#1810 - Progress Is Personal - Freestyle Friday

Ever wonder why achieving your dreams feels harder than expected? In this episode, Kevin and Alan discuss the real challenges of turning dreams into reality, especially when the excitement fades and the hard work kicks in. They explore the highs and lows of growing a business, handling overwhelming pressure, and the importance of balancing optimism with the harsh truths of reality. If you’ve ever felt like you’re in over your head or want to better prepare for the journey ahead, this episode offers a candid look at what it takes to succeed.

Links mentioned:
Free 30-Minute Podcast Breakthrough Session with Kevin:
https://calendly.com/kevinpalmieri/free-30-minute-podcast-breakthrough-session-with-kevin?month=2024-08
Alan’s Coaching: Alan@nextleveluniverse.com
Next Level Group Coaching - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
Group 16 - The 1st call is on Tuesday, October 8, 2024, at 5 PM EST, and the group runs for 3 months. Discount Code for N.L. Group Coaching (30% off): NLULISTENER

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For more information, please check out our website at the link below. 👇

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🎙️ 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 I gotta make sure my camera is focused. Today for episode number 1,810, it's Freestyle Friday. This is what I was thinking, alan.

Speaker 2 0:19

For Freestyle Friday, the more I don't do a whole lot of that you don't do a lot of thinking.

Speaker 1 0:29

No, and just in general, or for Freestyle Friday specifically, or In general, in general, same I try not to. It's dangerous, it's dangerous.

Speaker 2 0:38

I haven't really contemplated much Anything. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 0:42

Same. I try to avoid it. I try to avoid it. You know, I try to avoid it.

Speaker 2 0:47

This is what I've been thinking recently.

Speaker 1 0:50

This week has been very stressful. We were just talking about the fact that 2024 has probably been the hardest year of business ever.

Speaker 2 0:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1 0:57

And I think it's fair to say that.

Reflection on the overwhelming challenges of 2024

Speaker 1 0:59

And not just external stuff. Just, I feel like a lot of the lessons have just been really, really shaking. They're like jarring. They're jarring lessons that shake the bedrock of everything that you thought you knew. But here's the place that I wanted to go with today's episode. I feel like the more weight you are under in a constructive manner, the better you handle it when you get the most overwhelmed you've ever been. If I think I always I say this on other shows and I've said this here many times in the beginning I would have one coaching call and record one podcast episode and I would have to go take a nap. Like that's it. That's all I have to give today.

Speaker 2 1:48

Now, when I have like six calls.

Speaker 1 1:50

How many do I have today? Yesterday I had one, two, oh sorry, one, two, three, four, five. Yesterday I had six meetings and I was like this is a super easy day. When I woke up and looked at my calendar I was like this is easy. I'm going to have so much time to do stuff behind the scenes. Yeah, how'd that go, by the way?

Speaker 2 2:07

I got a lot done, yeah, a lot done behind the scenes. Sometimes I say that I'm like, oh, this is going to be. I had a Monday when you were at Podcast Movement. That was fairly open and it's the first you and I ended up. You called me, yes, and we had client stuff. So I just always am so optimistic. I think I can get so much done and then by the end of every day it's okay. We did what we did. We're going to have to push a couple things, but I think that's a really good representation of how.

Speaker 1 2:39

I think it's really hard to imagine what, if we had a scale or a meter of overwhelm versus competence or capability back in the day, if I was 10 percent strained, I was like 100 overwhelmed, maybe 10 challenged. I was 100 overwhelmed. And then I think it was like 20% challenge, 90% overwhelmed, nice. And then eventually it's like right now I am 100% challenged, I am beyond 100% challenged and I'm definitely super overwhelmed, but probably not as much as I was in the very beginning with a tenth of the challenge.

Speaker 2 3:21

That's actually why, when you said 2024 has been the hardest year we've ever had in business, my mind says yes, but also no. And the also no is we are more equipped to handle it. And it's a lot of things are so much better than they used to be. I mean so much right.

The evolution of handling stress and pressure

Speaker 2 3:42

There's way more demand. I'm very, very grateful for that. At the beginning of every interview that I go on, I always start with gratitude Just thank you so much for having me At one point. This was a dream. I always say this. I say I started listening to podcasts nine years ago almost ten and they really helped me sort of reorient my life in a more positive direction and I'm just really grateful to be here. So thank you, and I don't always say that if the host is at all sort of entitled and or disrespectful, I'm always trying to feel it out first. But ultimately, most of the interviews have been amazing lately and I always kind of try to start there.

Speaker 2 4:20

To bring this to the point that I originally wanted to make is what we were dealing with. Why has 2024 been the hardest year in business? I said this to Kev earlier. It's not a side hustle, it's not a dream, it is. It's our dream, but it's not a dream anymore.

Speaker 2 4:48

In the beginning we're chasing dreams and we still are. This is still a dream, but now it's. It's a business, and that's for anyone who owns a business that has a team and the responsibility is just. I mean, compared to the first year. How much more responsibility do you and I have in our lives? All of it, yeah, it's. It's not even close if, if this is a 10, we were, what a one? Not even, yeah, yeah, in terms of relationships. You're married, all of it, the team, and so, ultimately, it's such an interesting thing you just posted kevin sent me a whatsapp screenshot this morning that said big win, brother.

Transitioning from chasing dreams to managing a business

Speaker 2 5:32

And it was a picture of you with evan carmichael with a video that has over 9 000 views on youtube of you and him on his youtube channel. I believe I was like cool. And then I went about my morning. In the beginning, that would have been dude, no way right. And that the compound effect. It's such a fascinating thing because you still want to be grateful for those things. And what did I say to it? I think in WhatsApp, I said, yeah, man, compound effect. And then I went about my morning and what I meant by that is awesome, let's get to work, because that would have been life-changing impact. That would have been life-changing impact. 8,652 people are listening to an interview with Kevin on YouTube. In the beginning, at the very start, that would have been wild amount of impact.

Speaker 1 6:26

That's what you think you're doing it for in the beginning. In the beginning it would have been like okay, we made it, and it was very similar to me, I sent it to you and I sent it to the team because I wanted to team, because I wanted the team to see the results of all the hard work we've been putting in. But very different than the beginning For me it was like all right, cool. I told Taron. I was like yeah, evan posted that interview. I didn't even know he was going to do it and I didn't even know he's gonna do that cool.

Speaker 2 6:58

So I had no I I had no idea.

Speaker 1 7:00

But to alan's point, yeah, that was something that I used to focus on that stuff a lot more and then take my eye off doing the stuff that got this gut the results.

Impact is still the goal

Speaker 2 7:11

Yeah, impact is still the goal, of course, but you know, the impact goes away if you don't run the business. And we went to a business seminar event one time that said the point of business is making money. That's not true. The point of a business is to serve. You have clients and customers. Clients meaning you have a service-based business. Customers meaning you have a product. It's the only difference, same thing. The point of the business is to serve. Help people get to the next level. Help individuals, podcasters and business owners get to the next level. That's the point. Otherwise, there's no point in anything we're doing. The point is we make the world a better place by helping people improve themselves and improve their lives. That's the point, and not but. And if we don't grow the business, we cannot sustain the impact. And that's why it's so stressful and I don't know if stressful is the right word, but there's two types of stress. There's distress and eustress. Eustress is a challenge that's good that you choose like a tough workout. Distress is oh my god, we just lost a client because of some mistake. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Business is both for sure. But I think in the beginning everyone has sort of starry-eyed impact driven focus and then by the time you get results that most people in the beginning would love. I mean most of the podcasts that I go on. I went on one yesterday. It was awesome, it was so cool. They started a new app six months ago. They started a podcast. They were very sweet. It's actually a really cool app, by the way, but ultimately it was.

Speaker 2 8:53

You could tell she was so nervous. Remember when you used to read the bio with like big guests and you would. You would be basically about to jump out the window. That's what she was. So I'm just sitting there trying really hard, because now I'm that guy and I remember what that was like for kevin, because I never did any intro and she was so red she was stuttering over her words, she could barely read the intro and I just was there and I just wanted to be compassionate and empathetic and she was so sweet, it was great, but I could tell she was extremely, extremely, extremely out of her league and out of her comfort zone.

Speaker 2 9:26

But that's what it is in the beginning. She's starry-eyed, she's excited. They both excited. They both are, they're young, they. They have this naivete to them of we're gonna make an impact and we're gonna change the world and you will. But oh, you guys, I just had this moment of the next like five to ten years for you two. If you stick with, this is gonna be just slowly stripping away your innocence, you know I did a.

Speaker 1 9:53

I did a podcast pre-call yesterday with someone who is a sophomore in high school and I was like good for you, what was it? He was 14, right?

Speaker 2 10:02

no, no, her name's sanvi. Oh okay, I did one with a 14 year old. Coolest thing ever, but you first it was just.

Speaker 1 10:10

It was her podcast is all about mental health, nice, nice, and it was just awesome. She emailed me earlier in the day and said, hey, can we push back the meeting for a half hour, and I was like, yeah, yeah, we're good. And then when she logged on, she's like, yeah, I just got home from school and I was like, oh, that's why you had to push the meeting back a half hour. Okay, interesting.

Speaker 1 10:29

But it was just super cool to see people that start and they're super excited and they just have a love for talking into the microphone. It always resonates with me because that's where this all started, for me too. Sometimes I'll say I see me in you, I see my excitement and my curiosity. Do you see their future?

Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching.

Speaker 1 10:54

In my na, in my naive but not in a bad way, I think you. That's kind of the beautiful thing. The beautiful thing is You've heard us say this before and you've heard me specifically say this before that one of the quotes from a book that has helped me more than anything is by Morgan Housel. The book is same as ever. Alan recommended it to me and I think they're close to finishing it up in book club and it was one of essentially one of the biggest mistakes that we make as human beings is we value certainty more than accuracy, and in the beginning I think we all want to think it's going to be very, very easy and it's going to work out perfectly and our desires become our expectations. But over time, as things get more and more accurate, in some ways it gets easier because you know exactly what you should be doing.

Speaker 1 12:37

Yeah, when the Alan said innocence, but when the innocence in the naivete it's such a weird word. I feel like I'm a stuck-up person when I say that word. It sounds so strange to in the naivete. It's such a weird word. I feel like I'm a stuck up person when I say that word.

Speaker 1 12:48

It sounds so strange naivete when that goes away, what is left is accuracy. And when you have the accurate understanding of when I do this, I get this result, it's almost like it's obviously easier said than done. But if you're baking a cake the first few times, you have no idea how to accurately bake the cake. You don't know how much flour, how many eggs, how much butter, the temperature, how long you don't. How long does it sit, you don't know. But as you do it and you do it, you do it. Eventually you get the recipe down and you know exactly what the recipe is and you write it down and then guess, guess what Other people can use your recipe, and that I think that's the beauty of it. But I don't know if you can get accuracy without making mistakes along the way. Because unless you just use somebody else's cookbook which is fine, but not everybody is trying to make the same thing, and if you're not trying to make the same recipe, you can't If you have different ingredients and you're not using eggs.

Speaker 2 13:47

It's going to be different. If you're not using flour, it's like you can learn from a cookbook, but the meal you're making is always going to be different in life and business.

Speaker 1 13:55

Yeah, but I like to think of that as empowering Now I probably didn't in the beginning when, when the naive goes away naivete, Naivete.

Speaker 2 14:07

Yes, we're watching a movie on Netflix right now called Persuasion. It's a remake of an old one. It's like a slap comedy where it's theater-based and it's a period piece back in British, at the height of the British Empire.

The role of accuracy and experience in long-term success

Speaker 2 14:21

It's a romantic comedy and it's hilarious because they basically are just making fun of like that yeah, so I'm like you and I are dying because it's and it's also kind of making fun of just arrogant, ignorant men in this really hilarious satire way. It's. It's actually really funny. Um, I don't know why I brought that. Oh, the naivete thing made me think of it.

Speaker 2 14:47

It's like the only thing my father likes more than his own reflection is reading his book that was written for him, about him, you know, and anyways it was pretty funny. So what was I going to say when the naivete and innocence goes away for lack of better phrasing? Now you know what to do. So things get quote unquote easier. No, but now you feel guilty every time you're not doing them. And I think that growing and scaling a company, dude, a lot of business talks lately. Huh, yeah, I know, and you were telling me to start you son. Yeah, business growth.

Speaker 1 15:17

That's why one of the reasons why is because you've been talking a lot of business on the show and I'm gonna get you to freak off of it yeah, seriously, but there's principles in this for more than just business, which is okay.

Speaker 2 15:28

Let's turn this to a different metaphor. Seriously. I was thinking about this earlier bodybuilding you and I when we were young, we thought that bodybuilding was awesome and we saw these people on stage and we thought it was so inspiring and that's great. And then we find out that majority of them are on steroids. It's basically whoever suffers the most that wins the show, like I remember, in the beginning, I had this dream naivete of I'm gonna be a fitness model and a fitness competitor and a fitness coach and I'm gonna help people get fit and everyone's gonna want to get fit fit. And you know, I'm changing my life. I'm hydrating, I'm sleeping, I'm doing all these things the five fundamentals of natural fitness and yeah, that's all good. And yes, it did work. And yes, I was in the best shape of my life. And, yes, I got some clients and yes, I fitness coached for several years, but there was nothing about that that wasn't harder than I had originally thought.

Growth through naivete and experience

Speaker 2 16:22

I think when you're young, everyone in high school thinks like, oh, when I'm an adult, I'm going to have a beach house, and when I'm an adult, I'm going to. And I don't want this to be depressing, but the truth of the matter is, is pretty much all of what you think when you're a kid is wrong? It's inaccurate. Pretty much everything you think as a kid is inaccurate. Now maybe things are better than you think and you are very pessimistic. Maybe things are worse than you think, I don't know. But pretty much everything you think is inaccurate as a kid. And as you become older and older and older and you learn how the world really works and how people really work and how you really work, it can be very sad. It can be very sad, and I think that that's part of the process.

Speaker 2 17:07

What is growth? Growth is. I now know something I didn't know before, about myself, about other people or about the world. And what does that mean? Okay, that means we're going to have to work a lot harder than I originally thought. Okay, that means we're going to have to work a lot harder than I originally thought. Okay, that means we're going to have to learn leadership. Okay, that means we're going to have to spend $400,000 in order to get to a million, and a lot of people don't know that If we gross a half a million, do people know that we had to spend $400,000 in order to do that. No, I don't know if people understand that in business, right when you go into a business and you are a customer and you think something's overpriced unless you're a business owner you don't really realize that that business is going to go out of business if they don't charge that price, because they have dozens of other competitors that are trying to do the same thing for less money and it. Can you talk to that at all of like?

Speaker 1 18:10

what? No, because we have three minutes, mr business pants, yeah, um, what were you most naive about?

Speaker 1 18:18

that you can give to everybody, because ultimately we were both naive in different ways I thought I was going to make my own schedule and get to do what I want when I want. And here's truth, I could do that if I wanted to be far less successful than I desire After seven years Now. I could do that more, but I still couldn't. Just not work at all. If I don't feel like it, it's just different. It's different than this is the thing that I would say, and this is for everything, and this is based on the conversation that we had yesterday. Most of us start something because of the sexy upsides and most of us are just not super aware of what the unfortunate downsides are, because nobody sells you on the downsides. Nobody sells you. I used to be the guy who I thought everybody should have a podcast. I do not think that. I think that is bullshit and I think it's stupid.

Speaker 1 19:07

And I think the people that say that are the people that want more people to start podcasts so they can get more business.

Speaker 2 19:13

I don't want that. I used to think everyone should start their own business, definitely should, definitely, not Definitely shouldn't, but that's just an awareness thing. I don't want to say everybody.

Speaker 1 19:21

I would say way more percentage than I do now, yeah, I want to clarify that and it's just an awareness thing that comes with time after, because you didn't know what it was going to be like to be you seven years into business and how much you've been challenged and you've struggled and you've learned about yourself and you've unlearned about yourself and the things that you've done more of and the things that you've done less of. It's just hard to know. It's hard to know, but that would be the lesson before we get out of here, because we have two minutes. Just try this is advice I would give myself just try to become as familiar with the unfortunate, unsexy downsides as you are with the pleasure of the upsides, because the longer something is, I think the harder it is.

Understanding both the upsides and downsides of long-term commitments

Speaker 1 20:09

This podcast episode is 20 minutes, not that hard. Doing one of these every day for a week still, it's pretty easy now at this point, but it's very hard. Then doing it for two weeks harder, three weeks harder, a month harder, a year harder, three years harder. And then eventually it's like oh, you have this business and you work every single day to grow the business and you've done it for the last seven years. Of course that's going to be harder than just doing one thing. So I think the longer you do something, the harder it is because you learn so much about yourself and you just have so many opportunities for quote-unquote failure.

Speaker 2 20:49

But the better the results and the better you get 100%. And again, upsides and downsides yeah, 100%, all right, we got to go.

Speaker 1 20:56

If you are looking for help with podcasting, reach out to myself. We have group coaching coming up. Do you know the date? Off the top of your head? I don't.

Speaker 2 21:02

Okay, October 16th, I think but I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 21:05

Okay, we'll have it in the show notes and we'll have the link for the 16th round of group coaching. And Alan is still taking on coaching clients. If you are looking for accountability, awareness, consistency, strategy, all of that, happy jazz, alan is your guy, as always. We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each.