Next Level University

One Of These Mindsets Will Get You Stuck… (2018)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Are your daily choices moving you forward—or holding you back? In today’s episode, unpack how one simple mindset shift can completely change your future. They break down real-life examples—from credit cards and deep freezers to gas lines and podcast gear—to show how choosing to invest instead of consume leads to smarter, more rewarding outcomes.

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

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We love connecting with you guys! Reach out on Instagram, Facebook, or via email. We’re here to support you in your personal and professional development journey.

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Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/neverquitkid/
Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

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Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
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:
(2:19) Consumer Vs. Investor thinking
(4:48) Is productivity worth the price?
(7:27) Making cost-value decisions
(9:08) Living with or without goals
(12:54) Math-minded decision-making
(13:06) Join Next Level Live: A virtual, immersive event for those committed to growth, meaningful relationships, and a life they love. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
(16:41) Smart spending in everyday life
(25:26) Small choices, big outcomes
(26:10) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

How is it that the same set of circumstances can go in the favor of one person but against another? I think you and I were talking about interest rates on credit cards recently, and some people are able to use credit cards and get all the points and pay down the balance and they never have to pay any interest. And I was an idiot in the beginning and I didn't know any of this and I ended up in credit card debt because I was a consumer, not an investor.

Alan Lazaros:

An investor sacrifices in the short term for long-term benefit. It's pay now, play later. A consumer wants to play now and then ends up paying for it later.

Kevin Palmieri:

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

Alan Lazaros:

And 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.

Kevin Palmieri:

Welcome to Next Level University, next Level Nation, today for episode number 2018. One of these mindsets will get you stuck. The reason Alan is laughing so hard is because we are just trying to get through it. We're just getting through it. We're just figuring it out as we go.

Alan Lazaros:

Kevin was going to do the intro and he just went, hey your brain broke.

Kevin Palmieri:

We switched some things up behind the scenes and my brain is not ready for it yet. Which of these mindsets will get you stuck? Alan told me a story today. He said one of my clients reached out and asked me if it was worth investing in a monitor, a secondary monitor they actually messaged me as well and they said can you send me or can you send me your setup?

Kevin Palmieri:

and I said the same exact thing I. I said I don't think my setup is optimal for podcasting. Honestly. I think it's more optimal for productivity because my camera's under my TV, it's the whole thing. It's not great for being a guest on a podcast. You and I. It's a little bit different.

Kevin Palmieri:

But I said, if you're optimizing to get more done, it's definitely worth investing in some sort of secondary screen. And going to what I talked about in the beginning, I think that's why I'm so big on awareness. If I had the awareness in the beginning that this credit card is 0% for a year, you can buy something that's going to help you make more money and then just pay it off over the course of a year with no downside. There's no punishment for doing that and you're going to get points in the process of it. I think I just would have operated way better.

Kevin Palmieri:

But I I had way more of a consumer mindset of I buy the thing because I like it, not because it has utility, and I'm still more that way than Alan. But I do think the more I've moved from a consumer mindset into an investor mindset, the more successful. I have been and it makes sense. It makes total sense. When I was buying a new laptop, we got the laptop that, honestly, I didn't like. I didn't want a Mac, I wanted to do what I already had. But this our belief was it would be better long-term and that was an investor mindset and it has been. I love this laptop now. So that's just a simple example of this.

Alan Lazaros:

That is the perfect example, brother. I was top now, so that's just a simple example of this. That is the perfect example, brother. I was going to go there too. So kev got a new macbook, macbook pro, and we picked, I think, the lowest of the newest ones. So apple always does three and it's the high-end, middle-end, low-end. And tech improves so damn fast, especially especially with computers. That, how old was your old laptop? What? Six years or something.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think I got it in 2019. It was like six years.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, so it was time. We also got a new client. We've been talking a lot about that and Kevin's going to be doing a lot of work. So you need to be as productive as possible, and that MacBook Pro that we got you dude, that thing is capable of whatever. You need to be as productive as possible.

Alan Lazaros:

And that MacBook Pro that we got you, dude, that thing is capable of whatever you need, baby, that thing's good to go, awesome, right. So this client she had me send pictures of my setup and she's trying to become more productive and she asked me is this the best use of my capital, time, effort, money, what's the best use of your time, effort and's the best use of your time, effort and money? I said, well, it depends. What are you using? Now she has a macbook as well and she said, well, should I invest in this monitor? I said how much is it? She said 324 dollars or whatever. She sent me the links. I said yeah, absolutely.

Alan Lazaros:

I said how much more productive is it going to make you? And again, it's a hypothetical question, it's very hard to answer that actual question. I said how much more productive is it going to make you? And again, it's a hypothetical question, it's very hard to answer that actual question. I said, right now, I have you up on a 52-inch behind me. I don't know where I got this TV. Was this from the studio, I think?

Alan Lazaros:

that's mine, this is yours.

Kevin Palmieri:

Maybe I don't know.

Alan Lazaros:

I have a monitor over here. I have two computers going and I've got a 52-inch over here. My other computer is off because my internet sucks. Yeah, take it easy it sucks it does.

Alan Lazaros:

Sometimes it yes, it pisses me off, but I'm always optimizing for productivity. So this client let's break this down An investor says, hey, I'm going to buy this monitor so that I can be more productive, so that I can go and earn more money by adding more value. That's an investor's mindset. So I'm going to invest this 330 bucks and then, a month from now, three months from now, a year from now, it'll pay itself back. And then some Okay, a consumer would go buy I don't know a new, a new.

Alan Lazaros:

This person likes clothing. And she said it would be a dumb use of my capital to just go buy a bunch of a bunch of clothes just because I like it. I don't need new clothes, I already have nice clothes. I said that's exactly it right now. It doesn't mean you never, ever invest or spend money on what you want. It just means you have to be intelligent with with your money. And I think of life like a giant chess game. It's what is the best use of my time, what is the best use of my money? And if you are always playing that way, you end up with more time and more money and more effort and you get better.

Alan Lazaros:

She also asked me this. She said should I go to this training? It's three days. I said okay, let's do a cost value analysis. What are the inputs? She said it's going to cost me 800 bucks. I'm going to get certified and I think she gets a certification. I don't know if it's, I think she gets like a hey, you did this thing. I don't know. I don't know if it's an actual cost her three days. It's going to cost her 800 bucks.

Alan Lazaros:

I said how many people are you going to meet? She said ah, maybe hundreds. I said okay, are they in your industry? She said yeah. I said okay, are you going to learn a lot? She said yeah, are you going to improve your craft? Yeah, I said it sounds good. Now here's the part that I want to try to make land.

Alan Lazaros:

When she goes to buy the monitor, she's not doing a cost value analysis up against just a monitor versus buying clothes. You're you're basically trying to maximize every dollar and every unit of your time up against anything you could do. That's why it's so overwhelming, brother, it's. It's not a chess game. A chess game has what? 24 pieces and it's a tiny little board. I'd have to look it up. I think it's 24, but the point is is in life it's infinite possibilities. I said you need to ask yourself this question and this is overwhelming as hell. Is this use of my money better than any other use of my money? It's not like you're at the store going I want this jar of jelly versus this one. I don't know why I always use jelly. There's a psychological study they did with jars of jelly and how there's too many options and it doesn't matter. But the point is it's not like you're doing strawberry versus blueberry jelly. See, that would be easy. Ah, blueberry.

Kevin Palmieri:

Right, you got to go blue. Nutella, for me neither Okay.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, sounds good. But when you make a choice for your career, when you make a choice for what to do in fitness, when you make a choice of what monitor to buy, there's, there's, thousands of options. It's very, very difficult to pick. What do you do? I was thinking about this recently. When you wake up in the morning, how do you know what to do? It depends on your goals.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, if you don't have goals, how do you know what to do? Seriously, I'm actually asking Like I don't know what it's like to wake up in the morning and not know what to do, and that sounds really probably arrogant and pretentious, but I've always been reverse engineering goals't. I don't know what it's like to like, just wake up and do stuff you know, whatever you do, you kind of do whatever you want, regardless of consequence yeah well, there is no consequence because there's no goal to measure it against.

Kevin Palmieri:

I remember I would and I miss these fucking days again. There's the nostalgia piece of just having not really knowing the downside. I know it. Yes, I want to make sure I know the downside, but the nostalgia comes with wishing you didn't at times and then remembering what you didn't so you would just do things without knowing where it was leading.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yes, yeah, back in the day, back in the day, Back in the day, I would be in New Jersey for work. My two buddies would be. I left a key to my place. They'd be at my place waiting for me. I would get home at like 6 o'clock at night. We'd hang out, we'd play Call of Duty, we'd order pizza, sleep in, and the next day it was like we just did whatever we wanted. We went to the gym, played video games, hung out, watched a movie, whatever there was. No, the goal was relaxation. That was the goal. The goal was relaxation. That was the goal.

Alan Lazaros:

The goal was relaxation, the good old days, by the way I was with a uh, a client yesterday who he's an engineer as well and ap cal teacher and I I don't know if he ever got his degree. So when I call you an engineer, sir, again I'm just talking high level everybody. But he went to my school WPI. So I think he is an engineer, but again, correct me if I'm wrong, brother. But he and I were talking about how, back in the day, we would calculate the exact amount of alcohol per unit of calorie, per volume, per cost. So I'll give this tiny example and I think this will be of value. So back in college he and I were at college at the same time, he was in my fraternity and Miller High Life was $9 for 18 bottles and it's alcohol per volume, per price point was optimal. Volume per price point was optimal.

Alan Lazaros:

So I went with that and him and I were talking yesterday on the phone on Zoom about how we've never not calculated everything and how weird it is to live in a world where other people aren't doing as many calculations. And he's someone I would consider kind of a math genius and he's an AP Cal teacher and a lot of his students aren't calculating things quite as accurately or as optimally as he thinks they should, and that kind of thing, and he's awesome, he's great. But him and I have never not done that. We've never, like I, calculated the exact amount of drunk.

Alan Lazaros:

I wanted to get by the exact moment, in the exact amount of money, with the exact type of alcohol, because each alcohol is a different type of drunk and I would purposely eat a certain amount in order to make sure that I could sustain it long term throughout the night. But everything's equations and math and I know you're laughing, but here's, here's the thing, right to make this relevant to anyone watching or listening. What are you calculating like are you? You got to make sure what you're doing is building toward a bigger, better, brighter future, and I don't I don't want to project on anyone and say you have to, but you're definitely in trouble if you're not doing that. I mean, if you were still just playing video games, you know, going to the gym and getting drunk, you'd be screwed straight, straight up, screwed.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, I'd be in trouble. I'd be in trouble, for sure, yeah you wouldn't have built this magnificent life.

Alan Lazaros:

You have right, and Taryn wouldn't want to be with a guy like that.

Kevin Palmieri:

No, no, no. Well, the truth is, I think she deserves more than that Next Level Nation. We are very, very excited to announce that we are doing our first purely virtual Next Level Live. On April 5th 2025, from 10 am to 4 pm Eastern Standard Time, alan and myself will be live streaming from Worcester, massachusetts.

Alan Lazaros:

Next Level, live 2025. Be there, it's only $47 for a full day of personal development, self-improvement, holistic health, wealth, life and love.

Kevin Palmieri:

We have a global audience. Obviously, if you live somewhere else in the world, it's hard to come across the country or across the world for a one-day event, so we wanted to make sure it was accessible to everyone.

Alan Lazaros:

You're not going to get to the next level of your life by default. You're going to get there by design. Join us Design that next level. By default, you're going to get there by design. Join us design that next level. So how would you? Where would you go with this? Because I, time, effort and money are the resources we all have and we all have to make choices based on what we want to build in our life, career, calling business success, relationship. It's all by design. How would you explain that?

Kevin Palmieri:

Well, for me it's the conversation of where are you naturally wired? The thing that's always been very interesting to me, and again, I don't mean this from a place of judgment. This is a really powerful place of awareness judgment. This is a really powerful place of awareness when gas, when there's a gas station, let's say, gas is expensive and gas they do like a giveaway, and it's 50 cents off a gallon for a day and there's a four hour line to get gas, if we really sit and think, okay, we're going to save 50 cents per gallon, awesome, we have a 12 gallon fuel tank. Okay, you're going to save $6. $6? No $4?.

Alan Lazaros:

What did I say? It was 50 cents off each gallon by 12.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yes, isn't it $6. Isn't it?

Alan Lazaros:

isn't it six dollars, isn't it? Isn't it four dollars?

Kevin Palmieri:

no, no, 50 cents times 12 is six dollars 50 cents times 12, all right, cool.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, clearly I can't figure out. Usually I'm really good at this math you're gonna save that amount of money yeah, is it really that means you're valuing your time at very little three, three1.33 per hour.

Kevin Palmieri:

Right, right or $1.66. I don't know, the number is the whole, thing, let's do six divided by four, the whole thing's Jeffed.

Alan Lazaros:

No, no, no, it's 1.5. Okay, so you're valuing your time at $1.50 an hour. If you're waiting in a four-hour line to save $6?, yes, that leads to a lot of other things.

Kevin Palmieri:

Like, I'm not interested in going and standing in line for Black Friday. I don't really. I'm going to save $50 on something that I don't need. Nah, now, if so, this. So there's two thoughts. One I'm going to sit in line for seven hours on Black Friday, get there first so I can go in and buy a big screen TV that I don't really need, and I'm going to get 30% off. Okay, that's one. The other one is I'm going to sit in line for seven hours so I can go buy six new PlayStations and then I can flip them and make money on all those. Now, six PlayStations would be a lot of money. You'd have to have some cash on hand for that. But that's the difference between a consumer mindset and an investor mindset. Those are two very, very different things.

Kevin Palmieri:

Taryn came to me. She sold me my wife sold me on something Well, very, very well. She said, hey, I think we should get a deep freezer, and I was like what, where the hell is this coming from Nice? Get a deep freezer? And I was like what, where the hell is this coming from nice? And she said, well, it's like 140 bucks. We'll split it and I'll be able to buy food way more food. When it's on sale, we can freeze it and you'll never run out of ground beef, and you'll never run out of ground turkey, and we'll always have frozen food available. Smart, okay, I'm in. I'm in.

Alan Lazaros:

But all it was was yeah, it makes sense.

Kevin Palmieri:

That makes sense financially.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm in. So, it's 70 bucks each 70 bucks. The question is when it's called internal rate of return. So how long does it take for you to break even? Probably Probably like three or four months Eh. Probably like six, I'd say probably six months yeah, this is a good long-term investment, assuming you take it with you when you get a home yeah, well, it's coming.

Alan Lazaros:

It's going to come everywhere so let me ask you this, so. So if people were to ask me like, hey, what are the most important character traits for success, I would say number one is self-belief, number two is humility, number three is work ethic and number four is intelligence. In that order, intelligence is just making smart decisions. That's why people are afraid of ai, because it can make smarter choices than than them and it'll take their jobs. Essentially, um, I have a client who uses chat gpt to coach him all the time yeah and I'm like, oh, I better keep my shit together here, right, but I'm honestly not.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm being playful, but at the end of the day, I do understand why people are scared of that right.

Alan Lazaros:

Intelligence is a threat, because if we create a machine that's smarter than us, we're in some trouble potentially, and again, that's terminator stuff and all that. We're gonna be all right. But the point I'm making is and I I'm asking you this, kev I've always considered intelligence the most important thing. The ability to make an effective choice is the most important thing. I mean other than self-belief, work, ethic and humility. But like, if you can't make intelligent, long-term choices, you basically are winging it and you're going to end up in a bad place. That's just mathematically true. How do you sell people on how to make more intelligent choices? Like all my failures in the past were my own dumbass choices.

Kevin Palmieri:

Same. I don't know. I think the thing that you're the thing right now that is hurting you the most, somebody else has probably found a way to make it super beneficial. It's like, again, I keep using credit cards as an example, but for every 10 people that are in massive credit card debt and they don't know how to, how they got there, there is one person who knows exactly how to use it for the benefits that you can have from it. But it's not set up that way. It's set up so the well it is. It's set up so the people who really know what they're doing can benefit from it. But the the vast majority of us have never been taught about what an eight, what apr, means. I still don't know. If somebody said explain apr, it's like I couldn't possibly I don't know annual percent rate or something.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, it's like I don't know it. It runs in a certain cycle and that's how it gets. The interest accumulates in a certain jeffed way, but for every, for every 10 people that are stuck in credit card debt because it's like, well, I'll just pay the minimum and I'll get out, no, it's gonna take you like 25 years, depending on what the amount is. There's somebody else who Matt's a really good example. My buddy Matt would get a card because he had really good credit. He would go spend $10,000 on something that he needed for his investment property, get a bunch of points for it and then say, okay, I spent $10,000. I got to pay this off within 12 months.

Kevin Palmieri:

I'm going to pay $950 a month on auto pay and then it'll be done. Cool that way.

Alan Lazaros:

he pays no interest, he gets all the money up front and he gets free capital from the cash on hand.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, it's a win-win-win-win. But he also has a finance degree, so it makes sense why he would do that and somebody else like me I would never have done that in the past. I just didn't understand how it worked. There was a snowstorm a couple years ago and the complex was plowing and if you don't move your car, it gets towed, like that's the thing you got to move your car, it's going to get towed. And taryn knocked on the office door and said, hey, you got to move your car. And I said I have a call with like a very warm potential client. I said let him fucking tow it. I'm gonna get this client. And she's like what I said babe, you gotta think about it. This client is 500 bucks a month. If they stay for one month, I mean how much is gonna cost for me to go get the car? A couple hundred bucks. Let me see if I can get this client Assuming.

Alan Lazaros:

Taryn couldn't just move it herself?

Kevin Palmieri:

Right, yes, but I think she was leaving.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, she had work, I think she was doing something.

Kevin Palmieri:

So it was like, yeah, it is what it is. Either it's going to get towed or it's not going to get towed. I'm not going to move it, that client with us for two years Nice, I was thinking of the now again. You can't do that all the time.

Kevin Palmieri:

Right Because if I did that and we didn't get the client, we didn't have any money and I lost my car. That's a whole different. So there are layers to it, but I think that's probably my best example of like. I don't know, that's not a typical story, but that was very much me saying all right, I'm going to invest my time into this call where I can make that money back today and let me see what I can do. And luckily it paid off.

Alan Lazaros:

So Emilia and I live in a condo complex and all the landscaping, plowing, all that stuff gets taken care of. But we all pay. Everyone in the condo complex pays for that. As long as emilia and I are productive during that time when I would have been plowing, that's a net win right. But if we're, and I try to make this land and maybe it'll land differently this time. But one of the benefits I think of working so much is you're not spending as much no, no but seriously real talk, brother.

Alan Lazaros:

When you're working you're not spending I.

Kevin Palmieri:

You only need five minutes to spend five hundred dollars.

Alan Lazaros:

Doesn't take long, yeah, but when you're focused on your work, you're not spending money, brother, because if you take a weekend off, really think about this, you're gonna end up spending money. I mean always. You don't take weekends off and not spend money.

Kevin Palmieri:

Nobody does well I could work, yeah, but I would still.

Alan Lazaros:

I would get food or something, even if I were you and I worked all day, sunday okay, if you work real talk if you work 20 hours on a saturday and a sunday, you're gonna spend less than if you just hung out all that time I would say if you're not intentionally focused on saving money exactly which is normal well, you always say it to me like if you work more, you're going to spend less.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's like, brother, I'm already trying not to spend money it might be the. It might be the opposite for me, because I get to the end of the day and it's like I need to drive some food into this belly of mine, yeah, yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, even then you're running the equation of it's going to take me, I'm going to save time so that I can be more productive. I mean, emilia and I were going to be getting takeout. We're going to yeah much time. So, again, at the end of the day I said this to my client earlier I feel like my dream came true. I feel like I'm a math teacher. I wanted to be a math teacher when I was a kid and I loved math and I said I can't be a math teacher, quite frankly, just being very honest, because they don't make enough money. And that was my decision when I was very young. I decided not to do that and I figured I'd be a professor, maybe one day in my 70s or 80s. And now I get to teach math to business owners and to podcasters and to listeners. And this client I know we got to go. This client. She asked me well, how are you calculating all this? And I said that's the hardest part. I don't know how to explain it because unless you understand the mathematics underneath it, it's very hard to calculate. So the simplest way I can give it to our listeners now is what are the inputs of time, effort and money. And what are you going to get out of it long-term? Because that freezer example that's not going to actually pay off until six months from now. That's a decision you're making now that will pay off in six months from now and only if you use the freezer optimally, right? So that's just.

Alan Lazaros:

It's an investor versus a consumer mindset. Consumers are in trouble if you don't also invest. I'm a consumer too. I bought a couple new hats. They're seven bucks each, athletica. Thank you so much. Awesome hats. Okay, I bought four of them, all in different colors, because I don't need much and I use them every goddamn day in the gym, every day. I go to the gym now because of this long hair, but that's an investment, because I can focus more. It's, it's, everything. Is is either building towards your bigger, better, brighter future or destructive everything. And so just get a little bit smarter, a little bit more intelligent, make a little bit of better choices over time, and your life will get better and better and better Little by little.

Kevin Palmieri:

This episode is going to be destructive to my calendar if we don't get off here because you and I both have calls. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you at NLU. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow.

Alan Lazaros:

Keep making next level decisions, Next Level Nation.

Kevin Palmieri:

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

Alan Lazaros:

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.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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