This Is A Big Reason Why So Many People Get Stuck (2249)

Success looks different when it’s real. In this brutally honest episode, Kevin and Alan expose the fake numbers, false wins, and empty hype that keep dream chasers doubting themselves. It’s a raw, real conversation about what true success looks like when you strip away the noise and start playing the real game. Hit play and find out what happens when truth finally meets ambition.

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🎁 Your first 30-minute "Business Breakthrough Session" call with Alan is FREE. Designed to help you reverse-engineer success with clarity and confidence - https://calendly.com/alanlazaros/30-minute-breakthrough-session

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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, check out our website and socials using the links below. 👇

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Show notes:
(2:42) The business owner’s “fake stats” story
(4:00) How bot farms inflate podcast numbers
(8:20) Knowing your industry is everything
(10:44) What 5,000 real listens actually mean
(13:13) The illusion of online success
(14:45) Framework: Right time, right approach, right expectations
(15:40) Outro

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Chapters

• 2:42 The business owner’s “fake stats” story
• 4:00 How bot farms inflate podcast numbers
• 8:20 Knowing your industry is everything
• 10:44 What 5,000 real listens actually mean
• 13:13 The illusion of online success
• 14:45 Framework: Right time, right approach, right expectations
• 15:40 Outro

Transcript

Kevin Palmieri

(0:00) I am convinced one of the reasons most people end up failing in their success endeavors is because they don't actually understand what success is in their industry. (0:09) They don't know what's real, what's fake, what is an accurate target, and if you don't understand what you're competing against, you really can't win that game.

Alan Lazaros

(0:19) Are you in tech? (0:20) Are you in podcasting? (0:22) Are you in industrial automation?(0:24) Are you in robotics? (0:25) Whatever your industry is, the more you study it, the more successful you can be within it.

Kevin Palmieri

(0:30) Welcome to Next Level University. (0:33) I'm your host, Kevin Palmieri. (0:35) And I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.(0:38) At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.

Alan Lazaros

(0:44) Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life, love, health, and wealth.

Kevin Palmieri

(0:51) 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

(1:07) Self-improvement, in your pocket, every day, from anywhere, completely free. (1:13) Welcome to Next Level University.

Kevin Palmieri

(1:19) Next Level Nation today for episode number 2,249. (1:22) This is a big reason why so many people get stuck. (1:25) We have done dozens of episodes like this with a similar title, most likely, and the truth of the matter is there are a lot of reasons why people get stuck.(1:34) So Alan logged on today and he said, I had a podcast pre-call with someone. (1:39) And I'll let you tell the story. (1:41) I don't want to butcher the story.

Alan Lazaros

(1:42) Yeah, so I had a podcast pre-call with a small business owner and his podcast is for small business owners. (1:52) And he is under the impression that his podcast is doing far better than it's doing. (1:59) So we had a great pre-chat, awesome, here's what we're going to talk about, boom, metrics, habits, awesome.(2:05) In the light, in the theme of metrics, which is what I'm going on his show to talk about, as a business owner, you need to know your metrics. (2:16) He ended the call right before the end and he said, well, I know you're probably getting a lot more than this, but we're getting about 50,000 listens per month. (2:24) And I had the moment.(2:26) I had the moment. (2:27) I was like, do I hit end call or do I try to illuminate something for this man? (2:34) Now I'm going to be very transparent.(2:36) I thought he was blatantly lying. (2:37) There's a lot of people in this space that are just fucking lying. (2:42) He wasn't.(2:44) I said, I turned to him, I said, well, there's, there's no way. (2:50) And he's like, what do you mean? (2:54) And I said, I pulled up his podcast on Apple podcasts.(2:57) And I said, you have 11 reviews and most of them based on our guests of your show. (3:04) I, Hey, I enjoyed coming on. (3:06) Hey, that was a great interview.(3:08) Hey, I'm glad I was honored to be on. (3:10) And I said, you're telling me that you have, so let's crunch some numbers. (3:14) And again, numbers, I think is the best way to tell that someone's off.(3:19) 50,000 times 12 is 600,000 listens. (3:24) And I said, so you're telling me you have 600,000. (3:27) Cause I asked him some preliminary questions.(3:29) I said, is that like every month or is that just one big month? (3:32) He said, no, I pretty much every month. (3:33) Right.(3:34) And he pulled it up and I said, I think those numbers are bought it. (3:39) And we've done episodes in the past about this. (3:41) At the end of the day, you can explain this better than me.(3:44) It's, it's a farm of phones that a lot of different ways.

Kevin Palmieri

(3:47) Yeah. (3:48) There's a bit like there are literally rooms upon rooms, upon rooms, upon rooms that are cell phones that are all attached to chargers that are all attached to a main hub where you get, you hit play and it plays on all those. (4:00) And they're not real.(4:01) They're just not, this is a massive thing going on with Spotify right now with streaming for musicians.

Alan Lazaros

(4:07) Yeah. (4:07) Okay. (4:08) Spotify podcasts, YouTube channels that is happening like crazy for sure.(4:12) Okay. (4:14) So I said, you're telling me you have 600,000 listeners every year and only 11 of them wrote you a review. (4:23) And he's like, uh, now obviously that's just Apple podcasts.(4:27) So maybe there's some other platforms, right? (4:30) I asked him about YouTube. (4:31) He's like, no, we don't really do well on YouTube.(4:32) Please don't look at that. (4:33) All this stuff. (4:34) I said, I thought you were lying to me.(4:36) So I mean, no disrespect, but it turns out you're being lied to by the stats. (4:40) The stats are wrong. (4:42) Those are not real listens.(4:43) Some of them are, some of them aren't. (4:46) And all of those 11 reviews, you're telling me eight of them were guests. (4:49) So, and I said this to him, I said, so are you having trouble connecting with your listeners?(4:55) I said, I'm a podcaster. (4:56) We've been podcasting for coming up on nine years. (4:58) We do a group coaching program with all podcasters.(5:00) We produce 70 podcasts. (5:02) Trust me, you're not alone in this. (5:03) This is an issue that happens.(5:05) Are you having trouble reaching your listeners? (5:08) And he's like, honestly, yeah. (5:10) Like we don't.(5:11) I said, how many listeners have you met? (5:12) Have you connected with on LinkedIn, Instagram, social media? (5:15) He's like, well, we got one referral once.(5:18) I was like, okay, with all the love, no disrespect. (5:21) I just want to help. (5:22) Those aren't real.(5:23) That's okay. (5:24) It's still aligned for me. (5:25) Like you weren't lying.(5:26) You didn't know you were lying. (5:28) The point of this episode is if we didn't study the industry for nine years, we would, and I literally said this to him. (5:37) I said, I have a roommate in college who I spent three hours on the phone with who worked at Apple at the head.(5:45) He was the leader of the team that built iTunes analytics for podcasts, podcast analytics in the Apple podcast. (5:54) He is, I spent three hours on the phone with this man trying to figure out our numbers. (5:59) And at this point, the guy is like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.(6:04) Cause up until this point, he had been wondering like, why can't I get listeners to reach out? (6:09) He's like these small business owners. (6:10) They're so busy.(6:11) They just can't reach out. (6:12) No, they're not busy. (6:14) Someone is lying to you about the stats.(6:15) I said, did you hire someone for quote unquote SEO services? (6:18) And so we went into it and hopefully, you know, we're all good. (6:22) But at the end of the day, I told Kevin this I'm sick and tired of people getting away with lying and he didn't mean to.(6:28) So he was being respectful, but there are other people that will blatantly just say, Hey, yeah, we have 10 million listens. (6:33) It's like, no, you don't. (6:35) No, you don't.(6:35) I know you don't. (6:36) I can tell by anyone who knows anything about podcasting can tell if they actually look into it. (6:42) So they call this in politics, fact checking.(6:46) Listen, I have misspoke on podcasts before I gave the wrong damn magic number yesterday on a podcast. (6:54) I get it. (6:55) Okay.(6:55) I accidentally said I had 6,700 or whatever because I wrote the wrong damn number on my whiteboard. (6:59) And she's like, I thought you said you had 10,000 hours. (7:01) And I'm like, Oh shit.(7:03) I just redid my whiteboard this morning. (7:05) The real number is 11,671. (7:07) I'm sorry.(7:08) My bad. (7:08) Half the people there probably think I'm lying now, whatever. (7:11) Here's my point.(7:12) I'm not asking anyone to be perfect. (7:14) What I am saying is I heard someone recently say that we're reach 1.5 billion people this year. (7:19) And I said, that's impossible.(7:25) There's only 350 million people in all of the United States. (7:29) So you're telling me you're going to reach 4.3 times more than the entire country of the U S this person is someone no one knows. (7:39) I love their book and I tote their book everywhere and no one has ever fucking heard of it.(7:44) So the answer is people are not either, either this person is blatantly lying or this person has no idea how many people are on the planet, how many countries there are and how this all works and, and, or their interpretation of 1.5 thousand times a thousand times a thousand. (8:01) Like, I don't want this to be about that. (8:04) What I want this to be about is if you don't know your industry, if you don't understand cars and car payments and car loans and finance, you're going to get Jeffed when you go to the car dealership.

Kevin Palmieri

(8:18) My thought is very similar, but different in this. (8:20) You need to know you don't need to do anything. (8:22) Again, we're not going to tell you what to do.(8:24) This is, this is how it goes for us. (8:25) That's, I'll leave it at that. (8:28) It helps to know what the fuck is going on in your space.(8:33) So you're a dream chaser, not necessarily an entrepreneur. (8:36) Maybe you don't want to start a business, but whatever you need to know what people charge for pictures. (8:40) If you're a photographer and you need to know what they charge in the beginning, not now.(8:43) And you need to know how long it actually takes to edit. (8:46) You need to know how long people will actually wait before you return their edited pictures. (8:51) Like you need to know all that because that is the reality of the situation.(8:55) Now, obviously we're talking about numbers today, but you need to know the numbers too. (9:00) How many people, how many photographers are there? (9:02) How many of them actually make a meaningful living?(9:04) How many people become photographers every year and how many people stop becoming photographers? (9:10) Are all of those numbers going to be exact? (9:12) No, but it helps to know.(9:14) It helps to know that stuff. (9:17) I think one of the reasons it is so hard to be successful is because being successful at your thing is a full-time job. (9:25) Even if you already have a full-time job.(9:27) I say that about podcasting all the time, but anything in general, but I think podcasting is a really good example because you start it because you think it'll be fun and you think you'll enjoy doing it. (9:36) Not understanding that it is a business just like anything else. (9:39) You have to learn about all the behind the scenes stuff.

Alan Lazaros

(9:42) When you and I first got in this industry nine years ago, coming up on nine years ago in 2026, March of 2026 will be nine years. (9:51) So I'm rounding up. (9:53) You didn't know what it meant to be an Amazon bestseller.(9:56) You didn't know what it meant to be a New York Times bestseller. (9:58) You didn't know what it meant to be a top 10 podcast or a top 100 podcast. (10:02) You didn't know what it meant to have a six figure business, nevermind a seven or eight figure business, nevermind a nine figure business.(10:10) And you didn't know a lot of these things. (10:13) And now that we're nine years in, we're just not naive. (10:17) Well, we've had to learn it.(10:19) If that person had said that when I first started a podcast and said, well, we're getting 50,000 listens a month, I would think, well, what's wrong with us? (10:28) We only got 1,500 in the first year. (10:32) When in reality, that's actually a lot of listens for the first year.(10:35) As a matter of fact, if you get more than 5,000 listens in the first year of podcasting and you're only doing an episode a week, that's 52 episodes. (10:44) Kevin's the podcast guy. (10:45) You coach real people in the real world, real podcasters.(10:47) You're ahead of the curve. (10:50) 5,000 in the first year. (10:51) What would you have thought of that in the beginning versus now?

Kevin Palmieri

(10:54) In the beginning, I would think we were losers, even though it was 5X what we had. (10:59) But if when I started, yeah, I would have thought we were terrible. (11:03) And what do you think now, now that you're a seasoned podcaster?(11:06) Great, really good concrete foundation. (11:09) Great start. (11:10) Great start.(11:10) 5,000. (11:11) Great start.

Alan Lazaros

(11:12) To me, that is why I felt responsible to share that with him. (11:16) Because I don't want him to spread misinformation and have other podcasters feel like losers when they're actually winning. (11:22) Because you went through all the podcast stats and this isn't just podcasting.(11:26) This just happens to be our industry. (11:28) We want you thinking of yours. (11:29) But people will say things like, Alan, doesn't it bother you that this iPhone only cost $10 to make for the materials of it?(11:39) And they charge $1,200? (11:41) And I said, yeah, but what you don't understand is that Apple has to pay for the website. (11:46) They have to pay the CEO.(11:49) The cost of goods sold is $10. (11:53) I don't know what it really is. (11:54) It's probably more than that now.(11:55) But the point is, if you don't understand that the cost of goods sold doesn't include the marketing budget, doesn't include manufacturing, doesn't include operations costs and utilities and electricity and all, you're going to be upset by that. (12:12) Why don't they pay more if they make billions of dollars? (12:15) No, no, no.(12:16) They have 167,000 employees. (12:19) You can't do the math. (12:20) Look at their annual revenue and divide it by 167,000.(12:23) That's the average annual salary. (12:25) And that's if they have no profit. (12:28) My point of this isn't business.(12:29) My point of this is if you don't understand the industry that you're in, you can't really know where you're at. (12:37) I have a YouTuber client who's crushing it. (12:40) But if he looks at all those YouTube channels that you're talking about that have bought their subscribers and bought their channels.

Kevin Palmieri

(12:46) Or one that I'm working on that I'm literally spending 12 hours a week doing. (12:50) I mean, the video we did the other day has, I don't know. (12:54) It's good.(12:55) It's cranking along.

Alan Lazaros

(12:56) You just told me that that person is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into succeeding on YouTube. (13:04) Lots of money. (13:04) This client of mine who's brand new and in his 20s, he might feel terrible about himself when in reality he's actually doing very well.(13:13) For sure. (13:13) And that's one of my passions. (13:15) I know we got to go here.(13:17) If you take nothing else from this episode, at least from me, it's I think 90% of human beings are less successful than you think in real life. (13:27) There are a select few, maybe one out of 10 that is actually way more successful than you think. (13:33) And I'm really hoping Kevin and I are in that category.(13:35) And I think that's probably true.

Kevin Palmieri

(13:37) It's definitely, everything is skewed towards success. (13:42) Like nobody's going to say they're less successful than they actually are. (13:44) Very rarely is that ever going to happen, right?(13:46) I don't know the stat, look it up. (13:48) I don't know what it is, but it's something along the lines of like 75% of real estate agents don't do more than one or two transactions a year. (13:56) You might think, oh my goodness, there's so many real estate agents or realtors, whatever the proper term is.(14:00) I know one of them. (14:01) I did one this year. (14:03) I know one that is doing way more and he's absolutely crushing it.(14:07) And the bar to crush it isn't super high in fairness, but he's going above and beyond to crush it.

Alan Lazaros

(14:12) Can I understand how many transactions a year he's doing on average?

Kevin Palmieri

(14:16) Oh boy, I don't know, 15 to 20 probably? (14:19) Yeah. (14:19) And that's on the very high end, right?(14:21) Crushing it. (14:22) Yeah, absolutely. (14:22) Again, I don't know the industry that well, but that, that stat, you would think to yourself, oh, there's however many realtors in the country, like there's no room for me.(14:33) Then you find out 75% of them only do one deal per year. (14:37) There's a lot of fucking deals for you. (14:38) There's a lot of them.(14:39) You just have to do a little bit more than they're doing. (14:40) Nice. (14:41) All right.

Alan Lazaros

(14:42) Cool. (14:42) All right. (14:43) You have a formula.(14:43) I know we got to go. (14:44) Yes. (14:45) It's right time perspective, right approach, right expectations.(14:49) Yes. (14:50) Okay. (14:50) That is one of the best frameworks ever.(14:54) I think that's just success in a nutshell. (14:57) You have to start deeper on that. (14:58) Okay.(14:58) We'll do it.

Kevin Palmieri

(14:59) We'll do an episode. (15:00) That'll, that'll be tomorrow's episode. (15:02) We'll do that.(15:02) We'll do that. (15:03) All right. (15:03) If you are looking for real impact to real people in the real world, I help podcasters and YouTubers do that.(15:10) So I'm happy to do a free 30 minute breakthrough session with any of you that want to do that. (15:14) I know that's a subset of a subset of you, but I'm happy to do that. (15:17) And if you're looking to help yourself grow your business and your business helps real people in the real world, Alan is a world-class business coach who works with real people in the real world.(15:26) We'll have his information below as well. (15:28) That's going to be our new motto. (15:29) Help real people impact the real world in a real way for real money and real impact and realness.(15:37) That's going to be our new thing. (15:39) All right. (15:39) As always, we love you.(15:41) Grateful for each and every one of you. (15:42) And if you are as committed as you say you are to getting to the next level, make sure you tune in tomorrow because we will be here every single day to help you get there.

Alan Lazaros

(15:48) Keep reaching for your full potential in the real world. (15:51) Next level nation.

Kevin Palmieri

(15:53) Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level University. (15:57) We love connecting with the Next Level family.

Alan Lazaros

(15:59) We mean it when we say family. (16:01) If you ever need anything, please reach out to us directly. (16:05) Everything you need to get a hold of us is in the show notes.(16:08) Thank you again, and we will talk to you tomorrow.