Next Level University

Everything Starts With This One Thing (1975)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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In today’s episode of Next Level University, Kevin and Alan explain how clarity makes success more likely. They share personal stories and coaching insights on how a clear vision simplifies decisions and shapes careers, relationships, and life choices. They also discuss the sacrifices that come with clarity. If you’re feeling lost, this episode is for you.

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

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

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Kevin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-palmieri-5b7736160/
Alan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanlazarosllc/

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Show notes:
(3:54) Why decision-making is hard without clarity
(4:44) Coaching insight: Clarity leads to success
(6:43) The cycle of clarity, action, and results
(9:01) Examples of people with strong clarity
(12:56) Does manifestation work, or is it just clarity?
(14:00) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://bit.ly/4eE5RF5
(16:44) Fitness, clarity, and realistic goals
(23:49) Advice for people feeling lost or unsure
(24:52) The importance of small course corrections
(25:39) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

I do think, having that level of specificity and clarity what kind of house do you want to live in? What kind of car do you want to drive? If that's what you value? What type of relationship do you want to be in? Do you want somebody who takes care of you energetically Awesome, do you not want that? Awesome. But that all starts from a place of clarity.

Alan Lazaros:

It does. It all depends, and I think that the more clarity you have on what you want to achieve, there's probably a direct correlation with the probability in which you actually achieve it. The problem is, the more clarity you have, the more you might have to give up in order to stay on the path toward that thing.

Kevin Palmieri:

Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, kevin Palmieri, and.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.

Kevin Palmieri:

At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Alan Lazaros:

Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life love health and wealth.

Kevin Palmieri:

We bring you a new episode every single day, on topics like confidence, self-belief, self-worth, self-awareness, relationships, boundaries, consistency, habits and defining your own unique version of success.

Alan Lazaros:

Self-improvement in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free. Welcome to.

Kevin Palmieri:

Next Level University, 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 1975,. Everything starts with this one thing. I was on a podcast recently and this question has gotten increasingly more challenging to answer as we have done this more and more. Let's say, kev, I reconnect with you in two years. What's life look like? It's like. This is going to be very upsetting and disappointing to you. Same shit, just hopefully a lot better. Same shit. It's going to be the same thing. It's going to be podcasting and I'm going to be coaching, and I'm going to be talking about podcasting and I'm going to be talking about holistic self-improvement and that's it. Yeah, I'll probably be podcasting more and coaching more.

Kevin Palmieri:

A multiplied version of what I'm doing. Today is usually my answer, but I also say at the end of that I say but I also understand that I am very privileged in the fact that I have this and I have worked very, very diligently over the last however many years to get this level of clarity. Because of the clarity, there is not really that much uncertainty. If anything, there's like a boring amount of certainty. It's just not that exciting in terms of what will I be doing. I'll be doing the same stuff. Luckily I'm excited with that stuff, but it's not.

Kevin Palmieri:

I don't know. I think I used to expect that so much would change around. Everything like health, wealth, love, everything would change. It would go from like zero to one to two to three, like all the way up to 10. Now I realize it's probably just going to go from like five to 5.1. So essentially almost nothing will seem like it changes, but then when I look back five years, it will have changed a ton and I think just having that level of clarity is really a privilege that you can work really hard to get and it's kind of a cheat code it's. There's not a lot of time wasted on doing stuff that isn't part of the vision, and I can understand. Maybe that's like a hyper-masculine thing and a feminine energy might not do as well with that, because it's just the same thing every day.

Kevin Palmieri:

But, yeah, that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about clarity. Everything starts with clarity. If I One of the hardest things in the world, this is not really. But just as this example, taryn and I will be hanging out on a Friday night what do you want for dinner? We have no clarity. Why does it take so long to come up with something to eat? Because we have no clarity. Well, we're going to have something that's Italian. Okay, cool, that's clarity which then allows us to hone a little bit, and then that gets rid of a bunch of things. Yeah, clarity is an amazing thing to have and I think it's probably harder to get than most people give credit for, but maybe easier to get if you have the right people around you. That's my opening thesis.

Alan Lazaros:

I have a new client who's been in HR corporate for 20 years and we were talking about it. It was first consulting call. She was looking for a coach, recommended by one of my other clients. Awesome, thank you. You both know who you are. And she said she wants to start her own thing. What do you think I should do? Do you think I should go all in on my own thing, like you did? Or do you think I should kind of go part-time back to corporate and then do the hybrid thing? And I said well, there's three roads. There's you go back to corporate and do that. She's like. I said okay, the second road is hybrid, where you do both corporate pays the bills while you build a brand and a business. That's the one I highly recommend. That's not the one Kevin and I did.

Alan Lazaros:

Kevin and I both quit cold turkey, no income, went all in on this and almost lost ourselves. It was brutal, yeah, but we had absolute clarity and I said you want to know why I know you'll succeed. If we do the work Is because you're not trying to do a new industry. She wants to be HR consultant. She has 20 years of experience in HR already and big companies, big, big, big name brand companies. I said you're going to be fine. We're going to start an HR company where you're consulting and that's where companies are going anyway. They want to consult if they can rather than hiring it in-house because it's more expensive to hire in-house. So I said one of the reasons I'm certain I can help you is because you're not trying to go play piano for a living. You've been in HR for 20 years and then you come to me and say I want to play piano and make a career out of it. That would be listen, do you have another 20 years? Because you're taking your expertise and transforming it into a different space, but it's the same expertise and I think that her having that level of clarity makes it much more likely that she succeeds.

Alan Lazaros:

Kevin and I had a ton of clarity going into this and the more we do this we work with, I think, 68 podcasters now, 28 business owners now for me, I've gotten a lot of new clients lately, which has been really awesome, and I think that the cycle that I'm running in coaching is inject clarity, which creates certainty. Certainty creates massive messy action, massive messy action, massive messy action creates momentum. Momentum creates results and then, when results come. It creates a bunch of mayhem and less certainty. So then you have to come back and inject clarity again, and one of the things that I think is a misunderstood concept is people who don't have clarity on what they want for their health, people who don't have clarity on what they want for their career, people who don't have clarity on what they want in an intimate partner, people who don't have clarity about where they want to live or in what type of house or what type of car they want to drive.

Alan Lazaros:

People who don't have clarity. It's very unlikely that you randomly stumble upon the things that you want. So it's the who, what, when, where, why clarity questions, and that's really what coaching is. It's just you just get so much clarity on what you want, why you want it, how you're going to actually achieve it, and then how often you're going to iterate.

Alan Lazaros:

And I just Kev and I, when we got together this morning I was a little late and it's like what do we want to talk about? I said I think I'm finding it difficult to realize that a lot of people have very little clarity on who they are, why they want, what they want, what they actually want, where they're going, where they've been, the who, what, when, where, why, and that must feel so scary. There's a personal development speaker named Zig Ziglar, way, way, way back, and he said there's two types of people, and this is a spectrum, so don't quote me on this. There's a meaningful specific and there's a wandering generality, and I've used Taylor Swift, you can use Simone Biles. We just watched the Netflix series. I've been talking a lot about that. It's very inspiring, best gymnast in history, unbelievable.

Alan Lazaros:

Shout out to Simone Biles. She just does gymnastics. She's dating an NFL player. They have a very successful life. It's very obvious. Their statistical level of success is wildly beyond average. But she doesn't play piano on the side, she doesn't do anything other than gymnastics, and he doesn't do anything other than football. But they do travel and all that. It's but for your. I think that what I'm really starting to understand and I hope this is of value to everybody taylor swift her future. What's she going to be doing in five years? She's going to be singing and concerts. What's Simone Biles going to be doing in five years? She, at the end, she's like I'm 27. I'm retiring as a gymnast. I have no freaking idea what I'm going to do. She was showing her house and she's like well, this is my office and I know there's going to be a computer and a desk in here, but I think I'm just going to be Googling shit.

Kevin Palmieri:

Because she's a coach.

Alan Lazaros:

She'll probably. Coach has gone I was.

Kevin Palmieri:

So I've been editing, editing audio and video for certain clients because we've gotten a lot of new clients and I want to do like a very quick turnaround and it's very hard to do that with the amount of shows we're doing. The team is always working on something. So I was like I'm just gonna do it, right. I, if I have a block in my day, I can hammer out an episode. One of the episodes that I did was it's a show about architecture super interesting nice. And the episodes that I did was it's a show about architecture Super interesting Nice.

Kevin Palmieri:

And the person that was on as a guest was somebody who was like a behavioral psychologist, nice and they were talking about how the layout of offices affects workflow and productivity and behavior. And the through line of this person's entire career was that behavior. Like I want to know about behavior. And then, once you do that, my wife my wife has a master's in. She's a behavior analyst. I didn't realize that when you do that, you can be a behavior analyst for pets. Oh yeah, you could be a behavior analyst for the government. You can do it for serial killers, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff, sports teams, probably all that.

Alan Lazaros:

But it's that one For serial killers? You mean like investigation as a detective.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, yeah, no you're not working with the serial killers.

Alan Lazaros:

No, no, no.

Kevin Palmieri:

I need you to was a behavior analyst, I think. I think, don't quote me on that.

Alan Lazaros:

Oh yeah, that would make sense.

Kevin Palmieri:

Right, don't quote me on that, but I was going to say something.

Alan Lazaros:

Oh, who's the behavior guy that Taryn was preaching to me way back?

Kevin Palmieri:

She was not preaching to you anybody, because she is not a preacher. How dare you? You know what?

Alan Lazaros:

I'm saying I don't know she was, though she was not preaching, but she was very adamant about me learning this guy? Yeah, I don't know. She has a bunch of books about this dude the behavioral guy. I could probably look it up, damn.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, I genuinely don't know. I study behavior all the time too, so I'm very fascinated. I'm not sure I'll have to ask her. I'll ask her what if the people who are better at quote, unquote, manifesting are just clearer on what they want? That is step one. So let's imagine and this is going to be a bold statement, this is going to be a bold statement I don't really think the universe cares about me. I don't really think it cares whether I get my BMW or not. I don't think it fucking cares.

Alan Lazaros:

It doesn't, hey, it definitely doesn't.

Kevin Palmieri:

So imagine, imagine a world tomorrow where we realize the universe doesn't care and there's nothing beyond us. Hypothetically right, nothing beyond us. Why would you say that you've manifested the things that you have? Or why would you say that you haven't manifested the things that you haven't? Maybe because you're not clear enough? I could never. Okay, I have my dream car here on my desk. This is a Mercedes AMG GTR With the hood popped. I got the hood popped. You want to see under that? You're flexing that thing. You.

Alan Lazaros:

GTR With the hood popped. I got the hood popped. You want to see under that.

Kevin Palmieri:

You're flexing that thing you want to see under that thing. Jeez, take a look at that. Do you know what can never happen? If I don't know I want this car, I can never talk about it. Make it happen and then connect the dots and say I manifested it, couldn't, couldn't. Did I manifest the BMW I have? No, I didn't know that was a car. When I was 26 years old, I just happened to make enough money to get a BMW.

Kevin Palmieri:

And that's the one Next level nation. What is happening? If you've thought to yourself, I want to try coaching, but you don't really know where to start, group coaching would be a wonderful place for you. That's really why we created it in the first place. We start a new round every 90 days. So if you're hearing this, go to the website nextleveluniversecom and we have the landing page where you can actually hold your spot right now. Even if there's a group going on right now, you can still lock your spot for the next one. The biggest thing that we've seen is, as we get closer and closer to the date, unfortunately, some people end up missing. The group fills up and they can't do it, and then they end up regretting that. So please head over to the website. The link will be in the show notes and we would love to see you there.

Kevin Palmieri:

And I think I've said I've manifested it what I mean by that is I always wanted some level of luxury car. I never thought I would get it. By that is I always wanted some level of luxury car. I never thought I would get it. I think it's because of clarity. That's all. So what type of body do you want when you and I used to do fitness coaching? You still do to a degree with clients, but not like you used to.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, actually, quite a bit lately, quite a bit A lot more lately yeah.

Kevin Palmieri:

We would say is there a celebrity who has the type of body that you would like to have within reason? Right, J-Lo yeah exactly, j-lo's got that booty. Shout out to J-Lo Not everybody's going to have a booty like that.

Alan Lazaros:

Right. Other people are built in different ways. That's the one Emilia picked and Emilia definitely could.

Kevin Palmieri:

I'm not going to comment on that. Thank you so very much. I'm not going to comment on that.

Alan Lazaros:

Thank you so very much. I'm not going to look like the Rock.

Kevin Palmieri:

The Rock is different. Right, the person I have.

Alan Lazaros:

What about him? Is different.

Kevin Palmieri:

He's a foot taller than I am. He weighs 100 pounds more than I do. He's Samoan. Yeah, he has really good genetics. You've seen his dad, jesus. I know Jesus. But that's why I think sometimes clarity comes with dangerous confidence. It's like oh, I know exactly who I want to look like. I want to look like the rock. If that helps you exercise more and eat better and be more disciplined, awesome. But it might not be serving you because I'm not going to grow a foot and look like the rock, that's not going to happen. But I do think. Having that level of specificity and clarity what kind of house do you want to live in? What kind of car do you want to drive? If that's what you value? What type of relationship do you want to be in? Do you want it to be deeply respectful and trustworthy? And amazing intimacy and communication. Blah, blah, blah. Is that what you want? Awesome. Do you want somebody who takes care of you energetically Awesome. Do you not want that? Awesome. But that all starts from a place of clarity. It does.

Alan Lazaros:

Why do you think I was in the bookstore yesterday. I saw Jeff Nippard. We ended up actually running into his girlfriend in the store randomly in Florida.

Kevin Palmieri:

Remember that.

Alan Lazaros:

I do, that was a trip, but he wrote a book on the science of bodybuilding and I looked through it a bit. It actually was pretty sound, honestly.

Kevin Palmieri:

Oh he's—yeah, Jeff Nippard's legit, he's also 5'4".

Alan Lazaros:

That's what I was—so I was thinking to myself. Kev could totally, you know, have that as his dream physique. For sure, I feel like you could. That's achievable, I also. I don't know if he's natural. I don't know what your take is on that.

Kevin Palmieri:

I would argue yeah, yeah, he seems natural, right.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it's interesting.

Kevin Palmieri:

He's not. This is a weird take, and if you don't know who Jeff Nippert is, just look him up. N-i-p-p-a-r-d is how you spell his last name.

Alan Lazaros:

He's not in that good of shape compared to the, to the people at the top of the top of the industry yeah, he, when I saw the book and again the cover on the front, the picture on the cover, I was like I think he might be natural, at least the picture he chose. But that's for his book, I think he is. Yeah, I'm glad that we had this conversation and again, kevin and I are big into this and it's, I mean, some of these, some of these guys claiming natural art, but we've talked about it a lot. It doesn't matter. The point that I'm making about this is, if kevin wanted jeff nippard's physique, he could immediately, tomorrow, start going to work, buy that book, look at the diet, look at the training, look at the mobility, look at the regimen, look at the science, look at the mobility, look at the regimen, look at the science. And he could work toward that. And he might never be at that level, but he'll get a fucking lot closer. I don't know why all those words just slurred together a fucking lot closer but.

Alan Lazaros:

I think it's really important for all of us to shoot for things that inspire us and motivate us, and we've been talking a lot about goals and dreams, and I do. I feel inspired by Simone, I feel inspired by Michael Phelps. I feel inspired by these achievements, and I'm not a swimmer and I'm not a gymnast, but I have my own thing that I want to apply that level of dedication to. So if you want level 10 results in life, it's going to require level 10 dedication. If you want level five results in life, it's going to require level five dedication. But all of those both of those require clarity too.

Alan Lazaros:

So if you want a home on the beach with a two car garage and land, and, and, and, and and you're going to have to have more and more and more clarity about what you want, but also how you're going to get there, who you are, why you want it, who you surround yourself with and who you don't. I remember Kev said one time how do you know all this? This is early, early, early, and we were doing spreadsheets and he had never been in spreadsheets with me, the all these and he asked, like, how did like, where did you learn all this? And I, I said, dude, I had to know all this. This is, I mean I was when I was 21. I was at a billion dollar robotics company. I mean, we had to just to survive. I had to know this.

Alan Lazaros:

I mean, this is basic shit, right so, but it all depends. That's like a gymnast. Well, everyone can do a backflip. It's a triple backflip that no one can do, right. So it's it all depends, and I think that the more clarity you have on what you want to achieve, there's probably a direct correlation with the probability in which you actually achieve it. The problem is, the more clarity you have, the more you might have to give up in order to stay on the path toward that thing. So my last question for you I know we got to jump soon is why do you think you're someone who you and I? We just tell the truth, you didn't have any clarity growing up, dude. Like I, you didn't have very much clarity. You loved baseball Great, you were good at baseball boom but, like you, didn't know what your career was going to look like. I I feel like I always had strong clarity on my goals. In statistical comparison For you. How did you decide what to do and what not to do?

Kevin Palmieri:

What was that like I just did whatever sounded fun. That was pretty much it. I just did stuff that would seem cool to do.

Alan Lazaros:

How many people do?

Kevin Palmieri:

you think are still doing that. I think it's easy to get pigeonholed into kind of your point of I've been doing this for 20 years, I don't know anything else. It's like what's within the allowance of what I can actually do. So I think a lot of people, unfortunately, are doing that.

Alan Lazaros:

I gotta make sure we stay on this, because this is, I'm sincerely fascinated Not from a place of judgment Curiosity. Were you just hoping it would work out.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, yeah. I was hoping I would get my break at some point. That's why I always tried Okay, maybe it's not this, maybe it's the personal trainer thing. Let me try that. I like fitness, I'm good at exercise, I love helping people. Let me give that a shot. No, that ain't it All right, let me get an in-between job until I can figure out the next thing. I'll go drive a forklift oh, firefighter Shit. Okay, let me go do that. That would be awesome. That's a career I could do that. I'll just paint houses and and work as a little contractor with my buddy here on the side. Will I do that? Graduate that? The odds of me becoming a firefighter very low. I'm not a veteran, I'm not a former police officer, I'm not a paramedic Like that's years and years. Do I really want to wait for that? No, on to the next thing. I'm going to do this weatherization thing. I'm making four times the amount of money I've ever made, at least up to 10 times the amount of money I've ever made.

Alan Lazaros:

Cool. What was your?

Kevin Palmieri:

dream I didn't really. I didn't really have. My first dream that I actually pursued was to fight. That was my first dream that I actually pursued, and then after that it was just like I don't know, that's super risky. I still, I guess, went in on a risk, but a different one. I don't know if I ever had a dream of what I wanted to do from like an operation. I wanted to be financially free, I wanted to be in shape and I wanted to be in love.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, awesome, I know we got to jump. Those are byproducts.

Kevin Palmieri:

Those aren't, but those are byproducts. That's a starting point, I think.

Alan Lazaros:

Everything Kevin just said of wanting to be in love, wanting to be in shape and wanting to be financially free are byproducts of clarity. I'm in love, in shape, reasonably depending who you're standing next to, and then building wealth, financially free depending, but like it definitely was, could have been, could have, could have, you know, kind of coasted in my early 20s all the way into the sunset. So those were a byproduct of clarity though.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, but I think it sometimes you shoot and then you get a little bit more clarity as you get closer to it.

Alan Lazaros:

Maybe you know it's like what would you say to someone drifting around Because you're not going to stumble upon being in love, financially free and in shape?

Kevin Palmieri:

I would say try to be more specific about what it is you want Like cool. Okay. Layer one is I want a relationship. Awesome, love that. Then what? What do you want that relationship to look like? To the best of your ability?

Kevin Palmieri:

You might not have super specific clarity in the beginning. What do you want that relationship to look like To the best of your ability? You might not have super specific clarity in the beginning. What do you want to look like? What do you want your body to look like? And then, really, what do you think about money? How does money affect you and what kind of money do you want to have? Because clarity goes both ways. If you think you want to be a bajillionaire and then you work your face off for your entire life and that's not what you wanted, you're gonna be fucking miserable too. So I think it's just that. Let's just. It's not gonna most likely not gonna go from I have no idea what I want to do to. I know exactly what I want to do. I think it's just a little bit of course correction. So, yeah, I would just say what's one thing I could do to get a little bit more clarity, what's one question I could ask and answer. What's one thing I could learn all of that?

Alan Lazaros:

the unsexy fundamentals of small course corrections yeah, self-belief is first, clarity is second, and then after that it's consistency, work, iteration, and then you just lie, cheat and steal your way to success and then boom, you're done.

Kevin Palmieri:

Obviously, alan's gonna make me say I'm kidding, that's not serious. I'm not serious. That's why I always say it. Make me say I'm kidding, that's not serious, I'm not serious.

Alan Lazaros:

That's why I always say it. I always say I'm just joking. I appreciate it. I need people to know, just in case, right?

Kevin Palmieri:

take the clip out of context, throw it. If you've listened to this show long enough, you know I'm kidding, and if it was to go viral, you have my email you can shoot me, but there's some people. I feel like by the end of the episode you'd know Okay.

Alan Lazaros:

You know better than I, you're more of a jokester. It's a chance I'm willing to take.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's a chance I'm willing to take. All right, we got to get out of here. I got a coaching call, as always. We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and NLU, we don't have fans.

Alan Lazaros:

We have family.

Kevin Palmieri:

Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. We love connecting with the Next.

Alan Lazaros:

Level family. We mean it when we say family. If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. Everything you need to get a hold of us is in the show notes.

Kevin Palmieri:

Thank you again and we will talk to you tomorrow.

People on this episode

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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