Next Level University

If You Could ONLY Have 1 Habit Forever It Would Be This… (2038)

Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

In today’s fun and thoughtful episode of Next Level University, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros go head-to-head with their top life-changing habit picks. From fear chasing to personal development reading, they break down how one simple daily action can radically shape your future. They also explore burnout, inner work, and how different life seasons reveal what truly matters. Tune in to discover the habit that could transform your path.

Learn more about:
Next Level Dreamliner - https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
Next Level Book Club - https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-book-club/

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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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Any of these communities or resources are FREE to join and consume
Next Level Nation - https://www.facebook.com/groups/459320958216700
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Next Level U Book Club - https://bit.ly/3BQBYDr

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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.

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

Facebook ✍
Alan: https://www.facebook.com/alan.lazaros
Kevin: https://www.facebook.com/kevin.palmieri.90/

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:
(3:30) Why Kevin chooses fear chasing
(5:17) Alan's pick: Personal development books
(9:07) Is meditation still essential?
(11:24) A new kind of daily meditation
(13:02) At NLU, we want you to win! So, we're giving tools and resources to ensure your success. Join our Monthly Meet-up every first Thursday of the month at 5 PM.
(18:52) Balancing internal and external success
(20:20) Burnout: A painful but useful teacher
(26:20) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

I came to Alan with an idea today. I said I would like to have an open conversation about the fact that if we had to choose just one habit for each and every one of you out there, you can't practice any other habits. You have to do this one. You can do it as much as you want, you can do it every day, but you can only pick one. Today we are going to talk about that. I've said many times, deciding what not to do is actually more important, in my opinion, than deciding what to do, because it helps you stay focused on the essentials.

Alan Lazaros:

Today will be helpful with that. Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host.

Kevin Palmieri:

Kevin Palmieri, and I'm your co-host, alan Lazarus, 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.

Kevin Palmieri:

Welcome to Next Level University, Next Level Nation. Today for episode number 2038. If you could only have one habit forever, it would be this. So, as we, it would be pizza. As we discussed in the little cold open there, as they call it in show business, I was thinking of what could make for a cool episode and I was thinking, well, if we just had an open conversation about that. I'm not. I didn't tell Alan what mine was. He kind of told me what his was going to be and I was like, okay, well, we'll do that, We'll do that when we hit record. But I think that there's a lot of other like if you could only eat one thing every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? It might be pizza. If you could only do one exercise for the rest of your life, which one would you suggest? And why? I like stuff like that? Because it makes you. It really makes you think what's yours.

Alan Lazaros:

For food. It would be. I'm kidding, we're not doing that. So mine was going to be habit tracking. And then Kev said nah, man, fuck that.

Kevin Palmieri:

I did say that, exactly like that Anger, more anger. I had more anger in my voice.

Alan Lazaros:

I started tracking habits 10 years ago, and that's kind of cheating in this question, though, because that's more of a meta habit, which is a habit about tracking habits, which allows you to do more than one habit, so it's cheating, I understand.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's like if I said what's your favorite food and you said buffet. No, that's not your favorite, that's a restaurant.

Alan Lazaros:

That is not a style of food, sir nice, we had one of my clients reach out in one of the groups.

Kevin Palmieri:

Did you see? I saw. You know how you can preview it in whatsapp.

Alan Lazaros:

I previewed the message, but I haven't read it fully yet he said something about a buffet, so I didn't know if that's where you got that. But okay, what is my one habit? If I had to choose one for clients, for myself, for Emilia, for Kev, for anyone out there watching or listening, it would be reading personal development books, and I have a whole lot of reasons why that we can go into, but I want to hear yours first, and then we can have a duel as to who had a better answer and why then we can have a duel as to who had a better answer and why.

Kevin Palmieri:

I. I do think that x amount of minutes of learning per day is very valuable. I'm gonna go in a different direction. I'm gonna go in a different direction. It would either be fear chasing or it would be. It would be. It would probably be fear chasing.

Alan Lazaros:

Why do you get to give multiple ones?

Kevin Palmieri:

No, I'm just saying, I'll pick one. It would either be fear chasing. I kind of gave two anyway Habit tracking, and I feel like if you, if you're somebody who has a, really if you have been told you have a great personality, I am willing to bet that if you just had one conversation with somebody every day, you would end up fairly successful.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm convinced of that and that could be at all. It might not.

Kevin Palmieri:

It might not but I feel like I mean, okay, maybe when you go to the grocery store, maybe it wouldn't count if you're having a conversation with a person doing the checkout or at the deli or whatever, but like if you just started conversations with people that were ahead of you for the rest of your life, you would end up probably in a pretty good place. Now, would you be able to capitalize on that? I don't know, maybe not, because you wouldn't have learned and you wouldn't have been practicing stuff and you wouldn't be super consistent and you wouldn't be disciplined. You wouldn't have self-worth, self-belief, I think, fear chasing, probably because that's the best way to build belief and you one of the best ways to build belief, and you would eventually start taking bigger chances and bigger chances, and I think you'd end up somewhere pretty good. Yeah, I think that's a good answer for sure. Is yours better or mine? Mine, obviously.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, they're both strong and I think obviously the point of this episode is do both of those.

Kevin Palmieri:

No, the point is for one of us to win and the other one to feel bad about themselves and I feel bad.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, let's work on that, all right. So I'm reading, I'm reading, I'm holding up the art of impossible by Stephen Collar on YouTube. Nice, and there's. I mean, this book is just awesome. I've I've raved about it since we interviewed Stephen and we read the book to prep for the interview and then the interview was awesome. So that's on YouTube. You can just go to Next Level University on YouTube and then you can search, click on our videos and then there's a search bar. Just type Stephen Kotler. That'll come up. I think it's 600 something.

Kevin Palmieri:

You always, I don't know, you always guess and it's never close.

Alan Lazaros:

Thinking 600, something I seriously do, but whatever. Okay, chapter 9, the roi on reading. So there's an entire chapter where he talks about how. So he's an author, so obviously he's biased, let's just open with that. But he crunched the numbers of how much.

Alan Lazaros:

So, on the last episode, I reviewed it this morning. Not all of it, a lot of it. I said, kev, I want you to imagine I take away all your knowledge. You don't know anything about yourself, you don't know anything about the world, you don't know anything about people. You don't know anything about fitness or finance or business or podcasting. Take it all away. What do you do? And you said, uh, I think I'd do nothing.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, and the point that I'm making with that is knowledge is potential power. When you know how the world works and why it works, that way you now can learn how to flourish within it. And that goes for playing tennis, that goes for playing chess, that goes for rock climbing, that goes for martial arts. When you know nothing, you have no martial arts. When you know nothing, you have no distinctions.

Alan Lazaros:

When you're a kid, you run around and you don't know. You've never seen a three-year-old build a business. It's impossible. They're not developed enough to do that, okay. So the ROI on reading and my one habit to bring this back was reading personal development books, and what I mean by personal development books is anything that helps you build yourself physical, mental, emotional, spiritual growth, all right. So he breaks down the math blogs three minutes gets you three days. So if you read one of his blogs, it takes you three minutes to read it and it gets you three days of his life, based on the prep, the writing, the research, all this stuff, stuff okay, he breaks it all down in the book three days his awareness right three days of his work his prep.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, okay, yeah three days.

Alan Lazaros:

So there's prep, there's writing, there's editing, right. So three days of his hard work, focused work, gets you you can get that in three minutes. Articles is 20 minutes gets you four months of his. These are like peer-reviewed articles books. Five hours reading one of his books in a weekend. So the art of impossible gets you 15 years.

Alan Lazaros:

It's wild, yeah, and so, and again, not all books are created equal. So this, this math, doesn't work for all books. He uses his book the Rise of Superman. My book on flow and the science of ultimate human performance is around 75,000 words, so it takes the average reader about five hours worth of effort. So what do you get for your five hours?

Alan Lazaros:

In the case of rise, about 15 years worth of my life. Cause that book took him a long, long, long time and he obviously took a lot of the principles that he learned in the research for rise of superman, which is his other book, and put it into the art of impossible. I think the art of impossible is far better. I've read most of his books, if not all of them, I don't know, maybe he has a new one, I have to look but personal development books are where you get all the answers. If if life is a chess game, which it is books are the way you learn how to play the game better, and then fear chasing is how you actually implement those things. So I think both are pretty good let me ask you a question.

Kevin Palmieri:

We haven't had this discussion in a long freaking time. What do you think today about meditation? Oh, wow, the reason I'll let me let me prompt Somebody asked me recently. They're like are you pretty big into meditation and that type of stuff? I was like, nah, not at all, not even a little bit. I said, but that was one of the pillars for me. I mean, in the beginning I was every single day I got up and I had a meditation I did with Deepak Chopra, and when I can't sleep, I still do the inhale go. Oh man, I don't even know I can't do it unless I'm like lying down getting ready to sleep. It's like ooh, some or something. When I breathe in, I go ooh. When I breathe out, I go some. It helps me fall asleep. I still do that. I mean, I've been doing that for years, but I haven't meditated in over a year, for sure, I would have to say.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, thank you for the question. Appreciate it, brother. I'm trying to say this in a way that is accurate and not going to debunk or claim that meditation is not great, because it is. I can't tell if I did it for long enough to where it becomes. Okay. Remember the time when we were in Florida and we were driving back five hours from southern Florida to northern Florida, boca.

Kevin Palmieri:

Raton and I actually have one of the videos that we recorded on my iCloud yeah, facebook memories no, no, no, no, no this never went anywhere In the Kia Facebook memories no, no, no, no, no. This is like. This never went anywhere In the Kia. Is this when we were in the Kia? This was not the Kia, this was the Nissan. Oh, this was one of the videos that we used to record videos for the website. Remember that?

Kevin Palmieri:

No, we didn't want to do it in the car, but that's the only time we could do it. I saw that the other day. My goodness, were you terrible at speaking. I wasn't speaking very much, so I'm I was terrible as well. It was painful to watch brother.

Alan Lazaros:

I watched A five minute clinic. Oh, so back in the day, the hyper conscious podcast changed the way you think, changed the way you act, changed the way you live.

Alan Lazaros:

I know, everyone's probably sick about hearing our come up story, but we wanted to hear it again. So here we go. No, I watched a five minute clinic Back in the day. What were they? We had five minute clinic. Okay, hold on, we had long episodes. Then we had scratching the surface. We had five minute clinic At. We had five minute clinic At one point. We had a guest episode, motivation Monday. We tried a lot of shit. I miss it. I miss scratching the surface.

Kevin Palmieri:

Dude, five minute clinic Pick a word and then you go. I wonder whose idea that was.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it was mine. I wanted to learn, I loved it, man. Legacy. Let's talk about legacy today. No wonder why that didn't work. Okay, I learned, I loved it, man Legacy. Let's talk about legacy today. Yeah, no wonder why that didn't work. Okay, it was me going off for five minutes.

Kevin Palmieri:

I believe it. About a word, I believe it.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, I believe that and I listened and I'm trying to take this with a grain of salt and I'll try to bring a lesson in as well. I would say it was strong compared to, maybe, a new podcaster. If I compare to a new podcaster, I would say it was pretty good. Compared to me. Now it was fucking terrible levels, but you don't even know until you look back how bad you were. And you weren't really bad. Depending on, everything is comparative, everything is relative. That's why this is so hard. You don't really know how good you are at things. I don't feel any better at speaking. It's because you know more. If anything, I think I feel like I'm worse at speaking now than I did back then, because now I'm more aware of how high this goes and the levels of it. Right, okay, nlu listener, what is happening? I just wanted to jump in here and let you know if you want to get to the next level faster. We have a free, virtual monthly meetup at the first Thursday of every month. You can connect with like-minded people and become a bigger part of this amazing global community. The link to register will be in the show notes.

Alan Lazaros:

Bringing this back to the habits Meditation, meditation, meditation. Thank you, I would not have gotten that Back in the day. I used to, and I still listen to my morning mindset workout every single day. So for 10 years I've listened to the same video every morning and it every day. It's not always in the morning, sometimes I miss and then I do it in the evening, but for 10 years straight I've done this same video. It's called Ode to Excellence. As a matter of fact, Eddie just changed the thumbnail and I freaked, I know I freaked.

Alan Lazaros:

He changed the thumbnail and I'm like, oh my God, what happened to the video? It's just the new thumbnail, it's the same video but it's three and a half minutes and I consider that kind of a meditation. It's a letter from your highest self to your human self. And I coached Eddie, eddie Panera, on YouTube. I coached him for a time and he told me that that was the very first YouTube video he's ever done and he wrote that letter from his highest self to his human self and that's what I always took it as. It was like whoa, this dude. This was 10 years ago. I was like this dude gets it. This is, this is exactly what I want to be, this is what I think like and it's no one will outwork you. It's all this stuff. I would consider that a meditative experience for me and I listen to it literally every day and right after it is my focus music, so it goes right into the focus music right after. But I don't meditate anymore. If you consider that meditation, then I do and I'm for it. I don't meditate anymore. If you consider that meditation, then I do and I'm for it. I don't know.

Alan Lazaros:

And back to why I was talking about Boca Raton and driving North in Florida. If you remember this and I don't know if it was when we were in the Kia or when we were in Florida a couple times in 2018 and 2019, when we were driving North, I got out of the car at a gas station with Kevin. I said I feel like my inner world is kind of shitty lately. I feel like I've been too focused on external. I think I need to get myself centered in my inner world again, and Eddie's YouTube channel back then was called your World Within. Like work on the inner world first.

Alan Lazaros:

That was his whole premise and I always resonated a lot with that, obviously, which is why I listen to the video every day for 10 years. But I think that's what meditation does, is. It helps you get in touch with your highest self again, and I do think that's critical. I just I feel like it's pretty automatic at this stage. As arrogant as that might come off, I feel like my highest self is talking to me all the time I don't think it sounds.

Kevin Palmieri:

That's why I asked, because I I look at it differently. If you're out there, I'm not saying it's not good like go do it, go meditate. That absolutely I think. That I agree.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think fitness is kind of like meditation for me when I'm at the gym, I'm not really thinking about anything, it's just me and I have music on and I'm just in the zone and I feel like that is such an important thing for me. But there were times I mean we had our breath work phase. We had somebody on named Samantha Skelly. She came on one episode and then we did like a live podcast with her. That one, I'm certain, is 402, 402 I still have it saved.

Alan Lazaros:

402. It got pulled off spotify because the music she used was oh, yeah, yeah, great songs, great songs, selene dion. I still use that it's great.

Kevin Palmieri:

So we had a season where alan and I would be in the studio doing breathwork together is bawling our eyes out. That was super, that was super, that was super important, that was super valuable. I think you and I and again I don't mean this in an arrogant way you and I have gone very deep in the inner world. We were very deep in the external world, then we were very deep in the internal world and then I think now more external, more external, but I think the default setting on internal is higher than it's ever been I think you and I, and I think this tends to be the trend for men and again, I don't want to blanket statement it, but I do know particularly, uh, men they get, they focus more extrinsic.

Alan Lazaros:

I think they're enculturated to focus more extrinsic. I talk about how I didn't have a diary. My sister had a diary and a journal and that kind of thing. So I think women are encouraged to express their emotions and reflect, and I think that's why they mature faster than men, and I still stand by that. I do think they're more holistically humble and more intrinsically well-developed, for sure, for sure.

Alan Lazaros:

Um, I told Amelia I didn't have my first journal until I was 26. And she's, I can't even. She can't even fathom that. I mean she's had journals her whole life, right, and now I have the dreamliner. I've been doing it and it's a game changer. I mean it's you versus you, it's when you check in, it's how you check in, meditation, journaling, all these things.

Alan Lazaros:

So you and I growing up, I think we're very extrinsic. And then, after 26, we had our sort of quarter life crises and then we went fully intrinsic and we went broke as well, by the way. So for anyone who's fully intrinsic, be careful. You need to master both the internal and external world, and I think now we're much more external, but I feel like we're much more centered and I try really hard to work on both. That's why the mornings and the evenings are for fitness, food, family and myself. My mornings are for me. When that doesn't happen, particularly during event season, it's very hard not to feel like you're a chicken with your head cut off, just running around doing too many things. But if you don't do that, you end up very centered but broke, and that's just facts.

Alan Lazaros:

I know we're getting off topic a little bit, but I know some people that are extremely, extremely successful in the external world that are not focused on the internal world almost at all. And I know some people that are the most well-developed internally that I've ever seen and they are not successful almost at all that I've ever seen and they are not successful almost at all. And I do think there's a correlation between which one you focus on more and obviously, if you want to be both externally successful and internally fulfilled, you need to work on both. I was mostly external, did very well. I did the kindergarten, you know, preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, kindergarten you know, preschool, kindergarten, middle school, high school, college, corporate. I mean that was all external, mostly external at all. And then 26 car accident. And then I went fully internal and that was at least five years of barely successful going from a top 1% global earner to like struggling to even be respected in the economy at all. And now I feel like we're much more centered.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, it's been a journey, for sure it's been a journey. The only reason I asked is just because I feel like there I don't know, maybe five years ago, if you asked me, it might've been meditate, because that's the season I was in and, again, super valuable. It helped me a ton. I was in a very Deep chopra and sad guru. I read all those books. I had a very spiritual phase where it was just jumping from one to the other, and it was.

Kevin Palmieri:

I was not making a lot of money, that's, that is for sure, but I think that's a phase you have to go through it's like a phase you have to experience, just like, I think, getting burnt out. Now again, I'm not advising you to do this. What I think getting burnt out is a good phase after you go through it. In the process it's terrible, but after you go through it it now becomes a blip on the map for you to know like oh, these are the signs for me getting burnt out.

Alan Lazaros:

Dude, I don't know if I've ever been able to explain this. I have some clients I've been working with for six months, some a year, some a year and a half, some two years, some two and a half, some some four, five, six years. Longest client six years. She is growing through certain things that I was talking about five years ago, and there's certain things that I'm working with her on now that I said honestly, this will make a lot more sense in a couple years, and I don't want to come off as some wise guru from the top of a mountain. What I am saying, though, is I went through that already. I'm 36. You're only 30. Like I went through that six years ago.

Alan Lazaros:

As a matter of fact, I went through that probably 16 years ago, to be honest, and, but you don't know until later, and this is the problem with next level. You, it's such a fucking problem. You don't know that what you're going through and growing through right now is actually necessary for you to achieve this. Like, okay, some of the things that were terrible with my ex or whatever, like those were critical in hindsight to being with emilia today, and I think I just overcooked the turkey for lack of better phrasing.

Alan Lazaros:

I think that I stayed too long. It's almost like burnout is a burnout phase is necessary for you to learn yourself. Only those who are willing to go too far will ever figure out how far you can go. I do believe that that's true to some extent. The problem is, how long do you stay there? And I told you recently I said, dude, I don't think I can work any harder. We really need a phase of like working much more effectively and intelligently and working smarter. But you've never heard me say that before I hadn't reached the max out.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yet I've been waiting Like I've been waiting. I've been waiting like I've been waiting. I've been waiting for that to come at some point, like it has to come at some point. Right, yeah, it did eventually and it was.

Alan Lazaros:

I didn't know if it would well I was hoping.

Kevin Palmieri:

I was hoping it would but, again, it's not drastic.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's not like it's not a drastic shift, but it's a perception, it's an understanding, it's like, oh, okay, interesting, maybe we could do things a little bit differently. But the only reason you get to that point is well, I think that's the conversation. We gotta hop here, because alan's on a podcast here in a minute, but that's the conversation around maximizing your potential. The only way to maximize your potential is figure out what your potential currently is, and the only way to do that is to go beyond what it currently is for a short amount of time and realize, okay, that ain't, but now I know what it's like. Up there. The air is thinner than I thought. These are the lessons I took from it. Okay, this is how I approach it last time. All right, quick 10-second next-level lesson We'll get out of here.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, my next-level lesson. I'll go quick, and then my question for you. Well, question for you first. In hindsight, isn't it somewhat clear that you had to push beyond your limits, at least at times, to figure out where they are?

Kevin Palmieri:

I think one of the reasons I'm as capable as I am now is because I'm not beyond my limits, and for much of this journey I was, and I was freaking out.

Alan Lazaros:

So yeah 100%.

Kevin Palmieri:

I agree with that 100%, but I'm not saying you should go way as far past your limits like I did. I think I went too far.

Alan Lazaros:

I do, I think I went too far, but I don't feel like I did I don't feel like I had maxed out, but I now understand that you did and I didn't understand that you. That's very clear to me in hindsight, because I'm getting to the point where I'm maxing out now and some of what I'm doing is at the expense of my relationship or or my health, when lately I'm not even kidding I look very young. So I've never had aging as a concern. Like I'm not not aging very well, like I and again most people be like well you're, you know you look great.

Alan Lazaros:

No great, no listen, I aged like 10 years in the last, like four, I'm not even kidding. This is not good and I'm gonna, I'm gonna dial it in right, but you don't really know until later. That's the problem. Like certain things, you have to learn the hard way and and that's you know, you gotta stay self-aware and all that so my next level lesson is you do have to push past your current limits in order to expand them, but if you go too far, it can be at the expense of things you value.

Kevin Palmieri:

Mine would be if you're struggling with habits, start with one that start, because we're. We talked about the power of just one habit today. I do think. Reading every day, learning every day, that's number one, for sure. Habit tracking is number one, but that's meta. You can't do that technically, but I think if you want your life to look different in a year, you read 15 pages a day and it will look. It might not look. Honestly, it might not look that much different. It will feel that much different, 100%. It might not look it from the outside. Internally, it'll feel completely different. Okay, cool, next Level Nation.

Kevin Palmieri:

If you want to take your journaling to the next level, we have the Next Level Dreamliner. I, very honestly, am not doing it right now because I suck and I'm overwhelmed, but I do love it. It is amazing. Alan is doing it. We have so many people in the community doing it. Shout out to each and every one of you. It's super easy to do, it's sustainable and if you're somebody who wants to get the power of journaling, bada, bing, bada, boom, it is on.

Alan Lazaros:

Amazon and if you want to join Book Club, it's free. Every single week, 1230 pm Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, we're reading Reset right now one chapter per week. We've read 20 books in Book Club, so if you want more accountability to keep yourself reading, it's free and it's a great book. Join us. Yeah, great book. Yeah, join us. We've done 20 books, so you know, in a year from now, who knows how many more books we will have read together. So social accountability is big.

Kevin Palmieri:

Join us free as always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and at NLU we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow keep it next level, next level nation 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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