Next Level University

Don’t Celebrate Off The Rails (2031)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Dreams rarely go as planned—they either surprise us or teach us. In this episode, Kevin and Alan break down their real and raw takeaways from hosting their first fully virtual event, Next Level Live 2025. They open up about the behind-the-scenes surprises, unexpected stressors, and how flexibility helped turn a bumpy start into a big win.

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NLU is not just a podcast; it’s a gateway to a wealth of resources designed to help you achieve your goals and dreams. From our Next Level Dreamliner to our Group Coaching, we offer a variety of tools and communities to support your personal development journey.

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

Website 💻  http://www.nextleveluniverse.com

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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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Email 💬
Kevin@nextleveluniverse.com
Alan@nextleveluniverse.com

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

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Show notes:
(2:32) Flexibility creates growth
(4:21) Handling disappointment Vs. Seeing surprises
(7:18) The power of small daily actions
(9:45) Next Level Dreamliner: The planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(11:33) Redesigning life after big moments
(14:43) What young Kevin needed to know
(16:06) Balancing big moments with everyday work
(17:25) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

I don't think anything ever goes the way I think it's going to go. It either goes far better or far worse, and I think this was a really good example of it going far better and then me feeling worse after in some weird way.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, every single time that you shoot for something that you've never done before, reach a new level, next level, you you're going to get data. You're going to get data, you're going to get information, you're going to get feedback about yourself, about other people and the world, and then you have to reassess, kind of everything.

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 Self-improvement in your pocket every day, from anywhere, completely free. Welcome to Next Level University, next Level Nation today for episode number 2031. We're going to do a little event recap, so we're recording this on Monday. As you know, saturday was Next Level Live 2025, our first purely virtual event, woo.

Alan Lazaros:

Woo, next Level Live 2025. Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri:

And I think it went really well All things considered.

Alan Lazaros:

My water bottle smells terrible.

Kevin Palmieri:

You gotta wash that thing.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, I did recently, I don't know.

Kevin Palmieri:

Dishwasher.

Alan Lazaros:

No.

Kevin Palmieri:

There's your issue right there. What are you just? I know you. You probably put a little soap on your finger and scrape it around a little bit.

Alan Lazaros:

That ain't it, son, that ain't it.

Kevin Palmieri:

All right, quick contact. This is going to be a very short episode because we are. I'll speak for myself. I'm still recovering from the event in terms of like catching up to what seems like normal life, so just going to preface it with that. But event went really well. We rented a conference room Much smaller than we expected, much more noisy than we expected. The lighting was just absolute dog shit, so we ended up using a hotel room instead of the conference.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think it would be good to give our top takeaways. My top takeaway is that almost nothing is ever going to go exactly the way that you want, but oftentimes the resistance parts, or the, the points where you get stuck, are actually the biggest pieces of growth and can help you be more aligned anyway. And it's almost like I wonder in the past how often my expectations ended up jeffing me because I thought my expectations had to be reality, where this time you and I were like this this is not gonna work, we're in trouble. All right, alan's like, let's go check out the hotel room. Yeah, this is actually better, all things considered. All right, that's done now. Well, I'm not even thinking about the conference room. That's done that. That whole thing is now. That chapter is closed and then we're on to the next thing. I think in the past I would have ruminated over the fact that I thought we were doing it in the conference room and I think that was that was a win for me this time flexibility I've been trying to work on that.

Kevin Palmieri:

Flexibility be more flexible, more flexible. I'm trying to work on that.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, sometimes, you get disappointment. How well do you handle disappointment? Because, speaking as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a dream chaser, even any, any goal that you go to set, even if it's a fitness goal, you get injured. Damn damn. You go to buy that thing. You think it's going to work, doesn't Damn? Okay, this isn't what I thought. I think that life is as depressing as this is going to sound. It's constant disappointment when you have goals, and how do you handle disappointment? What is your relationship with it?

Alan Lazaros:

So there's a couple quotes from the event that I think I wanted to share here that I've my brain's been on fire since the event has ended. So it was six hours long. We had a first half hour, amy opened, then it was our breakout session, our breakout session, our breakout session, then it was Q&A, and so six hours of personal development and success, your own unique version of success, the best content I think we've ever presented. Not necessarily the best I've ever presented content, no, but it was. I actually do think it was very, very, very strong. All things considered, the best we've ever done to date. A couple quotes that I've talked to Emilia. She was there, she was in attendance, and I asked her what the most powerful things were. One of the things that I thought really landed well was the idea of the consistency piece, which is if all of us I said this at one point at the event if all of us were to get together tomorrow hypothetical world and work out for nine hours straight, that would not change any of your lives. But if I took that same nine hours and cut it up into half hour increments and we exercised, all of us got a little fitness accountability group going and we all exercise for a half an hour a day for 18 days, which is the same amount of time, same time, but spread out that might create a new habit and that new habit could change your life. And it's little things like that. This was another quote that came to me. I wish I had said it at the event, but I didn't.

Alan Lazaros:

Success is not about doing 10,000 things. It's actually about doing 10 things 10,000 times, really, really, really well and getting better each time. Really, really, really well and getting better each time Just little things like that. I think the cool part about being in the space of personal development and fitness and coaching and training and podcasting for 10 years almost well, 10 years for me, eight years since you and I got together in business is you just see these patterns, these patterns, these patterns? And another thing I said was consistency is necessary but not sufficient.

Alan Lazaros:

Consistency is something that I think. Self-belief would be number one. Consistency would be number two, which aligns with discipline and work ethic. Number three would probably be self-worth and social courage. Put yourself out there. These fundamentals are, they're everything. Listening to one episode of NLU is not going to change your life. It could change your thinking, which could change your life, but it's not really. If you listen consistently, it will, I mean, mean that little tweak, little tweak, little tweak, little tweak, this 15 minute episode, it can change your trajectory. It's not going to change your whole life, but it can change your trajectory. I think that that just was so blatantly obvious to me it's small things.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, it's small things. It's somebody comes to an event and they have a good experience that brings them to do another thing, like that. There is just a drastic difference. Amy and I were talking about this. There's a drastic difference between somebody who is really into growth and somebody who says they're into growth, and I think it's like that with anything. There's a drastic difference between somebody who is into fitness and says they're into fitness, somebody who is actually into fitness, and somebody who says they're into fitness. And I'm not making that wrong, I'm just using that as kind of an awareness thing or a perspective thing.

Kevin Palmieri:

I had this thought when you were talking what's the difference between a disappointment and a surprise? Usually a surprise, usually a surprise is connected to positive. It's like oh, I'm so surprised. It's the same thing. It's just a different emotion attached to it. And I think, if you can adjust the emotion, there were a lot of surprises, but I don't think I was disappointed about At one point. Housekeeping knocked on the door like two or three times. They actually opened the door and I was like whoa, whoa, my bad. I wasn't disappointed about at one point. Housekeeping knocked on the door like two or three times they actually opened the door, I was like whoa, whoa, my bad. I wasn't disappointed about that. I was surprised because I haven't. I haven't stayed in a hotel in a long time. I usually stay in airbnbs, like airbnbs better, so I haven't, but I used to stay in hotels all the time. It's like, oh yeah, forget about that yeah, yeah of course.

Kevin Palmieri:

Of course they're gonna. This is a nice hotel. Of course they're gonna come try to clean the room, like that's what they do makes it makes total sense. Yeah, so that that was a takeaway for me. There's a big difference between disappointment and a surprise, and I think a lot of it is the attitude you have about it, the state you're in. I think that's another piece of it. That was something that jumped off the page for me you want pleasant surprises.

Alan Lazaros:

you want things to go well and things can go well, and sometimes you are pleasantly surprised. If you're really optimistic, like me, not as often. But if you can't, it's almost like if you can't handle constant, consistent disappointment when you're headed towards your goals, you're not going to be able to get success.

Kevin Palmieri:

And you have to make sure that you also are able to get potentially consistent positive surprises and not let it get to your head Because there's both. Yeah nice, how many positive experiences, how many positive surprises. There was a lot of them, but they weigh each other out, they balance each other out over time.

Alan Lazaros:

Hello, hello, hello. Nlu listener. Thank you, as always, for listening to Next Level University. Real quick. I just want to jump in and let you know about the Next Level Dreamliner. This is a journal that I use every single day. Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time. It breaks down your dreams into goals, milestones and daily habits. We hope you enjoy it. The link will be in the show notes.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, how far does that pendulum swing? Right? So you set a goal, you go for something, and then it goes better than you thought. Does that go to your head and you get cocky? Okay, it goes worse than you thought. Does that go to your head and you get cocky? Okay, it goes worse than you thought. Does that go to your head? And you now don't believe in yourself? You got to stay. That's one thing that's very obvious at this stage is that pendulum metaphor is really something, because you just said you're a little low, because you're coming off a high.

Alan Lazaros:

Kevin and Amy, we had some tears of gratitude flowing. It was in the Q&A. It was really powerful and you went pretty intense with your grit. There was a question emilia asked about grit and I was so proud of kev because very gritty individual for sure, and you really let that out this time, what you're fighting for and your past and all that. I thought that was awesome. But oh, absolutely, man, yeah, that's, I mean, that's the goods. That's the goods, that's, that's the real reason we got here. Let's be honest.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's a massive, massive, massive piece of it, for sure.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, yeah huge and the tears of gratitude are wonderful and that's sort of the high, high. But then you know Monday, all right, back to work. It's back to work, right, that was great, that was awesome. Social that was great, that was awesome Social media. Hotel travel Great Okay, but I unpacked my stuff. I got to set my stuff back up because we used my system for for the event and it was okay.

Alan Lazaros:

Time to redesign my life from this new sense of awareness and when I set my life back up for success, when I redesign my office, when I set my office back up, I need to make it better this time. When I set the house up, I want to do it a little better this time. I talked to you on the walk. Okay, what did we learn at the event? What are we going to do differently? How am I going to say things differently?

Alan Lazaros:

I want to create a list of sort of one-liners that I think are really powerful. I have a few. You know, if you had a friend who broke as many promises to you as you've broken to yourself the 10,000 things versus the 10 things 10,000 times over time, type of thing. Like I'm going to start curating some of those. There's just a bunch of tweaks I need to make now, but when you get home, you have overwhelming gratitude on one end. You have a bunch of things that went wrong on the other and you're just sitting there letting your brain chew on all of it and my brain just goes to okay, that was the best we've ever done. That's great. And what's next year going to look like and what is tomorrow going to look like to build toward next year? And it really is exhausting and I think that that's okay. We have to make that okay. It's okay, we have to make that okay.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's okay. Goals are exhausting. That's why most people don't achieve them. I had, so I got to the hotel early. I got to the hotel, I think, at 6.30. No, 7.30?, 6.30. I think I got there at 6.30. I got up at 5. Yeah, yeah, I got there at nine.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, I had been there. We got there a little earlier than nine, but yeah.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, yeah, no-transcript. The night before that was like hey, we, we jeff something in the clips that we asked for. Can you give us more clips, can you like change it? And I did one and I emailed them and I said I'm literally like on stage for lack of better phrasing in two hours. I'm gonna have to get you the rest monday. But even that was such a new level of pressure of yeah, there's so many other things like yes, this is the main thing, but it really can only be the main thing for the six hours we're doing it. And then immediately there's another main thing. It was very, it was very, very stressful, for sure, more stressful than anything else because of the things orbiting it, but less stressful than it's ever been before. Sorry, more stressful than any other events because there's so many things orbiting it, but less stressful than it's ever been before. Sorry, more stressful than any other events because there are so many things orbiting it. Less stressful than any other events, purely from just like an event standpoint in a weird way.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, because not everything's riding on that one thing.

Kevin Palmieri:

Right, right yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

Real quick. I know we got to jump, but I wanted to ask you, kev, at the beginning of this journey, didn't know what business was like, didn't know what dream chasing was like. You know that kind of thing. What would you say? What you just achieved live event we. What we just achieved live event people all over the world, virtual. Thank you, christina, holy crap. Virtual event coordinator on the team. It was a dream come true. We had the moment. We always look at each other and go we give a you know the fist bump.

Kevin Palmieri:

This was at one point a dream.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, this is at one point nice nice, I haven't seen that yet, but a little fist bump of at one point. Remember, when we talked about this, you know, and it looks a little different than we thought. But what would you say to young kev about what it actually takes to achieve that dream? Because what comes with that dream is tremendous pressure and all that. I guess what would be the thing you'd say to him?

Kevin Palmieri:

You do not get to step up to the plate in public unless you've stepped up to the plate behind the scenes thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of times. That's part one, and then part two is it doesn't matter how well it goes, it matters how well you get back to doing the other stuff after. I know, in a weird it's like it went really well, great it today. That doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter. There's no time to really now again, we fast-paced and it's pedal to the metal. I'm not saying you have to do it the same exact way we do, but there was there wasn't any celebration really. Saturday night Alan took calls, I got home and there was UFC on. I was able to actually get better at a reasonable time and I told Taryn I was like I think Alan has three coaching calls after this and she's like he makes me physically sick.

Alan Lazaros:

the way he shows up and I was like same.

Kevin Palmieri:

But even then it's like the event ends, we unpack, and then Alan goes and does his one thing. The event ends, we pack. I'm in WhatsApp making sure that clients are taken care of which is great.

Alan Lazaros:

It's a great problem to have. This is exactly what we wanted. It's just way more stressful than I thought. Yeah, nice, it's a great problem to have as a good is a good way to frame it because it's it is amazing. And the other side of the pendulum is it's a lot of responsibility and you can't have one without the other. So, yeah, man fire and I appreciate Taryn saying that too, I do, I think that's I feel very seen in that and and, dude, ultimately I had that moment too of these coaching sessions matter a lot. They don't not matter just because we have an event like this is this is important. That's my number one most important thing is one-on-one coaching. So that's, and the one-on-one coaching for the last seven, eight years yeah, starting out with fitness coaching is part of what built that.

Kevin Palmieri:

So we're not going to stop the thing that built it.

Kevin Palmieri:

If anything, it matters more I know it's weird we'll do, I'm sure we'll do another, a part two debrief of this at some point. We just wanted to make sure we're we're both kind of going through it in our own internal ways and I thought it would be just better to talk about it rather than trying to put together some specific episode that doesn't pull us, because if it doesn't pull us it's not going to pull you and it's probably not going to be that valuable. So hopefully you found value in this. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and l you. We don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow keep it next level, next level nation thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University.

Kevin Palmieri:

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.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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