Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey. And today's episode is standalone. You don't need any context to watch it. But after today's episode, if you really liked it and you want to see a counterpart, I did record with the guest business partner, Alan Lazarus, We recorded that about two months ago now and it's called taking your life to the next level.
I have a description below Because today we're going to take our life to the next level We're going to take our podcast to the next level and our businesses. We are here with Kevin Palmieri Like I said, he and Alan Lazarus run the Next Level University and we're going to talk about that today And we're going to talk about the origins on Kevin's side Because he is a man who describes himself as someone who discovered that rock bottom has a basement, had it all, then realized what life is really about, and the tragedies that can happen.
We're going to talk about parenting and fatherhood as well, or lack thereof, humble origins. And so we're gonna have a great conversation today about how no matter what level you are at life, whether that's the basement of rock bottom or you're doing pretty well for yourself, how we can continually improve and get to the next level.
So Mr Palmieri, would you please introduce yourself for us? Yes, first of all, Mr. Whiskey, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So yeah, I'm Kevin Palmieri. I am the founder and the host of Next Level University. We're a global top 100 podcast with 1900 episodes, a million listens and listeners in 175 plus countries.
And I quite literally get to live my dream today, which is awesome. Is to be a podcaster who gets to do this for a living. And it is weird that I get to say that it has been a very strange journey as I'm sure we will talk about, but that is me in a nutshell. I'm just somebody who likes to help and add value.
And my goal is really to be the type of person that I needed when I was sitting in the basement of rock bottom. Right, for sure. And a lot of people don't know that they they need us. And as Alan and I discussed to even listen to this kind of podcast, anything, whether yours or mine about self improvement, you need to have humility and accept that, you know, you want to get your life to the next level, wherever you're at.
And that, you know, there are certain flaws, we have to accept about ourselves, whether that's our business or ourselves personally. But let's start with I mentioned a little bit of your backstory there. I didn't want to spoil it all just a little foreshadowing. But I know you had it all. And then, you didn't have it all.
In fact, you even had a brush with suicide. So can you tell us kind of You know, your early days and how that affected you and how it led to where we are today. Yeah, of course. It's almost like I went from having nothing to having it all to then having nothing again. It's been this interesting, this very interesting journey.
So, for context, I always say I started at the beginning being raised by my mom and my grandmother. I didn't know my dad. I didn't meet my dad until I was 27. So obviously that plays a role in a young man's life and that plays a role in my life today to a degree, right? Lower middle class, didn't have a lot of money, often talked about how we were gonna pay rent.
That was a pretty common conversation. Outside of that, childhood was normal, all things considered. When things started to get a little bit weird is as I was getting into high school and going through high school, I realized pretty quickly that I didn't want to go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I didn't really want to pay 20, 30, 000 a year to figure it out.
Just didn't make sense to me. And I had a very deep belief that a lot of the people that were going, we're just going from a place of peer pressure and not necessarily desire. And I, I had a little rebel in me. At the time, Mr. Whiskey had a little rebel in me. So after I graduated high school, I get a job at the local gas station.
And that was my, that was my first job. And I did that for a couple of years. And then I was a personal trainer and then I cleaned bathrooms and floors at a hospital. Truck driver, forklift operator, on call firefighter for a very short amount of time, construction, tiling, all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, for sure.
Lots of different stuff but this was the part in my life where I felt like I was kind of in trouble and I was never going to be any level of successful because I just jumped from accessible job to accessible job to accessible job eventually. After all these jobs, I got an opportunity to work in an industry called weatherization.
So our company would go into large buildings, usually schools, and it was our job to make the buildings more energy efficient. Okay. Easiest way to explain it. Since I was working on state or government owned buildings, I was getting paid through the government or the state, so I was making anywhere from 60 to 120 an hour.
Wow. In my mind. Everything we did to get up to this point worked out. And now I can finally be quote unquote successful. So if you saw me when I was 25, which is a couple of years after I had gotten this job, I had this great job. I had great friends. My girlfriend at the time was a model. I was getting ready to compete in a bodybuilding show.
So I was quite literally in the best shape I will ever be in sports car, new apartment, all this stuff. Internally, I was miserable. I. Assumed all of this external success was gonna fix the internal stuff. It was gonna fix the dad wound. It was gonna fix all the insecurities I had. It was gonna fix the negative relationship I had with myself.
And that was not the case. So my girlfriend ended up leaving me because I was just in a, just in a hole. A shell of a man that was just riding the struggle bus. When she left me, that was my initial rock bottom. My bills doubled, work got slow, I'm dealing with this rebound after this bodybuilding show, so I'm just depressed and I'm anxious.
But, I convinced myself that, well, maybe if I just make even more money, this, everything will kind of work itself out. I just haven't made enough yet, that's the problem. I just haven't crossed a certain threshold. So, I remember having the conversation with myself, lying in bed one night. I said, this is the year, I'm going to make the most money I've ever made, and I'm going to make all of my problems go away.
This is what's going to happen this year. So, the next year I get a promotion at my job. So now I'm a foreman at my company. And then I proceeded to spend the next ten months living on the road. Every single week in different hotels, different states, up and down the east coast. And Mr. Whiskey, we were not staying in nice hotels.
These were, these were dirty, gross hotels. It was in direct alignment with me making money, which I thought would solve my problems. So, I grind my way out through that year, and then I got to the end of the year, and I remember opening my final pay stub, I was standing at my kitchen table, because my ex girlfriend, they were her chairs, so she took the chairs, and I was never home, so I never bought new ones, because I never, I never ate at home, so it didn't matter.
But I'm standing at my table, and I crack open my, my final pay stub, and I made 100, 000 at 26, with no college degree. But it was the same climax and then just crash. I felt good for all of five minutes. And then I realized that this didn't fix any of my external, uh, sorry, any of my internal problems fixed a lot of my external problems, but it fixed very few of my internal.
So it was at that moment where I realized that for most of my life, I lived unconsciously. The opposite of unconscious is hyper conscious. So in 2017, I started a podcast called the hyper conscious podcast. Fell in love with it. I loved having cool conversations with cool people, much like you. But as you know, in the beginning, there's not exactly a line out of the door for people saying, Hey, how much money do you need to do this full time?
Oh, how much can we give you? So I had to keep going to this job and I hated it. And I started to loathe it. And my mental health was getting worse. And I started calling out and getting homesick and leaving the job sites early. And eventually I woke up in a hotel room, six hours from where I lived. I was getting ready for work that morning.
My alarm clock went off, I sat up, I slid to the edge of the bed, and that morning it was like there was ten televisions on in my head at the same time, and every single one was on a different station. And it was just this feeling of, Kev, you got so lucky to get to where you are today, if you leave this behind, you're gonna end up where you used to be.
You're gonna go all the way back to where this all started. And it was just too much, there was just too much pressure, there was just too much noise. And I remember thinking, well, if I was just to take my life, I would take all these problems with me. And that was my rock bottom basement. There's not much further to go from there.
I ended up reaching out to Alan, explained what I was going through. He said, Kev, over the last couple of years, your awareness has changed a ton, but your environments have remained the same. I think it's time for you to change your, change your environment. He's very wise. He's a very wise individual. And then I ended up leaving my job three or four months later.
And then him and I partnered up in 2018 and I've been doing this full time since 2018, but for the first few years it was brutal, just in debt, getting sent to collections, couldn't buy birth, uh, Christmas presents for my now wife. It was just absolutely atrocious. But now we're 1900 episodes in and we have a somewhat successful business and things are better now than they've ever been, which is good.
Yeah. You talk about brutal beginning. I remember Alan chaired, uh, in the episode we recorded together. It was like, Y'all combined the two podcast titles. It was like hyper change, super mindship. What, what, what was the full name? It was pretty, it was, uh, it was terrible. It was, uh, conversations change lives meets hyperconscious podcast.
Yeah. I remember he said that I was like, that's one of the things I've gotten at the conferences is they're like, have simple, straightforward title and, uh, shorten length, you know, kind of to the point. And I remember when Alan shared that, I was like. I understand what it's about, kind of, but wow, that's a, it's a long name.
But, um, yeah, we broke all the rules. He had all the rules in the beginning. Yeah. Which sometimes I can get you very far and sometimes it, uh, works out how it's historically worked out, but I was going to say, you talked about something. So I just want to see if, if this is a correlation, a causation to talk about, you had this model girlfriend and then you talked about a breakup.
She took all the chairs, unfortunately. And. Was that in relation to To the job you were working, would you say in some part or all part that it was because of this job in the sense that your pursuit of money to make your life happy and fix everything got rid of your girlfriend, which is, in most people's cases, the opposite of happiness.
In some people's cases, they're glad, but, you know, in your case, that, uh, I'm curious how that job and that pursuit, uh, kind of played a role in that. No, no, it was, it was more the fact that when I got into that relationship, I assumed that that would fix me. I think I, I knew that there was pieces of myself that I hadn't worked on, and there was pieces of myself that I, I wasn't really confident in, and I was kind of an introvert, and I had depressive qualities.
I assumed getting into a relationship with somebody who was the opposite of me would fix all those. That was like, my mindset is, well, this person is an extrovert, a ton of self belief, a ton of self worth, I'm, this is gonna be fine, this'll, this'll level me out. So, no, no, I don't think the job really affected the relationship, I think my mental health was affected by the job, and then I didn't really do enough to work on it, and And often times people will say, because that's my, my ex girlfriend did exactly what she was supposed to do.
She was supposed to leave. She should've, right? She, she should've left. And people say, well, how did you come to that realization so quickly? And I say, I didn't. I didn't come to that realization until a year later. When she left, I villainized her, for sure. And then when you start looking back, you think to yourself, well, yeah, I wasn't super supportive, and she wanted to chase her dreams, and I gave her every reason in the world not to, so in order for her to stay in alignment with what she believed she wanted, she had to leave, and That's one of the best things that ever happened to her.
And honestly, it's one of the best things that ever happened to me because it created all this other momentum in this other direction. So, yeah, I think, I think most of it was me. I mean, circumstantially there was stuff going on, but my job also afforded me a lot of opportunities and, you know, we could travel and we could, we could buy nice things.
And I had really good credit. So anytime we applied for a place to live, it always worked out. It's just the upside was there, but there, yeah, there's also a downside associated with it. Yeah, for sure. I mean, not everyone wants to travel. And like you said, you're living on the road, which, uh, not a lot of people like.
I know nowadays you do podcast coaching and you also run next level university. So why did you pivot so much into the podcasting side of, of what you and Alan do? Yeah, when we started, we were obsessed with self improvement. So it made sense to have a self improvement podcast. Like, okay, we're going to do that.
Then I started coaching people on self improvement and peak performance and mindset and relationships and fitness. And then I just fell in love with the art of podcasting. And the, the skills that you develop and speaking and interviewing for, for the first, I don't know, 300 episodes, I did all the audio editing and video editing, so I learned a ton there.
I was creating all of our social media content. So I kind of just fell in love with the behind the scenes of what made this whole thing work. And, and then it got to the place where a mentor of mine said, Hey, I have somebody who wants to start a podcast. I think you should help them and I said, I don't know how to help them.
They said, you know more than you think you do like, okay, easy for you to say. You're not the one who has to jump on the phone with this person, but, but then I, I started talking to this person and this person became a client and we ended up producing their podcast and they would ask me these questions that to me were just common sense.
And that started to click for me when the thing that you're doing seems like common sense and people are asking you questions where you think to yourself, wait, how do you not? How do you not know that yet? That's a good representation that you're living in your, in your genius zone. And that's the thing you're supposed to be doing.
So that. Was kind of a chance happening. And then I really liked that. I liked coaching about podcasting more than I liked coaching about anything else. So that's really where I put most of my time. And the focus is always to grow our podcast too. So I am always learning on what works and what doesn't, I can pass that down to clients.
And that, that became the thing for me. And the other thing too, is. We run our business very differently than than most businesses where I don't have the five step program I don't have the blueprint to get to a million listens. I can tell you what we've done I can tell you what has worked what hasn't I can help you shift a lot of things but for us I really want to be the person that I needed and The person that I needed would have kicked me in the butt when I needed to be kicked in the butt But he also would have held my hand when I needed my my hand held and I feel like that's something that not a lot of people do as You As coaches in the podcast space, most people, it's like growth, monetization and all that stuff.
I like coaching people on the art of podcasting. You want to be a better speaker. You want to be a better communicator. Those are the things that I'm super passionate about. So yeah, I get a lot of opportunity to do it. And I just, I continue to fall in love with it and I still do. I love it now more than I ever have.
Yeah, no, I understand because I'm certainly not the largest podcaster in the industry, but I met a lot of people who are trying to start a podcast or have an idea and they're asking me all these questions and I'm like, These seem like common sense, but you know, I'm thinking and as I mentioned before we started recording here as the recording date, it's my two year anniversary and I am been working all day on some post to celebrate and I've got photos and I'm looking through old stuff from when I first started and where I first started was an industrial environment with Lots of noise, no professional microphone.
It was just a couple of nukes BS ing about the Navy and other stuff in their life. And to see now we've got YouTube, we've got Instagram, we've got Facebook, LinkedIn, we go to events, we're speaking at events. And, um, I look at where I started and a lot of trial and error I went through, which I'm sure you went through as well with the length of the show, the style of the show, the way you put out content, the way you run your website, all of that stuff.
And I'm like, I wish. Like what I know now or the people I've talked to had spoken to me before I started my show or when I was first starting and would have saved me a lot of time. So, you know, I, I always think, well, who would need a podcast coach? And then I, I reflect on all the trial and error. I went through.
I'm like, you know what? If I had someone who had told me that, yeah. And I avoided all that would have saved me a lot of time more than anything money for sure But the time which especially for most people running a podcast who have another job or two or their parents or they've got all these other occupations.
Um, they don't realize most people don't realize how much time goes into podcasting, recording episodes, editing episodes, scheduling all the events. So to save time, which is the one thing none of us can get back that the most important currency in the world. Yeah, it's great. And I definitely understand the a lot of people focus, like you said, on the monetization and the growth.
But sometimes you just need to work on yourself as well as a person and a speaker. And that goes a long way. You know, you could be a great you can have a great show. But if you can't network with anyone, I mean, you're only going to go so far. So yeah, I mean, I know you do you do group sessions, correct?
Yeah. We do. Yeah, we do all sorts of stuff. We've done 16 groups of 10 students within our, within our group coaching. And this is the first time we've actually had all podcasters. So everybody in the group right now is podcasters, which is weird. That's again, that's like another, another dream come true.
That's the interesting thing about chasing a giant dream that you never accomplish is you get to accomplish many micro dreams. Along the way that are just conveniently beneficial along the way. So yeah, we do group we do one on one Those are really the two biggest offerings we have and I want to actually go back real quick pivot from this is he talked about not meeting your father till you were about 27 and You talk about how that you know changes changes the way a man grows up if he doesn't have a father figure Especially there's no outside of your biological father in your life.
So how did that affect you growing up and then meeting him so much later in life and whether that was a good relationship or a bad relationship, how has that played a role into all of this? I was a very angry kid. I was, I was very angry and I had a temper for sure. I wasn't someone who got into fights or anything like that and that never really happened.
But I just remember wanting to punch holes in things. It's like, I could definitely punch a hole in that. Let me, let me give that a try. What will that feel like? And I think the deep part of it was I felt like it was my fault in a way. I felt like I was abandoned because I wasn't good enough or I wasn't smart enough or I just wasn't enough.
And then unfortunately, I tended to behave in ways that would be in alignment with that. So, I think one of the reasons I didn't go to college is because I didn't feel smart enough. I just, I didn't, I didn't identify as someone who was smart enough to actually go to college and then get a degree and then get a good job.
I just, I don't think that was something that I thought was in the cards for me. So, that belief that I wasn't good enough, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't enough, That kind of became the internal dialogue and I built my entire identity around that void, right? That was, that was really the big thing. And then eventually, your ego compensates and it gets to the point where I remember saying, The only time I'll ever see that man is at his, at his funeral.
That was it, like I'm never gonna see him. I might not even go to his funeral, I don't even know if I want to give him that. So there was just ego there for a long time and, And then eventually you just kind of forget. And you're in my mid twenties. It was like, I don't, I don't really think about it anymore.
This is normal. This is the life I I've lived for the last 20 something years. So it, it doesn't really, I don't really think about it. It's just not a conscious thought. But when I was 27, I was sitting on my couch and I was going through my Facebook messages. And I didn't realize at the time that if you have someone who sends you a message and they're not friends with you, it goes to a special folder.
Yeah. I don't know. It took me a while to find that out too. Right. Right. So I remember seeing a message, and you can only see the first line, that's how they get you. And said, hey Kevin, I'm blank, I'm your father's girlfriend. And I remember thinking, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this today, it's a Saturday, I'm trying to have fun.
Yeah. No, no, no, we're not doing this. But I got curious. I, I've seen something. I need to look. I need to see what's up. So, I open the message. Hey Kevin, I'm blank. I'm your father's girlfriend. He has been seeing you on Facebook and social media and it looks like you're doing really well. If you would ever want the opportunity to meet, he would love to meet you.
And I remember just hot potatoing my phone onto the floor, falling on the floor, bawling my eyes out, thinking there's no way this is happening. There is no way this is happening. Because, as I mentioned, when I got into the ego phase of villainizing him, I never imagined I was gonna have to see this man face to face.
So I said some not, I said some very unkind things about him. Not to anybody, but to myself. Right. I wasn't, I wasn't talking about him online or anything. So I remember Standing back up, sitting back down and just reading the message and re reading the message and saying what's going on here? Is this real?
What am I, what are we doing? And I messaged back and I said, yeah, yeah, let's meet. Let's meet halfway between where we live and we can get lunch or something. And I texted one of my friends who knew my story really well and they said, do you want me to come with you to meet your dad? And I said, no, this is one of those things where I don't want to do it.
But I I know there's something internally for me. Best way to explain it. So, the day comes, I drive down 45 minutes, he drives 45 minutes, we meet at this diner. And I got there early, and I remember walking in and getting a seat, and I had this really surreal moment where I thought to myself, I don't even know what he looks like.
So when he gets here, it's gonna be way more awkward than I thought. I don't, I'm not even gonna be able to find him. I don't know what he looks like, so he's gonna have to find me, or we're just not gonna meet. And I was sitting at a booth that was facing the window, and I remember a guy walked by the window, and I said, okay, that's him.
Don't know how I knew, just a feeling, just, you could feel it, I could feel that that was my dad. So he came in, he found me, he sat down, and it was about as awkward as any human interaction I've ever had, where I know we're supposed to love each other, I know you're supposed to be my dad, I know I'm supposed to feel some type of way, but we are strangers, and my guard was up, and you're not gonna see an ounce of emotion from me, I am guarded, I will be stoic here, and at one point, he apologized, and he started crying, and He was telling me about his past, and I was telling him about what I was up to.
And it was good. It was a really good opportunity for me. And I, I started to feel a couple things after maybe the first half hour, 45 minutes. One, I felt empathy. Because his life did not turn out very well. And I felt bad. I just, it was very clear, Mr. Whiskey, in that relationship, I was the adult. I'm a grown ass man compared to you sir.
I'm just I've done the work I've done more work on myself than you have and it shows so there was a lot of empathy the second thing was Forgiveness, I remember I had that moment where I thought to myself He didn't wake up one day and just decide to try to wreck my life. He was He was going through his own thing.
He was dealing with his own stuff. He just didn't know how to process it and, and he ran away rather than solving it. Okay. And then the third thing I felt was, it was almost disappointment. It was almost disappointment and shame that I had given him so much power to be the villain in my life, when he just wasn't even capable of handling that much power.
So that day I left pretty much having forgiveness for him and and we ended up spending some time together after that I think I went down to his house two or three times And then it just got to the point where I realized This is never going to be what he wants it to be and he's never going to understand Me at the level that he's going to need to understand me in order to support what i'm doing I'm i'm not necessarily the type of person you can just call thursday at noon because you want to the only there's two people You There's only two people on the planet that my phone rings when they call me, Alan and my wife.
Everybody else it goes to silent or it goes straight to voicemail. So he would call me and say, hey, let's meet up tonight. And hey, what are you doing this afternoon? It's like, dad, I, I run a business. I do 15 episodes a week. I'm married. I have a household. I have a family. There's a lot going on. So eventually it got to the point where I just kind of let it die.
And I believe that I got everything that I needed out of meeting him and learning about myself. And honestly, I didn't want to lead him on. I didn't want to lead him on like I felt like I was led on so many times when I was young. So I just kind of let it die. And at this point, I don't think I've talked to him for, I don't know, two years, three years, maybe.
Yeah, there's a lot of impact there. I know, uh, familial relations can get very, uh, very complicated emotionally. And we've had a lot of parents on this show and a lot of People with, uh, issues with their parents on the show talking about, at the end of the day, parents are human beings who had lives before they had us, and, uh, those lives weren't necessarily easy, and sometimes us being born, uh, didn't make it easier, made it much harder.
So, uh, that empathy part, uh, it, it can be hard. I'd like, I understand, because I had issues with my parents, and it's like, We, we, we want our parents to be these perfect people, right? You made us, you're supposed to be, you know, do all this and that, and it can be complicated. And I think not understanding, kind of trying to jump back into your life as a parental figure when you were so far into your life already.
And, and that difference of, of mindsets and level, I, I get that. So yeah, thank you for sharing that. I, I can relate a lot cause I, I've got, you know, I don't talk to my mom at all. My dad, he's got a lot of mental health and medical issues and drug and alcohol issues. So it's hard for them to understand my life.
Like you said, phone is off except for select people because My schedule is, you know, people pick when they want to record together. And that's it. Some of them are on other countries. Some of them are, like you said, 175 countries, you know, there, there are people that I'm meeting with all the time. Like I'm recording with you right now.
And then in a few hours, I've got a guy from Australia coming on the show and it's going to be his morning time. My nighttime, like it's the online world has expanded us to some, some crazy schedules, but, um, yeah. Speaking of crazy schedules, I did want a bit of advice. I want to pick your brain for some advice here about Out of all the people i've had on my show i've had A lot of interesting people with a lot of interesting jobs from naked and afraid champions to pilots to scientists.
But I think you might hold the record for most jobs. Uh, not that a lot of people have given the whole list on the show, but I think you, you had a long list there that you presented at the beginning of the episode. And there's plenty of people, uh, whether college age or older, depending on life circumstances, who are.
Working, like you said, whatever job's accessible, whatever they can get from one job to the other. What would be your advice for them, whether that's continue to do that or to stop and focus in on one career or job? What advice would you give them who, you know, these people who are feeling the weight of that lifestyle of jumping job to job, not sure about paychecks, not sure about, you know, what's going to happen, where they have to live.
What advice could you give them? I would say. Number one, shout out to you because it's, it's hard. That's it's really hard. It's not easy out there working different jobs and trying to find a way to put food on the table. It's not, it's a challenge and it's now it's more challenging than it's ever been.
The thing that helped me the most was getting very clear on my core beliefs, getting very clear on my core values and really getting clear on my core aspirations. So my core needs as a human, I'm somebody who's very certainty driven. And I'm somebody who is very money driven. The job that I took, it essentially took away all of my certainty.
I didn't know until the Sunday night before Monday morning where I was working. I had no idea. It was, it was terrible. And then sometimes I'd get a message saying, Hey, you're off this week. That would've been good to know, you know, last week. That would've been, that would've been great. So, that was really hard.
And again, all things considered, that is a very privileged problem to have. So I want to throw that out there. Oh, wow, I have to drive an extra four hours to make 100 an hour. Like, I understand, it was a privileged problem to have. But one of my core values, And one of my needs as a human is certainty. I like to know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, how long I'm doing it for, when I'm going to be home, what time I'll be done.
I like that. I'd like to know that. And the other one is freedom. I like to be able to do what I want when I want. I had none of that. I took a van down with a coworker. We stayed in the same hotel room. I worked with them all week. I, it's not like I could just go anywhere I wanted. I had to find out if they needed the van.
So I was on a very strict gym schedule and all that stuff. So I had none of that. I think it would have served me more if I said, Okay, yes, we're going to get our core value of money met at a 10 out of 10. But we are not going to get our core value of freedom met at all. We're not going to get our core value of certainty met almost at all.
We're not really, we're going to struggle to get our basic human need of love met. The more and more you travel, we talked about that a little bit. That wasn't a huge thing. In what ended my relationship, but also when that relationship ended, I wasn't traveling as much as I ended up doing the next year.
So very hard to lock down a relationship when you're gone five and a half or six days a week, right? Really, really challenging. It would have served me to understand what I valued more in life. That way, at least I would have been able to make more aligned decisions. So we had somebody, we have someone on our team and he came on the team and this is fairly common.
This happens pretty often. And he started a podcast. He's like, I want to have a podcast like you guys. Awesome. Let's hop on the phone. I'll tell you what to do. I'll tell you the equipment to get. I'll help you name it. We'll do the artwork. We got you. Cool. And I was having a conversation with him when he was maybe 30 episodes in.
And I said, what do you want this podcast to be? And he said, I want to be like you, but bigger. I'm like, okay, I don't know what it's going to take to get bigger. Cause I can tell you exactly what it's taking to get here, get here. But I said, I want to ask you a couple of questions on a scale of zero to 10.
How important is it for you to be home with your family every night for dinner? And he said, 10 out of 10. Can't miss. Okay? How important is it for you to be at your kids, your future children's baseball games, recitals, school stuff, parent teacher conferences? How important is that? And he said, 10 out of 10.
And I said, brother, I mean this with all the love in the world. It's, you're not gonna get those things met doing things the way I did them. I gotta be very, very, very honest with you. And he ended up, him and I ended up having a very deep conversation, and a couple weeks later he ended up stopping his podcast.
And figuring out that that was not the direction he wanted to go. He wanted to go all in on the team and he wanted to be a part of this mission forever. Because he essentially knows what his schedule is going to be. There's a lot of certainty and there's a lot of freedom. I think that saved him a lot of pain.
Because now he understands what he values as a human. So, that's the best answer I can give. Is really sit down and try to figure what do you value as a human. Because what you value as a human is going to dictate what What your success is. I can't tell Mr. Whiskey you'll never be successful until you get to 1900 episodes.
I can't say that. Because that's not necessarily what you're playing for. And that's not what you've defined success as you've defined success as something completely different is you're the only person who can really reverse engineer your success based on what you're aspiring to in the first place.
So I would say that, and then the other thing I would say is. At the end of the day, your skills come with you forever, so maybe right now you're at a job that you don't really like. Understandable. It might be beneficial to try to learn as much as humanly possible while you're there because you take all of the knowledge when you go to the next place.
I'm pretty good when it comes to logistics and being on time for back to back to back to back calls. I used to have to leave Massachusetts. And be in New Jersey to start a job at a certain time. And I had to factor in how much traffic there would be going over the George Washington bridge. And I would have to factor in 9 a.
m. traffic and 2 p. m. traffic. So the logistics that I developed by traveling so much have carried over to running a business. Didn't know that some of the skills you're acquiring right now in a career that you hate might eventually be skills that are very beneficial. In a side hustle or career that you're doing in the beginning.
So I know it's easy to say, well, I hate this. I'm not going to learn anymore, but there's a lot of skills that you might be able to learn that you'll be able to take to the, to the next place that you go, those are probably the two places I would, I would give advice on for sure. I want to go back real quick and recognize you as an honest podcast coach, because there are plenty of podcast coaches who would have told a guy, all right, well, this is what we need to do.
and just milked him for money, whereas you basically shut him down, which actually cost you, you know, money that that could have been potential income, but it's a reflection on your honesty, your integrity and your care for who you're working with. So I just want everyone to recognize that because You know, uh, not everyone can think evilly and I can think evilly of how people could have said, Hey man, you know, and, and you know what, if you want to be bigger than us, you're going to have to pay even more, you know, so people will take advantage of you.
But what you did was honesty. And I think you did the, you know, the right thing. So I appreciate for that. And then I appreciate that very much as far as, um, maximizing like opportunities to learn skills. I totally agree. You know, when I was working in blue collar industry, They, I was at this chemical plant and they said, Hey, Mr.
Whiskey, we might do this, um, optional training for, uh, rope rescue and tank exploration and cleaning. Uh, you don't have to do it, but if you want to. You know, learn how to, and I was like, of course, of course, I want to add that may not have to ever use that. But, um, you know, any opportunity to learn something and you're getting paid to do it most of the time, uh, it's great.
And I said, you know, you don't even have, you don't have to memorize it fully. You don't have to know in full detail because most places you go there and they're going to retrain you their way or whatever, but it's just great to have. So if you're stuck jumping job, the job. I totally agree with you on that advice.
I think it's great advice, which is maximize what you can take from there to get a better job or a more high paying job or to just be so diverse. I know You're not supposed to have your resume like more than one page max two. I know mine between my blue collar jobs is seven pages long and uh, my goodness, I don't use it.
I don't use it. 'cause I podcast now and I run my own company, but I know it was like seven pages long of, of skills and, and I try to take advantage of those opportunities to learn stuff. 'cause you never know when it'll come in handy. So I, I think that's great advice. Yeah. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
And before we end here, I want to get a little bit more into what you do nowadays. I know you mentioned. Y'all run several coaching groups you specifically do do podcasts, but next level university has a bunch of stuff We're gonna have the website in the description below for everyone to check out Who should really check that out?
And and what do you offer on there? Anybody who wants to grow? That's it. Anybody who wants to grow in a heart driven but no bs way heart driven means We tell you from the heart because we care the no bs means i'm not i'm not gonna lie If you're doing great, i'm gonna let you know If I don't think what you want to do is for you, I'll let you know.
I think that's what a good coach is. I don't think a good coach is somebody who gets someone to a result that they want even if it's misaligned. I think a good coach is helping somebody figure out what alignment means in the first place, right? So, that's what we try to do on the podcast. The, the reason we do an episode every day is because If I'm going to tell you that you should grow every day, I better be there leading the charge to help you grow every day.
That's, I want to walk my talk. So, anybody who wants to level up in life, love, health, or wealth, I think NLU is a really good place for you. And the podcast is always free. We're never going to have ads. We're never going to have sponsorships. All the stuff that we talk about is our products, our services, because they're all vetted.
So, you're always going to have free content there. We have a Facebook group. We have an email list. We have a journal to help you practice your habits every day. We have an app that we've invested a lot of money into. We have one on one coaching group coaching. We have certified coaches that coach what we have taught them.
So there's so much stuff going on, no matter where you are in the self improvement journey or where you are in your financial journey, there is somewhere for you at NLU. That is a guarantee, right? There's the. Next level university podcast. And then there's also the podcast growth university, which is specifically just you, or is that Alan as well?
That is me. So podcast growth university is all things podcasting all the time to help you grow, scale, monetize. Alan will be doing business growth. University in the very near future, which will be his podcast, all about growing your business, making more money, all of that happy jazz. So between us right now, we have.
For podcasts. Awesome. Yeah. I just want to make sure specifically for anyone who's trying to grow their podcast, those resources are available to them. And like you said, you've got the group meetups, blogs, trainings, all of that great stuff. So Mr. Palmieri, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your life story and the advice.
I think it's been a great time and so glad to have hosted you. I appreciate you having me, my friend, you're wonderful. And I look forward to, uh, when you get to 1900 episodes coming back on.
