Next Level University

What I Wish I Understood About Chasing Your Passion (2046)

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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We've all heard the advice to follow our dreams. In this raw and honest episode, Kevin and Alan pull back the curtain on what it really takes to turn passion into profit. They share the gritty truth behind the glamorized “follow your passion” advice and why data, not just desire, is the driver of long-term success. From spreadsheets to sacrifices, they reflect on how easily people forget the messy middle once they “make it.” Whether you’re starting a business, building a career, or stuck wondering if passion is enough, this episode will challenge what you thought success looked like.

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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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Show notes:
(2:29) Data-driven success Vs. Feel-good advice
(4:11) Harsh stats behind dream careers
(6:35) The hidden cost of entrepreneurship
(10:28) Why most people avoid the real work
(11:09) Next Level Dreamliner: The planner, agenda, journal, and habit tracker to rule them all. Get a copy: https://a.co/d/9fPpxEt
(13:03) Success requires sacrificing what you want
(18:29) Learning to love the unsexy stuff
(19:56) The truth: Goals don’t care what you want
(20:02) Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

What if I told you that you have probably been lied to when it comes to chasing your passion, chasing your purpose? I think when you get to a certain stage in life, and maybe when you get to a certain stage of success in life, it's very easy to say that to someone Like hey, alan, you should really chase your purpose, brother, you should really do what you're passionate about. But I think it's easy to forget how challenging it is to turn your passion into a profit if you've already done it and you've been there for a decade.

Alan Lazaros:

I was at an entrepreneurial panel last week and these are two very successful multi-millionaire business owners, from what I've gathered, and one of them kept talking about passion. But I stopped everything at one point during the panel and I said wait, wait, wait. And I turned to them and I said how many spreadsheets do you guys use? And one of them laughed and said Alan, I have eight open on my computer right now. And I said here's the key. I know we're talking about passion, I get it. Love, what you do, I get it. Fulfillment yeah. But the real reason us three are successful up here and we have the privilege and honor of speaking to all of you is because we are in the data. Every day. We make data-driven decisions.

Kevin Palmieri:

Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, 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 2046. What I wish, what we wish, but what I wish, I understood about chasing your passion. So in the very beginning of this journey, I started a podcast in 2017 and I fell in love with podcasting and I said if I could do that for a living, I'm passionate about it. I feel like that's a piece of my purpose right To help people raise their awareness with my voice. I feel like that's a piece of my purpose right To help people raise their awareness with my voice. That's a piece of my purpose.

Kevin Palmieri:

For sure, I probably would have, and did, say you should really chase your passion, because it seems empowering and it seems like the right advice and it seems like the right thing to do, because if you're able to somehow capture that elusive thing, you will be wildly fulfilled and you probably will feel very quote unquote successful and you'll learn a ton about yourself. And it'll still be. It'll still be challenging, It'll still be hard, but it'll be deeply meaningful. Alan sent me a clip. He's been sending me a lot of clips lately in my story, in my Instagram story, and you know the guy's name. I think his handle on Instagram is ProfGalloway, I think his name is he's a professor and I think his last name is Galloway.

Alan Lazaros:

I don't know. One thing I've just want to share briefly is.

Kevin Palmieri:

I care more about concepts than I do about who's saying them. Well, he does. He said some wise things in the past I've seen pop up oh, he has. Yeah, again, I don't even think I follow him. He was on something I don't even. I honestly don't even know where I saw the clip. Yeah, yeah, well, alan sent me this clip and it was he was. This guy was being interviewed on a podcast and he was talking about how they were talking about the entertainment industry, I think anything that is romanticized as very sexy, anything that's very sought after, sports music any career that is like looks really awesome from the outside in yeah, and then what?

Kevin Palmieri:

so one of the things he said was I think he was saying like I think let's just say he was talking about acting, even though the numbers are going to be skewed. He said something along the lines of it was like 85 of the people in that industry didn't have to file for taxes last year because they made under $24,000. Or they did.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, if you think about that if you think about that number In the US, by the way.

Kevin Palmieri:

In the US.

Alan Lazaros:

In the US For the global audience.

Kevin Palmieri:

it's I'm going to butcher the stats. Don't hold me to anything. I say Let me live my life. Thank you so much, Just for as an example.

Alan Lazaros:

But what did that clip mean to you? Because I'm always sending Kev stuff on purpose to try to. It made me sad.

Kevin Palmieri:

It made me sad a little bit, Because we made it Like we not made it. Jesus, we're not even fucking close. We get to do what we're passionate about every day.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, from the understanding of doing something that you're passionate about.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yes, we have made it. We're on the upper end for sure. Yeah, we're on the upper end for sure. It made me sad because I think I don't know.

Alan Lazaros:

I feel like, isn't it weird how, now that we've quote unquote made it, I actually kind of understand why everyone doubted us.

Kevin Palmieri:

I would never doubted why people doubted I did big time makes total mean someone freaking sense yeah, I think the number one thing is it made me sad because it was like it was. It was almost like think realistic or suffer kind of, because it it is empowering to say, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, that type of stuff. Or if you're passionate about what you do, like every day is a gift, like that type of stuff. It sounds really good, but it's just the survivor bias of yeah, if I, if I say that, I'm forgetting how much it took to get here, how many podcasters that we started this journey with that are no longer podcasting, I'm forgetting all of the downsides that I'm suggesting to you that you should chase your passion because maybe eventually, if you do make it which statistically is unlikely, if we're being honest it will be worth it. I do believe it will be worth it, but it just I don't know.

Alan Lazaros:

It's like it's remove the if I was a pilot and I said hey, kev, there's an, there's a 13%, you and I, you and I make it, no destiny would, are you game?

Kevin Palmieri:

anything less than 90 I probably wouldn't do.

Alan Lazaros:

And here's the thing if you fail in business, the good news is you can get up and fail again and get up and fail again. And on the entrepreneur panel again I kind of turned it to them and said, how many times have you guys failed? Because it got very passionate oriented. The whole thing was like, well, I did this and I did that, and now I own all these sky zones and I did this and this tech company. They bought our patent and we grew from this. I said, whoa, hold up, how many guys? How many businesses have you guys failed at? And they started laughing again and they're like I mean six, seven, eight, like perfect. Can we talk to the students about how bad this is?

Kevin Palmieri:

why is that so valuable from your perspective, like, why is that why? Why is passion such a big focus to be spoken about? But the real stuff isn't from your perspective there's a lot of reasons.

Alan Lazaros:

My brain came up with three. Number one is you forgot what it was like in the beginning and how terrible it was. It's really easy.

Kevin Palmieri:

I mean you've gotten two or three referrals today, today was a weird day that didn't that doesn't happen in the beginning, in the beginning you have to fight for every dollar.

Kevin Palmieri:

I had a moment. I was walking out of my offices, uh clients emailed me. We have existing clients. I've been working very, very diligently with them and they emailed me and the subject was um, it was like off of scope of work project, and essentially it was hey, we need something done. We would like you to do it for us. Can you have it done by the end of day, april 28th, and how much will that cost? And I walked out of the office just saying to myself that's why. That's why it compounds. You get a client who then asks you if you can do other stuff that you never would have the opportunity to do if you didn't work with that client in the first place. And it just compounds. But I can understand why people lose sight of that eventually.

Alan Lazaros:

I can the hardest thing in the world is to not lose sight of that. I lose sight of the not believing in myself and well, that's probably a bad example because I feel like I always did believe in myself but I do lose sight of how bad it was to be single. Being single and lonely was terrible. I totally lose sight of that. I'm just my every day is I'm in love. Every day, you know it's fucking awesome. So my worst day now is like better than my best day back then in some ways Right.

Alan Lazaros:

So I think that you, just, you, just. It becomes a new normal and it's hard to remember okay, what are the other two?

Alan Lazaros:

the other two. So the first one is people forget what it was like in the beginning. The second one is it's less sexy and and people get turned off, like I'm in the speech. I actually just got sent all the photos and uh, a lot of them are of me, obviously, because they uh emailed me the ones of me, obviously, and some of them are not very flattering, but the whole time it's it's me with my hands, like this and like this, like that, and I'm doing all kinds of stuff, my hands, and it's not the most flattering angle, but I think it's.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's almost a little depressing you think it's a like a credibility hit?

Alan Lazaros:

yeah probably it's less sexy and it's less exciting and it's less. You gain less status. I wonder what the class thinks of me. I don't know and I never will, really, unless I gave a survey, and even then they're not going to necessarily tell me the full truth. So but I would say it was more fun when, when I didn't bring up the spreadsheets and when I didn't bring up the failures. My first business failed when I was in 2012. So the second one is it's less fun, just, pure and simple. It's not.

Alan Lazaros:

I had a coaching session earlier with one of my clients and she's like where do I suck? Where do I, where am I doing wrong? Like, go through my finances, go through my systems, go to tell me everything you think is wrong. That's not fun, that's terrible. It's okay, she's gonna win and she's gonna be great and she is great and she's crushing it. But Everything, everything in real life, is where am I sucking, like you? And I don't get to just, hey, we're awesome, go us like it, it doesn't. That's not really. That's not how it works. Apple can't be like hey, we're the best and we're good, we're just awesome but apple needs to look at every.

Kevin Palmieri:

Most people are not trying to be apple I gotta play, understand kevin's advocate and most people are not trying to be Apple. I do understand that Kevin's advocate. Most people are not trying to be Apple.

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:

The second one is it's just less fun. It's less funny and less fun and it's certainly less humorous too. It's not, it's very serious. Life is a very serious game. Business is a very serious game. Your career is a very serious game and you and I mess around. You make jokes, but the truth is the truth is always more serious and I think most not all but a lot of humor is actually covering up deep insecurities and a lot of comedians talk about that. The third one. The third one is numbers. I just think no one really likes numbers. That's been really hard for me.

Alan Lazaros:

I did a fitness session with one of my clients earlier and we went through her fit tracker and calculated everything and she's going to lose eight more pounds in the next. We have 70 days in Q2 and that's 10 weeks and eight pounds in 10 weeks? Okay, 0.8 or so, 0.7, whatever. And I basically said, like, based on the trend line, like you have to speed up, you have to either exercise more or eat less. Which one do you prefer? She's like well, I'd rather eat more. I said, okay, well then exercise more, so let's bump your workouts up. And she said how did you calculate that? And I graphed it for her and I showed her the trend line and I and I she's like no, alan, how, like what is your brain actually calculating? And I said I don't know, it's just I look at the number and I just, it can extrapolate okay, by this date you won't hit. And then we graphed it and showed the trend line. I've done this with you before too.

Alan Lazaros:

If I graph it and I say, okay, so July 1st is when she's optimizing, for if you graph it and you show the trend line, which is essentially just a bunch of data, and then a trend line is just the average sort of, if it's a projection. And if you graph it, you see she's way off the chart. She's like it's not close, and so all we have to do is get that. You have to shift now, otherwise you're going to drive off a cliff, metaphorically, and you won't get your goal. And then you'll make some excuse as to why you didn't and whatever.

Alan Lazaros:

And she's like well, I want to learn how to do that. And it's like listen, you got to go take math courses. I don't know what to do. I got my brain can calculate all that. It's not my conscious brain, it's my subconscious and unconscious. And one thing that I will say when it comes to success. I asked her this and this is I'm probably getting red because this is vulnerable for me. I said well, what do you do? Because I calculate everything, like when something's not working, I just recalculate, I recalibrate. And she's like I'm just doing things and I'm like what do you mean? You just, you just hope it works, like for me, I don't have that kev, I don't hope that was me.

Alan Lazaros:

That was me for sure so how do you know what to do and what not to do? You know what I mean you don't you?

Kevin Palmieri:

you try stuff and I think there's two ways. One, it feels right or it feels good and you're like ah, screw it, I'll do that. That's one. Second one is it doesn't work, and then you convince yourself I won't even say convince yourself, because I don't mean it in that negative way. You don't know why it didn't work. So you just have a list of reasons it didn't and none of them, most likely, are actually correct. But you just, you don't know any better. I didn't know any better.

Kevin Palmieri:

Again, I the fitness thing was something that helped me a lot because it helped me understand a little bit more than I would have inputs and outputs, like okay, when I eat a certain amount I look a certain way Interesting, okay, let me test that out. Oh cool, okay, that works, but with other stuff I didn't understand how it worked.

Alan Lazaros:

One last thing I'll share and I want your answer on this because I think it's more valuable for you to answer than it is for me when you do have a specific goal in the future that you want to hit. So let's say, by July 1st you want to weigh a certain amount, or by July 1st you want to get a certain number of clients, or by July 1st you want to make a certain amount of money. What you want no longer is relevant.

Kevin Palmieri:

What you want in the short run.

Alan Lazaros:

What you want to do on a day-to-day basis is irrelevant to that equation. Genuinely, that's fair. I'm going to be very candid on this, so please don't villainize me for this. But when I wake up in the morning, I don't do what I want. That's not part of the calculation. Yeah, I want to be outside with Emilia right now. It doesn't matter. My goals require me to be in here with you, and I think that, to answer the question of, like, why people talk about passion, I think that the hard truth that no one wants to share with anybody is like, if you do want to actually succeed at high levels, you pretty much have to sacrifice a large majority of what you want to do. Like, if you want to be married, you have to not be with other women. Like, there's always a sacrifice that no one wants to talk about, and even in the industry, there's so many people who say, oh, it's not a sacrifice.

Kevin Palmieri:

Like, what are you?

Alan Lazaros:

talking about. It's worth it and it's the better road. I'm with you there, but of course it's a sacrifice. If you want a six pack, you're going to have to sacrifice a lot of the things you want to eat, a lot of things you want to do, and it's just mathematically inaccurate. And so my question for you to have you kind of wrap up here is I don't really have what I want to do in my decision making set. I want to watch a movie tonight and I will and I'll pick a movie that I think is not going to be detrimental to my long-term strategic vision. But other than that, the majority of my day is spent building toward goals and dreams that require me to be and do a certain thing. It doesn't mean I'm not fulfilled, but what I want is I don't wake up in the morning and, like, think about what I want. I think about what's optimal for my goals. So for you, you've been on both ends of this and you've lived both ways. So I think I'd ask you about the passion thing.

Kevin Palmieri:

I think it's important to be passionate about. I'll say this Okay, this while we do an episode every day, this actual thing that you and I are doing right now is kind of what I do the least. If we were to break down the numbers like today I did a coaching call, I was on a marketing meeting with someone, with one of our clients, and then we're recording this episode and then we're doing a group coaching session after this. That's three hours, three and a half hours, four hours. The rest of my day I did stuff that I'm not as passionate about and or excuse me, and or I've learned to be passionate about. I was not passionate about sales. I love sales. Now I learned to be passionate about sales. Does that mean I want to go do sales all day? No, in the beginning you hated it.

Alan Lazaros:

I hated it. I hated it. It's very important for me.

Kevin Palmieri:

I hate it that it's so important for people to hear that I've relearned. I still don't like it that much, to be honest I know it's a necessity, but I don't like it. Go ahead I've relearned how to be passionate about coaching. Yeah, I had. In the beginning I was passionate about it. Then I was like I think I fucking suck at this.

Alan Lazaros:

I think I'm terrible at coaching.

Kevin Palmieri:

And then it was like, okay, maybe I want to serve a different clientele, okay, I don't want to talk about mindset, I want to talk about podcasting. Then for a while I was like I don't really fucking know anything. I don't think I don't know like how to. It's a whole thing. I've learned to be more passionate about it, especially recently. That would be the takeaway. I know we gotta pop because we gotta go get a group coaching here. If you do want to chase your passions, you are most likely going to have to learn to be passionate about all the things that it requires to sustain that passion, and there is a more likely than not uh probability that you don't make it and and that's very would you be more fulfilled at chasing your passion and not getting it Like your 100% passion than going for something that you're like 75% passionate about.

Kevin Palmieri:

We'll have to do a part two.

Alan Lazaros:

Next level lesson, real quick, would be the science of achievement doesn't care about what you want. The science of achievement, that's not part of it. I care about what you want and I want to integrate what you want with what is necessary. But the science of achievement and your goals don't care at all about what you want to do.

Kevin Palmieri:

Mine would be. Mine was what I just said. I would say that's my next level lesson. All right, we got to hop. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you and NLU, we don't have fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow. Keep it.

Alan Lazaros:

Next Level, 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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