out to me regardless, because it's been three years or six years or eight years since I used the account they were going to reach out to me. That would be confirmation bias. It would be that's why Fudge was on medication. So Fudge was a Prozac cat because he was so anxious.

Speaker 1 4:38

For a while he was a Prozac cat and Taryn and I had a conversation. I said I think we I don't want him to be on Prozac anymore. I feel like he's sadder, I feel like he's Good for you, let's try it. And Taryn agreed. She's like, yeah, I feel like it's time Now. I feel like he's more lovey and I feel like he's more brave and he's out and about. But I keep telling Taryn I say that's just me assuming that we did something and that's why we're getting the result, even though it could have been the same. It could have been this way the whole time and I just didn't notice it doesn't sound like that's confirmation bias in that case, but but it could be the fact that you think it could be.

Speaker 1 5:15

Yeah, there's probably some yeah maybe it's not a hundred percent, maybe it's ten percent, yeah, twenty percent, whatever it is. So the reason I wanted to do this episode is Alan said we have a responsibility to talk about stuff like this. Last thing I'll add, and then I'll kick it to you, alan there's a lot of stuff on the internet that is disguised as empowering but it's disempowering. This is what I mean by that. I can't tell you how many side hustle pages I've come across where people claim that they have an e-book or a course that can teach you how to do side hustles. All you need to do is sell 50 courses a day at $20 a piece and you make $1,000 a day. You're making $365,000 a day. Do you know how hard it is to sell 50 of anything a day when you don't have an audience? Do you think? Let me ask you this, let me, let me, let's do this. How many Dreamliners have we sold? 28. We have sold 28 Dreamliners. We have over a million listens.

Speaker 1 6:22

We have listeners in 170 plus countries and we get thousands and thousands and thousands of listens per month and we have sold 28 this year. This year, we've sold 28, which is actually pretty good. It is very good.

Speaker 2 6:37

I'm super excited about it. Shout out to the shout out to the products team.

Speaker 1 6:40

Yeah, literally but people are lessening yeah what it takes.

Disguised as empowering

Speaker 1 6:45

Selling 50 things a day, no chance, is very, very, very challenging, especially if you're at the end of your road and you've tried a million other things and nothing has worked. And then you see a promise that all you have to do is sell 50 of these a day. But you have no audience. You've never done this before. That's not where you start. That is not where you start. That's where you get eventually. If you do it for long enough five, ten, I mean we're seven years in right, maybe 10 years in we'll be selling 50 something a day. I don't know, probably not, maybe.

Speaker 2 7:21

So that's end rant no, I'm grateful and I love when you get fired up about this. This is great.

Speaker 1 7:27

And again it makes me sad Because I could have been when I was down and out and I hated my job. I was looking for every way To make money possible, every way. I've said this before I was going to buy Cell phone cases and I was going to resell them. I was going to buy a bunch of them From.

Speaker 2 7:44

China.

Speaker 1 7:44

Where did you? I was looking all over the place. There was that. There was quizzes you could do online. You could review products. You could do this, you could do this. There was a million different things that I was looking at at the time because I wanted to get out of my job and find a way to make more money. I probably would have fallen trapped to some of that stuff. That's why I'm so passionate about it.

Speaker 2 8:10

Yeah, I get sad as well and I try to my number one, core value, number two, actually. Number one is legacy, but number two is rationality, and rationality is something that it's just hyper logic, hyper reasoning. That it's just hyper logic, hyper reasoning and, mathematically speaking, I just think about it statistically and I think it's really important and hopefully I can inject rationality into this conversation. Not that you're being irrational, I think you're actually being extremely. I think you're accurate. It's very unfortunate to see. I coach one person who is a multi-millionaire and he loves music and he he wanted to go into music and he said my dad told me listen, I know you love music, but you're really good at math and I mean, if you go to engineering school, you're going to do better. You're just statistically going to do better. I don't know what else to tell you. I know your passion is music and I'm on both sides of that coin. It's a duality. It's on one end. You could have maybe made it as a musician.

Rationality

Speaker 2 9:24

I seriously doubt it statistically speaking, but you're definitely going to make it as an engineer with 136 iq, right? So all of us have to kind of do this cost value analysis in our brain. I mean, do you really think that this company is going to help you become wealthy or do you think that it's too good to be true? And if you really sit with it, you kind of know yeah, but the, the multi-level marketing thing, all that stuff. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is the iceberg analogy being successful looks great.

Speaker 2 10:04

I actually sent you something yesterday and then I ended up deleting it. It's one of those infographics about. This is what other people see above the surface, and underneath it is discipline and consistency and rejection and failure, and these are the things no one sees. And to inject rationality here, you can't want level 10 results with level one effort. You can't want level 10 results with level 1 effort. And you also can't expect If 1,000 people do one of those things where it's like sell 50 things or whatever, believe it or not, one of them will end up doing it. Yes, and then they'll highlight that one person and then they'll get another 1 to do it. And that's the same with the lottery too. Unfortunately, the lottery is set up in a way where you show the one winner and you don't, and you highlight them and celebrate them, but you somebody always wins somebody always wins.

Speaker 2 11:07

Yeah, somebody always wins.

Speaker 1 11:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2 11:08

Somebody always wins, but what about the 9,999,000 people who lost money in order to make that winner successful?

Speaker 1 11:18

And how many dollars did that person spend to win the lottery? I know, I know someone who won $10 million and he was at the store the next day buying more lottery tickets. He probably spent maybe not a million, but he spent thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to win the $10 million, but he probably blew it all most likely.

Somebody always wins

Speaker 2 11:39

So that's why Kevin and I spend so much time on this microphone, but also group coaching, everything we do. Dreamliner, you name it. Just going back to the fundamentals that actually work and I said this on yesterday's episode, which is I have a client right now who's making $10,000 a month on average. He's bringing home at least four of that on average. He's fit. You should see the transformation photo. It's wild. It's wild. It doesn't even look like the same person.

Speaker 2 12:12

But I'll be honest, that's two years of coaching. And honestly, here's the other part of the story. People don't know. He coached with me for a year, then left in what seems like a little bit of a toxic relationship and then came back, and so it's technically four years. And if you want to go even deeper, it's technically he's 29,. So it's technically 29 years if you want to go all the way back to the beginning, right. So everything's an accumulation and I think that any sort of quick win that you look at in a snapshot is going to highlight the good and then eliminate all of the hard parts that you and I joke off.

Speaker 2 12:52

And when Kevin and I first met, I was on the beach, I was talking to a camera, I was starting my YouTube channel. I had a YouTube channel conversations change lives, slash podcast and I had paid off $84,000 worth of school debt in a single year back in 2014. And then I had essentially invested $150,000 into stocks, technology companies and S&P 500, all this stuff for a company called Vanguard. And Kev saw me not working eating Chipotle, working out, starting my own business, starting my own brand, giving speeches but what he didn't understand at the time and I didn't know that you didn't understand this I didn't know that no one understood this genuinely, because I reverse engineer everything and that's not me trying to be cocky, I do.

Speaker 2 13:35

I look at someone's success now and I reverse engineer their entire existence to figure out how they did it. And again, within the data that I have, I obviously don't know everything about everyone, but at the end of the day, I reverse engineer everything. I always try to figure out like how, how did that happen? And sometimes it's oh, okay, that's, I've never seen that before, that's interesting, so something had to go differently there. And then I figure out what the anomaly was and whatever. But Kev didn't know that I was living off of my past success, not my current success.

Speaker 1 14:05

No, no idea.

Speaker 2 14:10

Yeah, I mean current success. No, no idea. Yeah, I mean. I lived on a lake, I had a beautiful girlfriend, I was bodybuilding all the time, eating food, going out, buying books, buying courses, giving speeches, starting, you know, recording videos, buying equipment. All that stuff was past success. What you didn't see was I was broke through all of high school and all of college. Then I made a lot of money after college and then when I quit, quit corporate, I still had that money but I was liquidating it. I was going backwards, not forwards. I mean backwards to go forwards, because it was an investment in myself and in my future.

Speaker 2 14:36

But I think that's one of the biggest things. That's hard is, if 10,000 people do something, there's going to be one that's wildly successful just by sheer luck, and then they're going to be highlighted, and some of them won't be by luck. Some of them will be by grit and hard work and all that stuff. But those people are usually not the ones that are the overnight shocking successes that get celebrated. And this is just a narrative bias, this is confirmation bias, this is rationality says. If you think in probabilities, you're just not going to. That's like you're more likely to get struck by lightning than win the lottery. Sometimes, mathematically speaking, you know you need to think about that.

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Speaker 2 15:21

I've never played the lottery. I never have and I never will. I don't even think I've ever bought a scratch ticket, except to give to my mom or my sister on Christmas. I don't think I've ever actually bought a scratch ticket for myself, and I think that makes sense. And I have a person I coach last thing who's an AP calculus teacher. He's never, ever. I asked him and I already knew the answer before I asked. I said have you ever played the lottery? He's like dude, hell. No, of course not. You know math. Not, you know math. Yeah, you're not gonna. You're not gonna give. You might as well go give your money away to someone that's not even good. At least, if you're gonna give your money away, give it away to something you you believe in, don't give it to the lottery, right? So again, and if anyone plays the lottery, please don't villainize me. Just honestly, I I just want to help and the only way I can help is to inject truth. You're most likely not win, and that's the math of it, not my opinion.

Speaker 1 16:14

Well, anytime I I've definitely bought. I mean, it's been a decade probably, but when I was younger I definitely did. But I used to go to. We have a casino close to Massachusetts. This was before Massachusetts actually had a casino.

Speaker 2 16:22

Which one Twin River.

Speaker 1 16:23

Yeah, Twin River. Every time I went to Twin River I went expecting the amount of money I had in my hands not to come home with me.

Speaker 2 16:30

Yeah, smart, so I go with a hunji.

Speaker 1 16:32

That hunji is probably staying, probably staying late, you know, probably not coming home from school probably going to stay after.

Speaker 1 16:39

That was always kind of the. I tried to go in with that awareness, so I wasn't heartbroken when I lost all my money. Sometimes I won, Sure, but not enough to make up for all the times I lost. The reason I wanted to do an episode like this is just because it just makes me sad. I just don't.

Speaker 1 17:04

The problem starts when somebody promises something that you're most likely, statistically, not going to get and then you feel bad about you. I say this to podcasters all the time we're not successful because we started a podcast. It wasn't the podcast that made us quota. It's not because it was a podcast and podcasting is easy, Just like if you want to start a YouTube channel or a coffee shop or whatever it is a personal training practice, a physical therapy practice, an ice cream shop just because you start that thing doesn't mean that thing is going to be successful, Even if it's the sexy thing. You can go start a TikTok. It doesn't mean you're going to be successful on TikTok, even though TikTok is the platform that everybody's talking about.

Success and statistics

Speaker 1 17:51

But what can happen is you do that and you say I did everything I was supposed to do and I didn't get any results. It's on me, I suck, Not necessarily. What if the people? What if the people who are doing the thing are ahead in their mindset, in their discipline, in their organization? They just understand success better at this point. That's okay In the beginning of this. If Alan and I started a podcast together and we did it for a year and then we separated, I wouldn't be as successful externally as Alan, because Alan knows more about success than I do. But he could literally say well, I started a. And then Alan could say say I started a podcast, then all of my dreams came true. And then he could make a course and say all you have to do is get 50 new listeners a day and then you'll have like a million listens in no time.

Speaker 1 18:41

50 new listeners a day you know how hard that is. That's really really hard.

Speaker 2 18:45

It's impossible, so I just I just don't want.

Speaker 1 18:48

I just don't want to see yeah, I don't want to see anybody set up for failure and then for you to own that and say it's because of me, it might be because of the mechanism you're trying to achieve success in, and most people aren't going to tell you that. I saw, I saw somebody I respect. He's. He's in the health and fitness space, he's's got an app, he's got several apps, but he produces these videos that are super high quality and always free on YouTube. And he said the truth of the matter is, here are all the downsides of the thing that I'm telling you to do. And he said be very careful, because if somebody sells you only upsides, they are either lying or they're unaware of what the downsides are. There is downsides to everything. Imagine you don't watch TV. I don't really watch TV, tv but sometimes I see ads for drugs like prescription drugs, pharmaceutical industry. At the end they have to say all of the potential side effects and it's always like my goodness, temporary blindness, yeah, diarrhea.

Speaker 1 19:51

I'll just have the headache.

Speaker 2 19:52

I'll just keep the headache. You know what I mean. I'll just stick with the headache. That's a great metaphor. But imagine if everything else did.

Speaker 1 19:58

Imagine if everything else did, I know. Imagine if the Instagram ad for whatever it is at the end said just so you know that 95 of people will not make a single dollar doing it, but the five percent of you that do, you'll make enough to replace your income. I'm willing to bet people would probably, yeah, think differently.

Speaker 2 20:20

I do have to hop in a minute, so last thing quickly I know I'm trying to think of how we can turn this into something actually empowering, because I I ask this question. I would say often, I'd say probably every couple months, to emilia what is the? What is the seemingly empowering belief that is actually disempowering? What is the seemingly empowering belief that is actually disempowering? I think wanting to believe that affirmation and blowing cinnamon through your doorway and the secret and that stuff. I do think positive thoughts are a good start. I think affirmation are a great start.

A surprising truth

Speaker 2 21:01

But there we we have an equation. I'm going to put it in the show notes. I've talked about this before. It's one-tenth of the equation. One of them is visualization and emotionalization, which is go into the future. Visualize yourself with the trophy or with the home or like vision. Boarding is step two in the equation. There's 10 steps. So the truth is 10% of the equation is affirmation, but the other 90% is things that kind of suck and whether it's fitness, health, wealth, life or love the fundamentals that work.

Speaker 2 21:41

And you and I did an episode recently about everything in the short term that looks like a cred hit usually is really good for you long term. Driving that old, beat up car is actually a cred hit in the short term, but you are saving a lot of money for the long term if you're investing it. And so, at the end of the day, just here's what I'll end with Give up the quick fix, give up the magic bullet, give up the cinnamon shit, whatever the hell. That is Dude. I can't, I can't like. Can you imagine if I came to you and I was like dude you know what I was thinking? What if we both blew cinnamon through our doorway? Like have you ever heard me say stupid shit?

Speaker 1 22:16

like that. No, you would never say. And again, I understand the desire to want to feel guided and I understand that desire to want to feel like there's something greater than yourself, and that's all good.

Speaker 2 22:29

But being misguided is not good yeah, just don't bet on it.

Speaker 1 22:33

Yeah, and I'm not trying to be unkind, I just I just, if you want to do that supplementally, do it you want, if that, if that makes you feel better. And now it's 10 of what you do. I am all for that yeah but if you think that's the 90% that's going to bring you results, I am afraid that you're going to end up wildly Jeffed in the future. That's my, that's my heart driven, but no BS truth.

Speaker 2 22:56

You've achieved your dreams to a very drastic extent, I would say, more than most people ever will, statistically speaking, and everyone listening knows that. Okay, we're not. I don't think we're going to be villainized for this. This is no BS. Heart-driven, but no BS. You've achieved your dreams more than most people ever will. You work for yourself. You own your own company. You're a podcaster. You get to podcast every day. You get to work from home. You have a wife. You have cats. You are able to sustain your current lifestyle able to sustain your current lifestyle. You also bought one of your dream cars. You have achieved a lot of your dreams compared to what most people will ever achieve, statistically speaking. That is my truth. Okay, I think it's the truth, but it's also my truth. How much of that was hard work and things that really kind of sucked in the moment. That ended up being good. 99, okay, yeah, 99, that's 99%.

Turning vision into reality

Speaker 1 23:42

Okay, yeah, 99%. That's I have On my screen, my TV screen, my screensaver. It's a vision board and I see it every day. Awesome, but you have to do something to turn a vision into reality and that's 99%, 99%. I told Alan today it's like Groundhog Day the alarm clock goes off at 6 o'clock. I wake up every single day. I walk out and I do the same shit. I like it, I happen to like it, but it is.

Speaker 2 24:13

Groundhog Day.

Speaker 1 24:13

But you don't like it every day. Right, I don't like it every day, but I I also know I would like the alternative less Exactly.

Speaker 2 24:19

And you don't always want to do, but it's worth it.

Speaker 1 24:22

It is worth it and that's the empowering piece we gotta go Because I'm gonna be late for my next call and you know the kid does not like to be late. Bad luck, he hates it. Alright, please subscribe if you haven't. Again, please don't villainize us for an episode like this. I want to add value. I feel a responsibility to tell what I believe is the. 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.

Speaker 2 24:49

The manifestation equation will be at the link in the show notes.