Life-Changing Challengers

Transforming Challenges into Growth with Alan Lazaros

• Brad A Minus • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to turn adversity into a pathway for growth and fulfillment? This episode features an inspiring conversation with Alan Lazaros, CEO of Next Level University, who opens up about his tumultuous childhood and the profound impact of losing his father at a young age. Alan's candid recounting of his journey through financial instability and emotional upheaval lays the foundation for understanding the transformative power of resilience and self-reflection.

Join us as Alan takes us through his remarkable transition from a high-flying top 1% global earner to a man seeking deeper meaning after a near-fatal car accident. His story underscores the significance of aligning personal goals with one's true self and the journey to find true fulfillment beyond mere material success. Learn from Alan's existential crisis and how addressing inner trauma can pave the way for a more meaningful life, filled with personal growth and authentic success.

In this episode, we also explore the themes of unfulfilled potential and the responsibility to maximize one's gifts. Alan shares compelling anecdotes, including an inspiring story of Jimmy, a dedicated podcaster with autism, contrasting it with his own experiences of coasting on natural intelligence. We navigate the complexities of overcoming fear and insecurity, feeling exceptional, and defining personal success. Alan's insights into human behavior and self-awareness provide a comprehensive guide to understanding oneself and achieving true fulfillment. Don't miss this transformative discussion that promises to leave you with valuable lessons on personal growth and societal contribution.

Contact Alan @ Next Level University
Instagram: @alazaros88
Facebook: @alan.lazaros
LinkedIn: @alanlazarosllc
YouTube: @NextLevelUniversity
NextLevelUniverse.com

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Contact Brad @ Life Changing Challengers
Instagram: @bradaminus
Facebook: @bradaminus
X(Twitter): @bradaminus
YouTube: @lifechangingchallengers
LifeChangingChallengers.com

Brad Minus:

All right, welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Challengers. As always, I'm your host, brad Minus, and today I am extremely lucky to have Alan Lazaros on the podcast today. He is the CEO of Next Level University and we're going to let him go into that. But let me tell you something If you ever get a chance to take a look at his at the website and listen to the podcast at Next Level University, you're going to be amazed. So he's a podcaster with over 1700 episodes. So the guy's a pro. Let me tell you that. Anyway, let me I've introduced him now, alan. Hey, how you doing today.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm very well. It's going to be number one. I do not take it lightly to be here, thank you. I started listening to podcasts nine years ago and they definitely helped me change the trajectory of my life, and now I'm one of those people who's helping people do that. So it's really a dream come true to be here. Thank you. And number two. After that intro, I hope I don't let everyone down. You know what I'm saying.

Brad Minus:

Oh well, anyway. So again, same question I ask every week Alan, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, the environment you grew up in, the complement to your family, and what it was like?

Alan Lazaros:

OK. So the first thing that I want to make as clear as possible when I started listening to podcasts nine years ago, I would hear these eloquent speakers and they would tell their narrative and they would tell their story and it seemed like they had it all figured out and I used to think to myself, wow, I'm a mess in comparison. And now I realize I just was in my mid twenties and everyone's a mess in their mid twenties. But anyways, when I tell this story, just understand that I didn't understand this stuff at the time. It's only in reflection. I often joke. I say I'm hoping to hit puberty at 36 because I look 12, but I'm going to try to condense 35 years into this episode. So that's going to be a challenge, but just realize that it's. I didn't understand all this at the time.

Brad Minus:

The really good analogy.

Alan Lazaros:

It's funny, right it is. The good analogy is if you've ever seen a movie as a kid and then you rewatch the movie as an adult, now you get it at a different level, right, the movie didn't change, but you did. So that's really the metaphor. Okay, so started off in adversity for sure. When I was two years old, my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28. His name was John McCorkle. My real last name is actually McCorkle, not Lazarus, so Lazarus is my stepfather's last name. So when my father passed away at 28, my mom was 31. My sister was six. I was almost three, so I was raised by my mom and my older sister, but my stepdad was in the picture from age three to 14. And when we were the Lazaruses, I took his last name, I think around age seven. We were trying to be the Lazaruses. I took his last name, I think around age seven. We were trying to be the Lazaruses, so we didn't really talk or associate much with the McCorkles anymore.

Alan Lazaros:

Now, my birth father, john McCorkle, was a part of a big Irish Catholic family. So I actually got asked yesterday on a podcast are you Greek? I get this all the time. No, are you Greek? I get this all the time. No, I don't look Greek at all. I'm Irish, polish, german, scottish, right, and people always ask her Lazarus, are you Greek? No, that's, my stepdad was Greek. My birth father came from a big Irish Catholic family and it was all Js. So my mom and pop-up, his father and mother, had six kids. He was one of six. It was Jim, joe, john, jane, joan, jeanette, all J, six kids, yep. And so my father passed away at 28. My stepfather came into the picture and when we were the Lazaruses we didn't associate much with the McCorkles and that'll make sense soon. So I often refer playfully to 3 to 14 as boats and BS.

Alan Lazaros:

My stepfather was big into hunting, fishing, snowmobiles, motorcycles, trucks. We lived on a lake. It was late 90s, early 2000s, dot-com, bubble-ish time. He worked for a company called agfa and they did hospital computers, so we did very well financially. But he and my stepmom did not get along and that's a very polite way to put it on a public media.

Alan Lazaros:

And so at 14 he left and I went from like xbox, dreamcast, early christmas presents, boats, ski trips, deep fishing. We literally had a yacht Modest yacht, but still a yacht. To now I get free lunch at school because our income is so low. My mom traded in her BMW for a Honda. I shop at Salvation Army now for clothing. Now we're not going to starve, but it was definitely a different life. So he leaves at 14.

Alan Lazaros:

But it was definitely a different life. So he leaves at 14. He gets the apartment building and the yacht, we get the house and the dog, and my sister at that same time moves out with her older boyfriend, and so it's just me and my mom in that house by ourselves, kind of the man of the house by 14, right At that same time my mom gets in a fight with my aunt Sandy, her sister Sandy, and my aunt Sandy ostracizes us from her side of the family. Yeah, and again, I didn't realize any of this until my thirties when I started reflecting on my life and realizing, like whoa, so 14 was by far the hardest year of my life.

Alan Lazaros:

I lost three families by the time I'm 14. I've never spoken to a single person on my stepfather's side, including him, except for on Facebook Messenger. I've messaged him a little bit but I've never seen him in person. The McCorkles. Fortunately, my birth father's side welcomed us back with open arms once my stepdad left, but it was like them seeing a ghost, because I looked just like my dad, but my mom's side of the family. I've never seen any of them since, except for one of my cousins, Jeff, who came back eight years later. So by the time I'm 14 years old, I lost three families in a way.

Brad Minus:

It's like your whole support system just faded away.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, scaffolding out from under? Yeah it was. But now here's again. In hindsight, I did the only trauma response that I knew how to do and I wasn't doing this consciously because I didn't even know what trauma responses were back then. But there's four trauma responses. There's fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawn was the one I didn't understand. Fawn is like don't poke the bear, do whatever the bear wants. It's appease, it's the appeaser. So I did a lot of fawning socially, especially when my stepdad and mom weren't getting along. But I also did fight, and by fight I don't mean fight against others. I did work harder, aim higher, get smarter. That was my trauma response.

Alan Lazaros:

The past is painful, the present is painful. I'm going to go into the future and I'm going to build the biggest, brightest future I can think of Now. Part of that was true self. The other part of that was get attention and love from my mom or stepdad, right, that kind of thing. And again, I didn't know any of this at the time. So anyways, I bootstrapped. I mean, I went from I can't wait to go to college.

Alan Lazaros:

I remember when I was 10 years old I was driving past WPI, worcester Polytechnic Institute. It's a technical college in Worcester. It's like a mini MIT in Massachusetts and it's one of the best tech schools in the world. And it was $50,000 a year back then. And I remember thinking I'm going to be an engineer, I love math and science and I'm going to do this thing. And when my stepdad left I remember thinking how the hell am I going to go to college? That's 50 grand a year. So even if I get into my dream school, how am I going to go right? So I ended up getting the President's Award. It's actually behind me, it's signed by George W Bush and basically it means you get straight A's on every report card, all four report cards for 16 report cards, straight all through high school. And I did. I got 189 in honors English and luckily it was weighted because it was an honors class. So I still got the award, but I'll never take honors English again, I'll tell you what, but anyways. So I got into the school and I got. I was the obnoxious kid at the award ceremony that just never sat down. Just award, award, award, just you might as well not sit down because you get all the awards. So I got straight A's through high school. I got tons of financial aid and tons of scholarships, thankfully. So I was able to go and then my mom helped me out as well. So I went to a $50,000 a year school Worcester Polytechnic Institute that was 30 minutes north and I got my computer engineering bachelor's. And then I got my master's in business and then I went off into corporate.

Alan Lazaros:

And my dream I had two dreams. When I was a kid I had a bunch of dreams. All of us do, I used to say, all of us do. Now I realize that's actually pretty rare, but I had two main ones. So I used to not say this because I used to be too much of a coward, but genuinely I remember having these actual thought processes. I was either going to do lawyer, politician, president, or I'm going to do engineer, mba, fortune 50, ceo of a tech company, like my hero at the time, steve Jobs. Me and my friend used to argue who is smarter, bill Gates or Steve Jobs, the whole Apple, microsoft thing, right, and so I just wanted to aim as high as you can aim and so I chose, obviously, engineer, mba, fortune 50 CEO. So once I went into corporate, I went from a broke high school student to a broke college student to, basically, I'm a computer engineer in the 21st century from a top school. I passed up an interview at SpaceX. I just did really well. So I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125 to almost 200 grand a year. So I'm a top 1% global earner not US earner, but global earner.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm in my early 20s to mid 20s. I paid off 84 grand worth of college debt in a single year. I bought a 2004 Volkswagen Passat in five grand cash because I just decided to get wealthy and I was so used to being broke that I don't need nice things. And so I also had 150 grand in an investment account for Vanguard of just all tech companies, because to me, tech made perfect sense. Why wouldn't you invest in tech? So I made a bunch of money in the stock market and I'm in my mid-20s and I have a beautiful girlfriend named Courtney. I live on a lake and my rent is 500 bucks a month. We split it. It's a tiny little place, right? I don't have kids, I don't have a mortgage, I have a $5,000 car I bought in cash and I'm making tons of money at this point Again, tons relative to being a kid in his early twenties. And so I'm off to the races.

Alan Lazaros:

But here's the thing I'm super successful. I'm very professionally developed resume, cover letter, linkedin, engineer, master's, bachelor's, of science, all this stuff. I now call it STEMBIF science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business and finance. Those always came naturally to me. But I was deeply unfulfilled. I was drinking too much and too often. I had high school friends and corporate friends and college friends. I hadn't dealt with the trauma of my past. I didn't do much inner work, I didn't have a therapist, I was mostly achievement oriented and I was improvement oriented, but I wasn't self-improvement oriented. So the car accident that I got in changed everything. So I'm in New Hampshire with my little cousin in the Volkswagen Passat. Thank you, volkswagen. I'll explain why in a minute.

Brad Minus:

Oh no, I can already know that one.

Alan Lazaros:

Right, yeah, so we're playing Call of Duty, we're not drinking or anything crazy. We're going to TGI Fridays, and this is actually the second cousin. So this is the cousin who came back from my mother's side eight years later, seven years later, and I was with him. My little cousin, second cousin, so his kid. So anyways, he's like 17. I'm in my early twenties, we're playing Call of Duty, we're going to TGI Fridays.

Alan Lazaros:

Both in the front seat there's a three-way intersection. And this is back in 2015, when the snow banks were covering the signs. It was a really bad winter up in New Hampshire and I was supposed to yield. I didn't. I end up on the wrong side of the road. I look down from the GPS and I see what I thought was a Mack truck in front of me and right in front of our car. So I'm like this is it. This is the end.

Alan Lazaros:

My computer engineering brain went done. No possibility we survive this. It's impossible. This is the end, and for anyone who hasn't had that moment, it's the scariest thing in the entire world. And for anyone who hasn't had that moment, it's the scariest thing in the entire world. It's inexplicable Time is it happened in a millisecond? But it also is, like, emotionally, still there. It's weird, but fortunately two things saved my life. Number one the Volkswagen Passat. I used to call this car the tank. This is a German engineered steel trap of a car that I actually called the tank. It was a heavy car. So thank you, volkswagen, seriously, because you saved my life. Now, number two thing that saved my life is it wasn't a Mack truck, it was a lift kitted pickup truck Lots of those in New Hampshire and so hood completely crumbled, but the frame didn't, the airbags deployed. My cousin hurt his knee on the airbag. I hurt my face in the airbag, but physically we were okay. He's a young 17-year-old, still invincibility complex. He was tweeting about it like right away. I'm physically okay, but remember, my dad died in a car accident when he was 28.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm 26 at this time, questioning my entire existence because this is the second chance my dad never got, and by this point I've heard stories about John my whole life, particularly when my McCorkle family came back into my life after 14. And so I'm sitting there. This is quarter life, existential crisis. What was the point? What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of my life, filled with regret. Now, in hindsight, I didn't make worse choices than any other kids, for the most part no-transcript. So existential crisis right and existential for those of you who don't know is just a term that refers to. What's the point of all this? Why are we here? What's your purpose, what's your meaning, what's your calling those kinds of words that I think a lot of people feel are fluffy. But if you've had a mortality moment, it's not fluffy, it's real. And so pre-26, in hindsight, this is the way I describe it, and I didn't know this at the time. It's been nine years since then. I'm almost 36. And I now understand that I was in one of these three buckets.

Alan Lazaros:

So the first bucket, prior to 26, is what I call the successful unfulfilled. I was professionally developed. I had hard skills up the wazoo, I was extremely smart, I was academically inclined, I was well credentialed, I was an engineer and I was off to the races and I was hardworking, for the most part statistically speaking. But I was not emotionally developed. I was not personally developed. I wasn't self-improvement oriented. I was improvement oriented and achievement oriented, but I wasn't self-improvement oriented. And after so I was successful and unfulfilled. After 26, nine years ago, I flipped the script and I flipped it hard and I went. I found self-improvement and I went all in. I'm talking fitness, health, wealth, love, self-reflection, self-improvement, personal development, personal growth, every book I could get my hands on. I just went all in. And then I went all the way past, broke because I quit corporate. I started my own company.

Brad Minus:

Wait, hold on, wait a second. We need to step back here a second. Okay, so I understand flipping the script, right, my clients do that consist consistently and something I'm super proud of. But you are telling me that you were making over two hundred thousand dollars a year and okay, so I get the unfulfilled part, but you basically, like, went from the accident to okay, I need to do something different and you quit just flat. That's an interesting, that's a completely interesting thing that I think is very well. It's something that we need to delve into the and what you're going to, and I didn't get that. I got to step back one more second.

Brad Minus:

So when you said regret and you also mentioned we talked about hindsight 2020, right, you said regret and you also mentioned we talked about hindsight 2020, right. When you go back into where you were, your head was, in that moment where you say regret, what exactly do you think that you regretted? Besides the whole fulfillment thing, because from the outside, you're right. We all look at you, you're, you were. You made your parents proud, you made your mom proud. You are definitely, academically, the whole bit. You're doing these great projects. I'm imagining I haven't talked to you about that yet. We'll talk about that in a minute.

Alan Lazaros:

What exactly are you regretting at that point? I want to share this. So recently I was on a podcast with a man named Jimmy and this will articulate what I regretted. Jimmy has autism and Jimmy had me on and it was a wonderful interview and he is promoting and, again, I don't know enough to talk intelligently about this, but he has a podcast and he's putting in work and he is working on himself and he's just awesome. I had a blast. I had a blast on the podcast and I had this moment when I was being interviewed by Jimmy and I saw how much effort he's putting in and I sat there and I was like I know people who have potential that are so much higher than what Jimmy was given, but they aren't. Jimmy is maximizing his potential more than half the people I know, if not, honestly, more than 95% of the people I know. We're all born with different gifts and different potential, right? Lebron James in basketball the great example.

Alan Lazaros:

So what do I regret? I regret, yeah, I was academically inclined and yeah, I was really smart and yeah, I got straight A's, but I didn't try that hard. I'm just really smart and so I regret not maximizing. Why do I deserve these gifts. Like I was proving textbooks wrong when I was a kid. I built my first computer when I was 12, right, I drank too much and too often I did drugs, I frolicked too much, I didn't maximize my contribution to humanity and I don't know if this will resonate with anyone else. I don't think it probably will, maybe not no one, but I always knew, because everyone else said, like you're so hardworking, you're so amazing, you're so, and it's like, no, you don't understand. Like I know you think so and I'm grateful, thank you for. But you're projecting your standards onto me, like I was the kid that could party all night, not go to a single calculus class and get straight A's in all the classes. So so it's all relative right. So Jimmy was putting more on the court than I was back then and that is unacceptable, because I had this moment on the podcast and it's I'll only use first names because, of course, I want to protect everyone's privacy, but I had this moment on the interview. That was sad. It was a sad moment and I felt sad for him because he's working so hard to win in podcasting, he's working so hard to be successful and I am going to succeed more than him forever at almost everything, even with very minimal effort, and I got sad. And then, after sadness, I said you know what, alan? How dare you not make change in this world when you are given so much more than other people? Now, let me be completely transparent with you. People see me now, and I get it right Born in the biggest economy in the world, which by far the US is, like a large majority of the economy in terms of country to country.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, white, caucasian, american male, I get it. Okay, I do, I get it. I had two advantages in life. Most people think I was born on third base. The truth is, I couldn't even see the damn ballpark. Okay, but no one knows that, especially not now. I had two huge advantages.

Alan Lazaros:

Number one and I never used to say this because I never used to have the courage, but I read a book called the hidden habits of genius and it's behind me and it's a yale professor who has studied geniuses throughout history who, by the way, a lot of geniuses are awful human beings when you study them, by the way, holy crap. But he studied the geniuses throughout history and he brought up the 14 character traits of a genius, quote unquote. And he did this course called the Hidden Habits of Genius for 30 years at Yale and then he wrote a book about it and I didn't find this book until my thirties, by the way and I looked at the character traits and he opened the book with this quote that I'll never and I'm paraphrasing so it's not verbatim quote, but he opened the book with geniuses don't know, they're geniuses, they're too busy doing genius shit. Only a non-genius could go and do this work, because geniuses are too busy just going and being geniuses. They don't really get it. And I had this moment of like you know the thing that you know on the soul level, but yet you need this external validation to verify it. And who's this self-proclaimed genius? Like I'm scared to even say it, but I do know it's true.

Alan Lazaros:

Like inside of me, I've always had an advantage in pretty much everything. Now, not athletically, right, I'm not going to beat LeBron James at basketball, I wasn't born on a ski mountain. Like there are certain advantages I just don't have. I'm not strong, I'm not very strong, but intellectually it's very clear to me. I grew up and I really used to think this why is everyone so lazy and so unintelligent when in reality they're not lazy and unintelligent. I'm really intelligent and really hardworking. And if you're wrong about one thing, you're wrong about everything. And I was wrong about everything, but I didn't know it. And so the two advantages I had in life is number one I was gifted with this huge brain, like super powerful brain. Everything feels easy for me, like mathematics just made sense. It's good. Hunting is a good analogy, but yeah, and then number two I was born in a country that invests in powerful minds.

Alan Lazaros:

I got straight A's in high school, but I didn't have to try that hard. I had a colleague of mine, a friend colleague. She's a friend, her name was Tara, and she used to get pissed off. She'd say I don't, it pisses me off, I study for 10 hours, teach it to you in 10 minutes, and then you do better than I did. And I never understood, because in my head it's we're friends, so why not, right? I now understand how frustrating that is for someone who has to work so hard for things, and so, truth be told, I regret not doing more with what I have. I have been gifted with those two gifts. Without financial aid and without scholarships, I would not have been able to go to one of the best technical colleges in the world and I wouldn't have met all the friends I met and I wouldn't have gotten out of the small town and the small-minded crap that I grew up in. And let me tell you this too, and this is the duality I had two advantages, but I'll tell you what.

Brad Minus:

I only had two, and that's something most people don't know, especially if you see me now. All right, but you were able just to learn things, which is different than having a didactic memory. Didactic memory meaning that you can regurgitate, but yet you might not learn it. You actually had the ability to learn things very easily.

Brad Minus:

So just to give a parallel analogy, if anybody's ever read anything, maybe you have on David Goggins when he did his first hundred miler, right, this guy could run a seven minute mile without a problem. He could do it for 20, 20, 25 miles without a, without an issue, right? So he decides to go on this hundred hundred miler. He gets to a point where he he wants to so badly he actually has to tape up his shins and his feet in duct tape in order to put them in a certain position so he can keep going. That is like that is the effort to keep going, to keep moving forward, and that's an effort level where, as a where you In the same situation, obviously say to more athletic, but saying that you had the same as that gift, you would be able to run that 100 miles without a problem and have an issue and didn't have an issue.

Brad Minus:

I just want to put that out there for people, because people, some people, just we just don't understand that. What do you mean? You got straight A's, you had to work hard. No, it's not true. What is what you're saying? But it was what you're saying. But it was what you're saying.

Alan Lazaros:

That's what I'm getting from it. I had to make sacrifices that other kids didn't have to, but I'd be lying to myself and to you if I said it was hard. It was hard compared to, like hanging out all the time, but it wasn't hard compared to what it would have taken Jimmy. And that's just the reality that no one goes near anymore. Like people want to believe that we're all equal potential. It's not genetically true. It's not. It's never been true. It's not true and everyone knows that too. I struggle socially because everyone thinks I'm arrogant when in reality I'm actually dialing it down. Like if you think I'm confident, like this is me dialing it down out of social cowardice.

Alan Lazaros:

like david goggins is extremely gritty but he's not naturally intelligent right I happen to have a lot of grit because he came up hard like I did. And again, I don't want to compare because again he definitely came up hard, but real talk, like between you and I. I asked my therapist once there's something called an ACE score Adverse Childhood Experiences and there's decades of research on this and you can take an ACE test and you can. I finally had the courage to ask my therapist after six or seven months or eight months or something like that, like I needed to know because I already knew on the soul level. I said zero to ten on a bell curve and this is how I think. I think in bell curves, I think in exponentials. Like nothing in the world is linear, even though we think linearly it's you know. Anyways, I can't get into that. But I asked her. I said you know me well enough now. You know my past, you understand what I've been through to a great extent. Where am I at? There's things called little t trauma and big t trauma and trauma overall. Where am I at on the bell curve? Like 10 is the most you've ever seen of trauma and zero is the least you've ever seen. And I already knew the answer and she had the courage to actually tell me too, and she said, alan, it's the highest I've ever seen. Due to the chronic nature of your trauma, it's the highest I've ever seen, and I know what that means. She's been a clinician for 10, 15, 20 years. So she here is the worst of the worst.

Alan Lazaros:

And I bawled my eyes out Because I already knew eyes out, because I already knew. That's why I asked the question. I knew that, so I bawled my eyes out and I felt freer after that. It was like, okay, awesome, what am I going to do about it? I'm going to accept it for what it was and I'm going to build something great out of it and I'm going to be the male role model I never had and I'm going to lead by example.

Alan Lazaros:

Because, quite frankly and this is so hard to say, but it's true and there's some good parts of my childhood. I need to make it clear there's some good parts, okay, but honestly, where I grew up, it was nothing but people that are completely full of shit and I hated it. I saw deeply unfulfilled people, I saw deeply unfulfilled marriages, I saw tons of drugs and alcohol and I saw what I consider the boulevard of broken dreams and I decided nope, not me. And my therapist has told me if it wasn't for your genius, you never would have made it out of that, and I think that's probably true. And so now I have more empathy than I could have before because, truth be told, everyone listening right now, watching this, you already know I don't struggle with self-doubt that much. I don't feel not good enough, I don't feel not smart enough. There's only been a handful of people that I've ever been around where I'm like oh my God, are you smarter than me? Holy crap.

Alan Lazaros:

I remember I had that moment with someone and I told my girlfriend about it because she's brilliant as well, and I was like did you have that moment of like, is this person smarter than me? And she's like, yeah, I said I bet people have that all the time around us. I like again I'm see, even this is scary because no one's going to relate to any of this. Okay, one of my mentors is the ceo of the one of the biggest robotics companies in the world. Like, it's a different game, I'm playing a different game and I didn't know this.

Alan Lazaros:

You met kev. Okay, kev's the one who taught me all this. He said dude, that's a youth thing. He said no one turns down an interview at SpaceX. Like what is up with this? I said for me, dude, that has always been there, so it's not. But let me share this. Okay, there's two types of courage. There's competence courage, which is apply to the job, apply to the school. Do the interview, do the speech, show up, do the resume, write the letter, write the email. Okay, that's competence courage. Can you do it? Are you good enough, smart enough, capable enough, competent enough? That is fine for me. I've never had a problem with that In athletics. I have a little bit. I'm not naturally as gifted in athletics. Okay, over here is social courage. Social courage is have the courage to be all of Facebook, amazon, like. None of them are real estate companies. They own real estate, but it's just. If that statement was ever not true, it's now.

Brad Minus:

Right, absolutely.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, but I didn't say anything because I'm a coward, because I know I'm smarter than him. He knows I'm smarter than him, but he's insecure about his intelligence. So what am I going to do? Do this, and every time I ever called anyone out for anything because I was more accurate than they were, because I'm more intelligent they hated me. And then I felt unlovable. So I became more of a coward.

Alan Lazaros:

So Kevin and I give a speech and we speak together. He's afraid he's not going to add value. I don't have that fear at all. I'll get you thinking differently. I'll get you more successful, assuming you don't hate me. If you told me, alan, you have to give a speech in front of a thousand people and you have to add value, no problem, I'm your guy, let's rock.

Alan Lazaros:

If you say you have to make everyone not hate you, I would say that is literally impossible. That's not possible. See my energy shift. It's not possible. I'm going to trigger everyone in this room. I'm going to get them believing in themselves more. I'm going to get them to aim higher. But they know I'm not like them. They know I don't struggle with self-doubt. I used to not have the courage to say it. I did a marathon on three days notice and that was the first time I had felt self-doubt in like a couple months. And I was literally three days notice, 95 degree weather, on a track, by myself with a phone in my hand. What? Yeah, I didn't run it. Some of it I had to walk because it was brutal and it was 95 degrees. But yeah, I did that. The first half marathon was actually easy. The full marathon was awful. I was actually cocky in the middle. Emilia has a video of me running backwards Stupid.

Brad Minus:

You did this on a track.

Alan Lazaros:

I did it on a track. Yeah, 95 degree weather. It was brutal. My ears will never be the same. I forgot sunblock on them.

Brad Minus:

Oh, my God.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, but again, the point that I want to make with all that is that I think that we all are either this is Kevin's quote, and it's the best I've ever heard you are either afraid that all of you is not enough or you are afraid that all of you is too much. We all have both to some extent, but I'm 99.9%. The second one I'm afraid that all of me is too much. I'm not afraid that I'm not enough. I don't feel not enough. That's never resonated.

Alan Lazaros:

When I was a kid, I used to wonder like why do I feel like I'm good at everything? I didn't understand. I just didn't get it. And so the truth of the matter is it's more scary for me to talk about my strengths than it is my weaknesses. I'll tell you every weakness under the sun. But remember, it's not socially acceptable to be better than other people, especially as kids. You know how, when you're a kid and you're playing a board game and your friends don't even want to win, they want to make sure you lose. Yeah, that's been my experience, and so most people are deeply insecure and feel like they're not enough. So when they get around someone who doesn't have that issue, a lot of times they lash out and I dealt with a lot of bullying and that kind of thing. And also, truth be told, when I say I'm going to be lawyer, politician, president or engineer, MBA CEO, people are like, oh, another blowhard, Like meh.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah like oh, another blow hard, like nah, yeah, the truth is they think I'm full of shit and, honestly, as I've gotten older, they've realized that I'm not as full of shit as they thought, because I'm actually doing it right.

Brad Minus:

So no, it sounds like yeah, it's definitely a whole different mindset and it's a mindset that is it's as much as we want to, as much as you're successful in everything that's going on. It is a negative mindset as far as your social competence, and that's where people don't they tend to not realize that.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, it's a smaller percentage of the population, so the books aren't written for me. That's the other problem too. Like I remember himelia because she's brilliant too and and she's her own level of genius. It's unbelievable. My beautiful girlfriend been together for five years and I nothing's built for her. Like these books aren't written for her.

Alan Lazaros:

Like the books that teach you how to be more confident, like Like, I don't need more self-belief, I need more humility. I don't need to like, oh, get outside your comfort zone. For me, doing a speech is not outside my comfort zone. What is outside my comfort zone is telling the truth in a speech. You see what I mean. There's no book on that. There's no book on hey, you need to own that. You don't struggle with self-doubt. That book wouldn't sell. No one struggles with that.

Alan Lazaros:

Statistically not competent enough. You've always felt like you struggle to achieve things. Maybe you have a sibling who's more capable than you and you know it like that. Then you're most likely afraid that all of you is not enough and if you accept that and own that, ironically, paradoxically, you'll become enough. If you're not in that camp, I would say that's probably 97 of the population is more on that side if you're in this other percentile.

Alan Lazaros:

That doesn't resonate at all. None of that resonates, but you hide it. By the way, you don't tell anyone. Oh yeah, no, I struggle, like yeah, it's not real. Okay, the other side is you don't feel like you naturally fit in. You feel like you have the chameleon everywhere you go. You don't feel relatable or likable at all. You feel like you get lashed out at for what seems like no reason all the time. You feel like no one wants to see you win. If that resonated, you are unbelievably amazing. You're amazing and you're scared to be amazing, because socially being amazing isn't awesome unless you're on their sports team Like their sports team, right.

Brad Minus:

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things, that life, that don't really matter.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, Great Set on that. You've ever heard the by the quote of it is not our darkness but our light that most frightens us. Right, that quote resonates with me. That doesn't resonate with Kevin at all. Kevin's afraid of failure, right, he's not. My greatness doesn't frighten me, no-transcript. And this is the first time in my life, in my 30s, where I can say I'm putting it on the court, man, I'm actually stretching right. And if you can't say that, if you can't say you're doing all you can with all you have, with a straight face and I'm talking by yourself in the mirror then you're not going to be fulfilled. And that's my thesis, and so far I've coached hundreds of people. I believe that to be true, but that looks different for everyone.

Brad Minus:

That's why it gets confusing when I say to people that, hey, when you listen to my episodes about listening to the interviews that I give and I say I want you to take one nugget away, if you just take one nugget, then I feel like we've succeeded. That's the one right there is that if you are not maximizing your potential, using everything that you possibly can, then there's no way that you're going to feel fulfilled. And if you feel like you're doing that, most likely you don't know what being fulfilled feels like. So there's my question to you what was the first time you felt fulfilled?

Alan Lazaros:

I think it's more of a spectrum than a one or a zero. So I would say it's like a staircase, but it's all relative. And Einstein wrote the theory of relativity and Kevin told me no one cares, but I've read some of it and it's really good. But anyways, the point is that if you've never felt fulfilled, you don't really know what you're missing until you're fulfilled. So it's this weird thing where you climb this staircase and now you're level six fulfilled, and you realize, oh, maybe I'm actually a two because there's so much more to go, but I'm definitely a six compared to where I was before. And so, to answer your question, I always ask my clients this, and this is the goal with my coaching, it's business coaching, but it's really how do I make you more successful and fulfilled? And not, but not or, and I'm a computer engineer, so I think in logic, the idea here is the question that I ask them is zero to 10. How fulfilled are you right now? 10 means the most fulfilled you've ever been. Zero means the least fulfilled you've ever been, because everything's experiential. If you've never been fulfilled but you're the most fulfilled you've ever been, maybe it's my one, but for you that's a 10. And usually they say around an eight usually. And I know why. I say okay, when were you a level 10? And then they go and usually they say around an eight usually. And I know why. I say okay, when were you a level 10? And then they go and I said when were you dialed in? You were on point, you were living, you were challenged, but you were contributing, you were growing, you were doing it.

Alan Lazaros:

And they said one of my buddies, he said back when I was playing D1, d2 college football. And I said let's analyze what was different. Okay, offensive coach, defensive coach, head coach, peers, common goals, you had belonging from the crowd. You were celebrated. You also had the chip on your shoulder because your grandfather said you're too small to play in the NFL. You have a dream that you're chasing, like there's certain principles that create fulfillment and people say it's the journey, not the destination. It's both. If I drive 30 minutes south, that's very different than driving from Boston to LA, which I did in my early 20s. So the destination matters, but the journey is the climb, is what's fulfilling. So it's this, everything's like these dualities, and if you can't think in duality, you're in so much trouble. What is duality.

Alan Lazaros:

There's a book called the Self-Made Billionaire Effect and this is back when there was only 1200 billionaires. There's like 3300 now, and they said the number one quality of a self-made billionaire um, so there's only 1200 self-made billionaires. This is back in 2012, didn't inherit it, like that kind of thing. And he said the number one quality of self-made billionaires is that they can hold two seemingly opposing ideas in their consciousness simultaneously. And I see that all the time.

Alan Lazaros:

It's you work too hard compared to what? And, by the way, for my goals, I'm actually not hardworking enough, believe it or not. So, yeah, you think I'm disciplined, you think I'm structured, you think I'm systems, you think I'm too rational and I should need to live a little right. You ever hear that and it's you're projecting onto me your own standard, like, in order to achieve my goals, I'm actually not dialed in enough. And it's back to the fulfillment piece.

Alan Lazaros:

Fulfillment looks different for everyone, but the principles are the same, and even that's a duality. Let me give you an example. Virtue is a principle. If you show compassion and I show compassion, we're going to be more fulfilled than if we don't. If you show greed and I show greed, we're going to be less fulfilled. But what that greed looks like, the amount, all of that changes based on the individual, the context, the goals, your upbringing.

Alan Lazaros:

Right Axe can build a house or kill someone. It's not the axe that's the problem, it's the wielder. And so, for all of us, people come to me and they say how do I be more successful? It's like listen, the reason you're not successful is because you've set goals based on a version of you that isn't real. Most people would look at my life and say, screw that.

Alan Lazaros:

I work 12 hour days every day, for six days a week, and Sunday is my only day off, and even that's not off. But that's what fulfills me, trust me, I tried taking time off and stuff that wasn't fulfilling for me, and so I podcast, coach, speak, train and write and I do events. Those are my six. Those are my things I do and they fulfill me and they're my purpose, my calling, my passion. They're profitable. Someone else looks at my life and goes, oh my God. But then they look at my results and go, that would be nice. No, my life. And goes, oh my God. But then they look at my results and go, that would be nice. No, you don't understand what. You can't get those results without the process, without the systems, without the tools, without the beliefs, without the.

Alan Lazaros:

You know you, maybe you want to spend more time with your friends than I do. I had to give up a lot of friendships in order to get to where I am. 1700 episodes. You mentioned that. I appreciate it and that sounds really cool, but the truth is we do an episode every day. You have no idea. These are not like three minute clips, these are full 30 minute, anywhere from 20 to 40 minute episodes every single day. It's like how do you do that? Kevin and I have decided to climb this mountain, and this is a fulfilling mountain for us. It's meaningful progress toward meaningful goals for a meaningful purpose, and it's our passion, it's our purpose and it's our profit, and in that order. And you can't design your life based on what I've designed mine to be and I can't design my life based on what you've designed yours to be, because neither one of us will be fulfilled or successful, or maybe you'll be successful and unfulfilled, which is what I did prior to my car accident.

Brad Minus:

Interesting that you mentioned and this like blew me away is that you said a lot of people have goals based upon a version of themselves that's not set in reality. That's huge. Like people to understand that in your coaching. How do you get someone to understand that without tearing them down?

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, so so that's actually been one of my greatest challenges. I what a great question, brad. I appreciate it. So I have this framework. Everything's a framework to me.

Alan Lazaros:

There's four modalities of thinking, by the way. The first one's math and numbers. The second is words and concepts, the third is energy and the fourth is images and pictures. I'm math first, so anyone who's math first is like I, like this guy. Everyone who's not is like. He doesn't make any sense. I used to think I was a strong communicator. Now I know I'm a strong communicator to engineers, communicator to engineers, but anyways. So Kevin is words and concepts first, so he's more emotional and we don't have to get into that. But the rarest is math, I think. Statistically, the next rarest is energy Words is by far the most common as words and concepts, and then images and pictures is next, but anyway. So to answer your original question, everything's a framework. So I have this framework that I use to try to understand human beings and I have to close my eyes to look at it on a whiteboard, all right. So imagine a target. The outer ring is what you want others to believe about you. The next ring in is what you want to believe about you, and then the inner ring is what you really are Interesting. My goal in life is to make all three of those rings the same. That means I'm, in reality, right, because the GPS is a great analogy. The GPS needs three things.

Alan Lazaros:

I have a Tesla that they've actually updated it to now it's not as good self-driving. It still drives itself, but it's called supervisor mode. But emily and I went on a road trip from massachusetts to south carolina to visit her fan bam, and we drove through eight states and I'm not kidding, I let this thing drive us there. It was the coolest thing ever. I've been waiting for this for a decade because I was robotics companies and computer engineering right, so I know this is coming. A lot of people get freaked out. Listen, it's coming, whether you like it or not. I'm sorry, don't hate me. It was awesome. So, anyways, the point is the Tesla has eight, nine cameras. So it has three in the front, one for the right, one for the left, one for the center, it has one in the rear and then it has one in each door four doors. And then there's one in the inside because if it sees you on your phone or whatever it says, hey, pay attention Right Now. I'm not talking about the privacy issues, I'm not talking about data, I'm not talking about Elon no, don't associate me with any of this please.

Alan Lazaros:

Now, in the metaphor, in order for the Tesla to drive me somewhere, it needs three things. Number one it needs a current location, an accurate current location. It needs to know where it is in relative to other persons, places, things and ideas. Okay. Then it needs a destination address Okay. So in this metaphor, current location is self-awareness. Destination address is where you're headed Goal, dream result, objective, whatever you want to call it. And it also needs number three it needs to know the data of the terrain.

Alan Lazaros:

Remember, back in the day, the Garmin and it would like not update, and you're trying to take a right and it's like that's not even a road, that's a lake. I feel like that's what people do in life. They set these goals and then they drive into the lake over and over again, and then they have low self-worth and low self-belief and they think something's wrong with them, when in reality they're just inaccurate in their thinking. And then I come along trying to update their software and help them think accurately and they hate me. And then I decide to bottle it all up, take all the answers, keep them to myself, just like all the other engineers that have low self-worth, that have all the answers and tell no one, right, because it's not safe. And now we get all our goals and dreams, but we're these emotionally stunted children and again, I'm being playful because I know a lot of engineers.

Alan Lazaros:

But that's the problem, right? The people with the actual truth, the actual answers aren't emotional, and so they don't learn how to communicate effectively with emotionally driven people. Because when someone says, hey, alan, how do I look in this dress? And my brain says you're level six fat, you can't say that it's not safe to say that, even though that is the truth. Fat people are fat, skinny people are skinny. Some houses are shacks and some are mansions Like.

Alan Lazaros:

You have to look at the world accurately and you get villainized for it. But if you don't call a spade, you can't make good decisions without accurate data. And so here I live in this objective world in my head and I can only share certain parts of it in the world without people hating me. Even on this podcast, I have to be careful, right? So, to answer your original question, when someone comes to me in coaching. My job is threefold no-transcript. And how do you do that without tearing them down? This is why I tend to coach people who are under, not over. Let me explain. I'll use Jesse. Jesse's a past team member of mine, used to be a client. Love Jesse, wonderful human being, smarter than she thinks, better looking than she thinks, more competent than she thinks. That's easy for me. It's not hard for me to say you're better than you think.

Brad Minus:

Right.

Alan Lazaros:

It's the ego-driven ding-dongs that think they're smart. That it's hard for me to say. I know you think you're accurate, like the real estate thing but, you can't make good decisions.

Alan Lazaros:

If that's the case, go invest in real estate while I invest in tech. See how that goes, especially commercial real estate when no one needs headquarter buildings anymore. So here I am. I keep the answers for myself. I go be successful. He goes, makes poor decisions because I never update his data. And then he what likes me more or hates me more, unconsciously, right. And then what does that do to my unlovable part? Right? And so at the end of the day, I try to coach people who are under meaning. They are More competent than they think, they're smarter than they think, they've been conditioned to think they're less than they are, and I'm really good at coaching those people.

Alan Lazaros:

I have trouble with the ego-driven Narcissists who, like, think they're awesome when they're just not. You're just not. You need to go Humble yourself. You need to go do some hard stuff. I did a timed mile recently and I thought I'd get a six. I ended up with a 709 and I was trucking and I'm 35 and I was like, oh my God, talk about humble pie. But I need the humble pie because otherwise I do.

Alan Lazaros:

I get arrogant. A lot of people do. They get really arrogant. They haven't challenged themselves at the core level enough, especially successful people Like listen.

Alan Lazaros:

When you have 50 grand a month coming in and all your friends are not successful like you, it's very easy to become very arrogant, but that's how you end up not humble and not courageous and not vulnerable and not honest, and that's how you end up delusional. We all are victim of being delusional in one direction or the other. You either are better than you think or you're worse than you think. No one's fully accurate. Everyone thinks they are, which is why no one is. It's this whole thing, and so my job is to see them as accurately as possible, as objectively as possible, knowing there's a percent error and that I'm not all-knowing, and then help them see that so that they can set goals based on that are actually in alignment with who they really are. That's how you win.

Alan Lazaros:

And if you think you're super smart and then you go to SpaceX, you're in some serious trouble. I thought I was smart before I went to college and I was smart, but like whoa, I was like holy crap. I was like the math guy. Now I'm like the guy, just regular guy. I'm just regular guy Now. You just have to keep on getting feedback. But most people avoid feedback because they're deeply insecure.

Brad Minus:

And that's an interesting. That's an interesting subject within itself and we could probably go on for hours about that. The sensitivity that's going on in our environment today is ridiculous. It's far upscale than we need to talk about I. I'm one of those guys that I guess I have empathy for other people, but I don't have empathy for myself. So I want you, like if you were coaching me and I'm probably an under or I'm, I don't know what I am but if you were coaching me, I want you to sit there and look at me in the face and go.

Brad Minus:

You are so far below what you think you're going to be able to do that we need to come up with something that's going to put you in the success factor, in the person that you are. I need to see that. I need to hear that. I tell my bosses all the time. I'm listening. You know what? If I effed up, you need to come in my office, look at me in the face and said you face and said you effed up, now fix it. I don't need you to sit there and say this didn't really work out and we need to push back on this a little bit and blah, blah, blah. No, I need you to come in there. Tell me. You effed up. If you need help, let me know, but you need to fix it and you need to do it now and walk out the door.

Alan Lazaros:

But, brad, that's because you have high self-belief. This is the problem with fixed and growth mindset and I see you trust me same. Just tell me I don't want you to. Kevin called me fat once and people in our community don't understand why. He knew I was delusional. They're like you're in great shape. Compared to who, though? Right, kev remembers when I was in way better shape than this Like. Kev was there when we were doing fitness competitions and I would eat me right now. Right. So he's not calling me fat to be mean. He knows I'm delusional and he knows that I'm underperforming, but he would never say that to someone who's actually fat.

Alan Lazaros:

That's the duality yes, to someone who doesn't have the belief that I have and the competence I have. Like. I had a client once who came to me and said I want you to be as hard on me as you are on yourself and Emilia, my beautiful girlfriend, who has the most self-belief of anyone I've ever met. I told her that and she said oh, she would die. You can't give. You can only give the level of like. You don't treat a seven-year-old year old the same as a 70 year old. You like if I'm brand new at chess, are you gonna berate me that I didn't do the bishop to king, perfect setup. No, of course not. The fact that I even know what the pieces do is a win, but if I've been playing chess for 10 years and I'm losing to 10 year olds, it's come on man. What are we doing here, right? So? And then so there's toxic positivity, which is it's all going to work out, no worries. Regardless of your effort, everybody gets a trophy. And there's toxic negativity, which is you're the worst you know. Grind every day. How dare you? No compassion, the optimal solution is always in the middle, and so you have high self-belief, so you can take direct feedback.

Alan Lazaros:

People who have low self-belief and fixed mindsets have trouble with that, because they already beat themselves up so much and they actually need more affirmation. Not all of them. Some people need to be told like listen, I know you think you're hot shit. Come on man, what are we doing? Like you need to go run with someone who's an actual runner, okay. What are we doing Like you need to go run with someone who's an actual runner? Okay, get humble pie. Everyone needs and this is the problem the medicine that cures one patient kills another. That's why I love one-on-one coaching and this is why podcasting is so hard for me.

Alan Lazaros:

If you're a computer engineer out there listening and you have high self-belief, you love this episode. And most likely if you have low self-belief and low self-worth and you struggle to think accurately and you feel like you're not smart enough, you have a really hard time with me and Brad right now, and this is why like attracts like. But the problem is that we all end up in these echo chambers. Kevin and I have really broken each other's echo chamber because we've combined these two worlds of the computer engineers and the heart-driven people who were blue collar right, and so we've learned the opposite bell curve, the opposite side of the bell curve, and we've become holistic because of it. And so I've learned so much from Kev, just because Kev's so different than me. But we have similar core values and similar core aspirations and we respect each other and we both didn't have fathers and we also had a common core wound of wanting male role models, never having them. So there's a lot underneath that.

Alan Lazaros:

But at the end of the day, you want direct feedback because you have high self-belief but no one knows how they built their self-belief. There's an actual formula. It's state-proof self-assign. So, brad, you say I'm going to do a marathon, and then you prove to yourself you can do it. And then, after you're done, you go. I told you I could do it, and so you build belief. Other people aren't stating and they're not self-assigning.

Brad Minus:

And that's something I'm oblivious to.

Alan Lazaros:

Yes, because you have self-belief and you don't know that you have it, and all the people around you are pretending they have it too.

Brad Minus:

And only the people around you are pretending they have it too, and only the fact that you're not insecure around me means you have very high self-belief.

Alan Lazaros:

You know what I?

Brad Minus:

get it, because I believe, I know that I can't do 37 half marathons, 17 full marathon, like you. Need self-belief for that, yeah, but I accept the fact that you are a very smart person and you're probably much, much smarter than I am, and I accept the fact. And when I hire people, let me just give you just a little bit I am actually in IT myself. I work for a surgery center right now, but I've worked for JP Morgan. I've worked for some of the biggest Fortune 100 companies as a project IT, project program manager, blah, blah, blah, blah. When I hire people, I know that I want to hire people that are smarter than me, much smarter than me. Got it. I need that knowledge in order to get the project moving into a point that I can be successful and I can take it. Let me take care of the budgeting, the scheduling and all that stuff. You take your knowledge and build me my freaking application.

Alan Lazaros:

As long as they're humble. As long as they're humble, because a lot of times the people smarter than you sometimes aren't humble and therefore not coachable and they can't be led. I've come to realize as a leader if you're not humble, I can't work with you at all, because if you're not humble you're not coachable, and if you're not coachable we're in trouble. Right, and again, that's another layer. Sorry to interrupt you, but I don't know. I talking about are probably brilliant, but they're also low self-worth and they have a lot of humble, a lot of humility, probably.

Brad Minus:

That's super interesting because that's because even in the, even in my interviews, when I'm getting somebody across the table to bring out to my teams, I'm like no, I am in this, I am in this business to hire people that are smarter than me. As far as your resume goes and what you've accomplished, it looks like you fit that bill. Now let's talk about what it was, and a lot of times you're absolutely right. They all of a sudden their eyes go down and they tuck their head in and blah, blah, blah, like they can't take that compliment or they actually don't believe it.

Alan Lazaros:

Yes, yep, and ironically, that's why they're so smart, because if they did think they were smart, they wouldn't work on getting smarter. Everything's a paradox.

Brad Minus:

That's super interesting too. If you know you're smart, you're not going to work on becoming smarter. There's a lot of great takeaways here, ladies and gentlemen, and we can probably go on forever about this. As far as there was something that you were talking about earlier, we'll go on to that later, but just as far as chronology goes, before we start to wrap this up, you got out of corporate and you started to really delve into personal development. How long was it before, when you quit your job, started moving into this personal development stuff after the accident, that you started next level? Or was that the next step in your journey here, or was there something in the middle?

Alan Lazaros:

No, there was a couple of things that I do think are critical for anyone listening. One was back in 2012,. I started a little company called Campus Libre. It was going to be a campus specific Craigslist for textbooks. It started off as a little business competition at school and we actually won a couple of awards, but it was me and the three smartest engineers that I knew at the time. It was a four person team. We were profitable out of the gate and me and the CEO had a falling out.

Brad Minus:

I was the cmo chief marketing officer.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay mark zuckerberg. Yeah, yeah, honestly. It's funny that you say that, because the movie that came out I was watching it back then, thinking this could be a big deal there was a competitor called uloop. It was a campus specific craigslist for textbooks and then it was eventually going to be like a uh, not just textbooks, and then we were going to go from the east coast to the west Coast and then fill in the gaps and then we were going to move beyond US. But anyways, me and the CEO had a falling out and it was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had. I was crying for freaking four hours because I poured my heart and soul into this.

Alan Lazaros:

And now I realize too, by the way, that I'm a naturally born entrepreneur. I am obsessive, I'm extremely organized. There's a personality test called Hexaco that tests you on 26 facets of your personality and one of them is called conscientiousness, and I'm very high in conscientiousness, which is the most correlated with business success, not the most correlated with relational success, by the way, felt easy. Most people are on the other end of that, statistically speaking. Blah, blah, blah. But the point is, I started a little company. It ended up failing and it didn't go anywhere after that, which in some ways was like the ego part of me was like, yeah, I told you. And then the other part of me was, ah, that's sad, but anyways.

Alan Lazaros:

Then I went into corporate, did the whole corporate thing car accident at 26. After that I reinvented myself completely. I went all in on self-improvement. It wasn't long after that I started listening to books while on the road, going into all these manufacturing facilities, because Cognex, the company I was working for, I was on the road. I managed Connecticut, vermont and Western Massachusetts, so I was on the road all the time just listening to audiobooks. And then I quit Cognex, probably within six months, maybe even sooner. And then I started my own little company called Alan Lazarus LLC, and it was what you'll never learn in school but desperately need to know. And so instead of taking jobs through industrial automation which again is what it is I decided to help people retool for a bigger, better, brighter future, and that's really where it was born. That was eight and a half years ago.

Alan Lazaros:

And then eventually I teamed up with Kev. So Kev had a podcast called the Hyperconscious Podcast change the way you think, change the way you act, change the way you live. I had a podcast called Conversations Change Lives, which was meaningful conversations like this being a fly on the wall will change your life, type of thing. As his first guest and after that we just started teaming up and we had the worst named podcast ever. It was the Hyperconscious Podcast Meets Conversations Change Lives Podcast. It was awful. So eventually we went all in on the Hyperconscious Podcast. We were one a week, then we were two a week, then we were three a week, eventually we were five a week and then seven a week 1% improvement in your pocket every day now. And then we rebranded from Hyperconscious to Next Level University. So Next Level University was born, probably if it's been nine years. Next Level University was born probably four years ago, and before that it was three years of the Hyperconscious podcast. So technically, kevin and I are still a toddler in business. We're only seven years old. We have a 21 person team now. We've got 21 departments. We've got our own charity about to be 22 people actually as of yesterday. We've got a big community, now heard in 170 countries, and we're still, in my opinion, in our very infancy. But we've got a is aligned with who we are now.

Alan Lazaros:

My career wasn't as aligned with who I was as I thought, because it wasn't the passion and the purpose and it was profit. Most people are profit. First, I wrote this blog recently about how to have a magnificent career that you adore, and it's a simple Venn diagram and the bottom left circle of the Venn diagram is there's three circles is what fulfills you. Then number two is what you're really good at statistically speaking, like I don't mean good at in your own head. Line up 100 people in a room. Are you the best in the room? And then number three is what makes great money, and I often joke.

Alan Lazaros:

I say how much money would Michael Jordan make to play basketball a hundred years ago? And the answer is $0. The NBA is only 74 years old and even in the beginning there was very little money. There was no market, just no market right. So I don't care how good you are at something that there's no market for, it doesn't actually pay the bills. But unfortunately, most of us go for money first. Particularly in the older generations, it was always money first and then we try to be fulfilled. It's like good luck with that right. So that's what I did.

Alan Lazaros:

Engineers make a lot of money. Let's go be an engineer and then I'm sitting behind a desk all summer designing circuits going. I made a mistake and obviously not a macro mistake, because computer engineering has been very lucrative and I'm grateful for it. But I had to reinvent myself and so that's what I do for people now is you're either fulfilled and unsuccessful, which happens all the time, by the way or you're successful and unfulfilled also happens all the time. Both of those suck. I've been there.

Alan Lazaros:

Or you're like my client, yvette, who came to me and she said listen, I love what I do. I'm really good at it. I want my life to be an amplified version of what it already is, but I don't want to work 12 hour days, six days a week, like you do. I was like okay, let's rock and roll. So I'm just helping her amplify what already is super successful in most people's eyes. Is she going to be a billionaire? No, but she's definitely going to be a multimillionaire and she loves what she does. So at the end of the day, I've got 26 people on my roster. The youngest is 16. I'm actually on with him in two minutes. My oldest is 63 and it's been so awesome because it's people all over the world, from all different backgrounds and I'm coming up on my 10,000 hours, so I'm pumped about that and thank you so much.

Brad Minus:

Brad, this was awesome. This was great. I really appreciate it and if anyone wants to reach out, they can. I appreciate that and I'll link your socials. I'm going to link nextleveluniversitycom If you could send me the link to that blog. Is that blog?

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it's on my LinkedIn. Is it public? It's blog number 18. Okay, so I have 18 blogs on my LinkedIn.

Brad Minus:

Yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, it's the latest and greatest one, yeah.

Brad Minus:

All right, so I will find that I'm going to link that Um and we'll have that all. And then don't forget the to check out next level university podcast. I'm assuming, according to everything on your website, it looks like it's everywhere you can find in your podcast, so you won't have a problem. You won't have a problem with that. But yes, no, this has been amazing, alan. I really appreciate it. Please say hello to Kevin for me, I will, and remind him that I was the guy sitting next to him for like three and a half hours the very first day of PodFest. And for the rest of you, we will see you in the next one. It's been an honor, brad, thank you, appreciate it.

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