Episode 59: Dismiss Limiting Beliefs Via Personal Development with Kevin Palmieri

Episode #59

Mike O'Neill: Welcome back to the Get Unstuck & On Target Podcast, I'm Mike O'Neill with Bench Builders and we specialize in helping leaders build the teams and the processes that they need to grow their business. Joining me today is Kevin Palmieri. Kevin is the host of the Next Level University Podcast with over 750 episodes Kevin's podcast is a top 100 global podcast with listeners in over 100 countries. Welcome Kevin. 

Kevin Palmieri: Thank you, Mike so much for having me. I'm very excited for our conversation today. 

Mike O'Neill: Well, I was particularly interested in inviting you as a guest for two reasons. One, the fact that you are a prolific podcaster, I can learn from you. Our listeners can learn from you, but here's what really caught my attention. You write, it's my purpose to help other people get unstuck and get to the next level of their lives. Share a little bit about why you keyed in on that as your purpose. 

Kevin Palmieri: Sure. So I grew up in a single family household. I was raised by my mother and my grandmother, my mom, and my memes. I call her Meema. The first time I really ever met my father was when I was 27. So I'm 32. So that was kind of, that was a huge, huge thing that, you know, that, that really shaped my life in a lot of ways, from not having positive masculine role models, to really figuring out what not to do in life. There was a lot of lessons around me. But my story of being stuck and then unstuck and why that became my purpose. When I was 25, by all outside standards, I had what anybody could ever want. I had a six figure income without a college degree. My girlfriend was literally a model I had just won a bodybuilding show. So I was in the best shape of my life. I had a brand new sports car. I had a great apartment. Everything was awesome. Quote, unquote, but truthfully I was super insecure. I was super depressed. I was dealing with anxiety that I didn't know was anxiety. And I am this person now who just wants to put wind in people sails. Like that is my goal. I will never tell you, your dream is too big. I will never tell you, you shouldn't do what you want to do because you only have one life. But my girlfriend at the time said, Kevin, I want to move to California. And I want to chase my dreams. And I was like, no, you can't. And here's a list of reasons why gas prices, whatever, just a bunch of dumb stuff that didn't matter. And my girlfriend ended up leaving me, my girlfriend at the time left me. And she went to California and she went to do her thing. And I'm glad I'm grateful she did cause that taught me so many lessons. But when she left me, Mike, I had to look in the mirror for the first time ever really. I was a bodybuilder with tattoos. Everybody assumed I was confident. I had a sports car that was really loud. Everybody assumed I was successful, but I, when I looked in the mirror, I start to realize that I am very insecure. And I hide behind material possessions, women, tattoos, money, muscles. I hide behind those things. When she left, I got into personal development. That was the first time I ever read a book other than high school. I read, Think and Grow Rich. I started listening to Tony Robbins. And it was a dark time in my life. I, I had an apartment that was $1,400 a month. And when she left my bills doubled, because I had to pay for everything myself. Work was really slow. It was a really rough point in my life. This was, this was my initial rock bottom moment. Unfortunately, I found out later that rock bottom has a basement. So she left. I get into personal development. Every night before I go to bed, I said, these positive affirmations, I am handsome. I am talented. I am worthy. And this is the one Mike that really got me in trouble. I will make the most money this year I've ever made my entire life. See, I fell back even then I was stuck. I fell back on that material possession thing. So at the beginning of 2016, the year after she left me, I got promoted to a foreman at the weatherization company I was working at and I was traveling all over the place. I was in New Jersey. I live in Massachusetts. I was in New Jersey. I was in New York. I was in Connecticut. I was in Virginia. I was in Delaware. I was in Pennsylvania. I was always on the road. So we get to the end of the year. And I had been on the road for 10 out of the 12 months, literally every single week.

I'm only home Saturday night and half a day, Sunday. And. I didn't care. Cause I just wanted to make money. I will do whatever it takes. So I'm sitting at my table, my kitchen table, without chairs, I didn't even have chairs cause my girlfriend took them when she left and I didn't care. So I'm sitting there probably standing and I open up my final pay stub and I, all I wanted to do is make it a hundred thousand dollars. If I can make a hundred thousand dollars with no college degree before any of my friends, that meant I was something and I did. And then in that moment I had another realization of, you did it again Kev. You did it again, nothing changed. The only thing that changed was the amount in my bank account, nothing up here changed. And in that moment I had this realization. Your car doesn't really matter that much. You're the bed you sleep in doesn't really matter that much. The house, the garage, nothing really matters as much as this what's up in your brain. That matters more than anything. And for most of my life, I had been living unconsciously. I wanted to start living hyper consciously. So I started a podcast called Hyper-conscious. That was my initial dive into podcasting. And it became a passion project for me because I was talking to people about suicide. I was talking to people about depression, about being bullied, about what they love doing about if you could do anything in the world, what would it be? And we would just have conversations about that. And this was my passion project, but the problem is my passion project in the thing that paid my bills started to directly impact one, another. Being at a hotel, it's really hard to do interviews with people, you know, and I'm working night shifts and I'm crawling through attics and it's just not a good environment. So the job that brought me so much security, so much certainty now is taking away from my dreams. I would literally call out of work. I would leave the job early, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. It got to the point where I'd have to be in New Jersey for 7:00 AM shift on a Monday. And I'm still living in Massachusetts. I would literally go to bed at 10:00 PM. I would sleep in my bed from 10 until one I'd wake up. I drive five or six hours straight to the job site. I'd work an eight hour day. I'd go to the gym. Friday. I do the exact opposite. And that, that became my life for a short time. And it got to the point where I was just miserable. I didn't care about the money. I didn't care about the job. I didn't care about my quality of work. I'm in a crusty hotel room in New Jersey and I'm lacing up my work boots and it's cold it's a cold morning. And it's just one of those soul sucking days of like, I don't, I genuinely don't think I can do this today. Like I just feel I have this emptiness in me. I don't know if I can do this. And the best way to explain it is there's 10 televisions on, in my head at the same time. And they're all on a different channel and I can make out what's happening in some of them. One of them saying you're stuck here forever. You'll never make $120 an hour again, anywhere else. Like how could you possibly do that? What will your friends think? What will your family think? And this is the biggest one. Mike, do you really think you could be a successful podcaster? And in that moment of loneliness of dread of hopelessness, I genuinely felt like the best thing for me would be to take my own life. Because if I took my own life, I took my problems with me. Luckily, this was just a really dark feeling and I didn't take any action. But I messaged my buddy who is now the cohost and my business partner. And I said, Hey, I'm feeling really bad. Like, I don't feel good. I'm having these like really dark thoughts. And he said, Kev, you've changed so much about yourself over the past year, two years, but your environment hasn't changed. You're still doing the same thing that you don't like. You have to make a change. And three or four months later, I left my job. I went, full-time in to podcasting and to speaking and coaching, and here we are 750 something episodes later, and it's been a wild journey, but the part of me being stuck was not believing in myself. The part of me being stuck was thinking that where I was, is where I was forever. And Bob Proctor has this quote that really, really changed the way I look at things. There's two types of goals and there's two ways people set goals. And this is why I think a lot of people are stuck. You set goals based on what you think you can get. Or you set goals based on what you actually want. I was stuck because for most of my life, I was setting goals based on what I thought I could get. And I got unstuck by really getting clear on, I want to have the most successful podcasts in the world. And that's just a wild, giant goal that may never happen, but it's the pursuit of the goal that creates the human it's the experience. It's what type of man will I have to become in order to attract and sustain that into my life. I was stuck for most of my life, 27 out of the 32 years, I've lived, I was stuck, so it's not too late. It's never too late. There's always a way to do it. But I think a lot of it starts with self awareness and understanding who you are as a human and how you got to where you are.

Mike O'Neill: I love this story. I want to follow up on that in a couple of ways. This podcast started as a result of talking to clients who were looking around confused what in the world are we, as a business going to do in response to COVID. And it was really scrambling. And as a result, the get unstuck, I thought would be speaking more about organizations that feel stuck. And what I'm finding more often is the guests like you come on, are willing to be vulnerable and share where they personally got stuck. Now you have, you've come almost full circle. If I understand correctly. You did not go to California to encourage a girlfriend to pursue her dreams. And now you are you, this is your vocation. You're encouraging others to dream and dream big. Tell me a little bit about that. How did that transition from a podcaster? How did you change your business model? To allow you to pursue this passion? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah, it's, it's interesting because when I started the podcast, there was no business model. There was no monetization point. There was no sustainability at all. It was just, I want to have conversations with people about cool stuff like Joe Rogan does. The business model started to shift when Alan and I, Alan is my cohost. We were in Florida and one of our mentors invited us down there. He said, Hey, I want you guys to come live with me for a month. We're going to shoot some online courses. It was literally called The Launch House. It was just like, there was a whiteboard in every room. It was awesome. It was amazing. And we were down there and I was just lonely. I was broke and I was talking to Alan and I said like, Hey, we have to start making some money here. Like this is a, we have a business. Now, luckily for me, Alan has an MBA. He's got a degree in electrical and computer engineering. He's a genius. So I'm blessed that I have that person on my side. Cause I wouldn't be here if I didn't full disclosure. I said, how did you make money when you started as an entrepreneur? Because he had started the journey earlier and he said, Kev, I've just done one-on-one coaching. He said, I started with fitness because that's something I feel like I've really gotten to the point of almost mastering. And he said, then I just leaned into peak performance, lifestyle design. And I was like, interesting. And I said like, what? I don't have any credentials though. Like, how do I do that? And he said, you've studied it more than other people have. Like those are your credentials. You don't have to be. And this is a good lesson for anybody out there. You don't have to be at the end of the rainbow. You just have to be two steps, three steps, four steps ahead of whoever you're coaching. I think that's a very important distinction that really, really helped me. So I said, okay, what do I do? And he said, you just find somebody and start coaching them. And I was all right, cool. Let me see what I can do. So I had already really been building relationships in the podcast community. For people who are sharing our content and reaching out to us. So I reached out to a young lady and I said, Hey, I'm starting to coach people. I want to coach you for free as kind of my test to see how good I am. Are you interested? She said, absolutely. Like, let's do it. I think I coached her for a month or two. And then I said, one day, I said, Hey, I can't do this for free anymore. I have to start charging. And I was charging like 50 bucks a week. Then I ended up getting, you know, four or five clients, then it went to a hundred and you know, it kept going, which was amazing. But I had this realization, Mike, that I don't want to do mindset coaching. I want to build like a podcast business. So the business model has changed so much in the four and a half years from not being a business, to being an LLC, to actually becoming profitable. To then really finding our niche and finding our thing and then building the systems out. We have a 12 person team. So I'm very blessed that I have somebody who, you know, does all the audio editing. All the video editing gets us on shows. We're very blessed in that regard, but that took four and a half years of us screwing up and trying to figure out where's the momentum and how do we keep it? But that's how our business has shifted over the last four and a half years. And now we're on track I told you in the pre-call to be, a multi-six figure or a multi six-figure now, through the podcast as the top of our, the top of our marketing channel, really. 

Mike O'Neill: We probably won't be spending a lot of time talking about the business model of podcast hosting. But I understand a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs or they are in a traditional corporate role and they had this entrepreneurial vent. And so one thing that I was interested in pursuing in our conversation is how did you pursue entrepreneurial interest and basically turn your life radically in a new direction. Can we go back to your story a little bit? And that is when you came to the realization that rock bottom has a basement. And that led you on the path that you are currently on. Limiting beliefs is kind of the topic that I guess you and I discussed. What is it about limiting beliefs to has such power over us?

Kevin Palmieri: I think the biggest thing is their normal. And you don't even know they're limiting. So it's, it's almost like, What an elephant looks in its own reflection. It doesn't realize that it's an elephant. It just is what it is. It doesn't realize that it's bigger than everything else. It doesn't realize that it's this massive creature. I think the problem with our limiting beliefs is we forget to put the word limiting in front of them and we just consider them our beliefs. I think all most humans, I won't say all humans, but most human beings are afraid of rejection. We're afraid of failure. They're literally, those are the two ways to success. That failure is the way to success. It's just, do you fail productively? Do you fail forward? So I think that when your normal becomes normal, you start to attract that into your life. One of the, one of the stories I use, I had a client and she was told that she would never be successful. She was told she wasn't smart enough. She was told not to chase her dreams, which lowered her self-worth. She started attracting abusive people into her life because her self-worth was low and she never believed that she deserved anything better. So she kept accepting what was. That limiting belief created all the results in her life and those results in her life reinforced the limiting belief. And it becomes the cycle. So this is what I always say. I call this the confidence conundrum and you can, it's the belief conundrum, it's the limiting belief conundrum. It's kind of all the same thing. At the beginning of any journey, we all have one thing in common uncertainty of results. You and I had no idea how this was going to go today. It could go great. Could go terribly wrong. Our goal is to make it go great. So we have uncertainty of results. If you have limiting beliefs, your uncertainty of results create lack of action. Your lack of action creates lack of results, which then ties in the belief that you had in the first place. And then that's just a rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse and repeat. If you can inject a little belief between the uncertainty of results. And the initial action just a little belief. You'll take an action you never took before. You'll get a result you've never gotten before and that'll actually break the pattern. One of my favorite stories ever, Amy who's on our team, she's Allen's executive assistant. She's done a lot of assistant stuff for me. She's the best. She reached out to me on Snapchat four years ago, three and a half years ago and said, Kevin, I'm so afraid of meeting people and like talking to people like I'm just so afraid to start conversations. And I said, Amy, we're going to go to the mall. And we had never met before. So this is like a totally random thing. In retrospect probably seemed very sketchy that I was taking her to the mall, but we go to the mall, Mike and I give her a big hug. Amy is a pleasure to meet you. Honestly I'm so proud of you for doing this. Like this is awesome. And we go into the mall, we go get a coffee at Starbucks. We go into this store I said, Amy, all I want you to do is go talk to that person about that beanbag chair. She's like, well, what if they, what if they're mean? I said, it's their job to get you to buy the beanbags chair they're not gonna be mean. They're gonna be really nice. And I promise. She does, that goes well. We go to the next store. She does. That goes, well, we go to the food court. We ask about the chicken goes, well, it gets to the point where she starting random conversations with random people walking through the mall. We're getting ready to leave and we walk by this display that has these motorized zoo animals. And I said, Amy, if you were really brave, you'd get on one of those and ride it hoping she would say no, because I don't want to do this. And she's like, all right, Kev, we should do that. And I was like, oh no, what have I done? So I have a video that I show during my speeches of Amy and I riding around these mechanicals zoo animals, riding around the mall. Just we call it fear chasing. Genuinely like hoping to get judged by people. That day changed Amy's life because I instilled a little bit of belief. I injected a little bit of belief, so she did things she never would have done, and the result went better than she expected. And even if the result didn't go better than she expected, I would have been there to reframe it. And say like, Amy it's okay. Like you got these results. I care way more about the effort than I do the outcome. So I think that's the, that's really the way to do it. You have to understand that your limiting beliefs are creating your limited reality and your limited reality is reattracting things that are in alignment with your limiting beliefs. 

Mike O'Neill: So, Kevin, let me see if I heard this correctly. And that is in the case of Amy, someone you had not met. Y'all just went to the mall and you instilled, I think the term you use instilled, would you go do something. Now you characterize this as, and this was something that we now know that she would have feared doing, but you instilled it and she did it. When you went to the next one where you still instilling at that point, because she had a good first experience? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yes, but less.

Mike O'Neill: Okay. 

Kevin Palmieri: So I, I call it borrowing belief. It's the goal is not for me to, you know, teach, teach somebody to fish and they fish for a lifetime versus giving them a fish they fish for a day. I want to give you the first fish. So you know what it's like to eat the fish. And then I want to start teaching you how to fish. And then I want you to see what happens when you don't catch a fish and when the line breaks and how to retire the line. So I wanted the first thing to be me taking over completely and just saying, this is what we're going to do. And then I wanted her to borrow belief less and less and less and less and less as we go. And that's what happened to me. Alan has more belief than anybody I've ever met in my entire life. I've been able to borrow his belief to the point where it took me 150 episodes, podcasting to feel comfortable like 150, most people only make it to 20. So if I stopped then I would never be comfortable. So I borrowed his belief for long enough until I could start to cultivate it myself.

Mike O'Neill: By the way, this is episode number 59 for me. So I've got another a hundred episodes before I had that same degree of confidence. But what I would say to you, what's made us podcast. Our guests like you, Kevin. And that is what I heard you say is that, you instilled, you kind of just took over and she started. And then you would begin wheen yourself. But when she encountered, we'll use Amy as an example, when she would encounter issues, you would help her reframe back to these limiting beliefs. Does this kind of describe the coaching practice that you have developed? Is that a describe kind of, part of the methodology that y'all use with your clients?

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah. All the coach is is somebody who has a higher level of awareness. Who's already done what you want to do. Really. What I always tell people is I don't care. It's not that I don't care about your limiting beliefs, but I don't care because I don't have them. So I can actually see the real picture that you can't necessarily. If you have a limiting belief, it's skewed. For me I just see what you are. I don't see your past until you tell me. I don't know your traumas until you, you teach me them. For me, it's just, I see what is, and I see what's possible and I try to connect the two. And that's really the name of the game. That's really the name of the game. Now. Some people require a different level of support. I mean, genuinely, but it's always that of like, okay, Amy wanted to go back to school, but her whole life, she thought she wasn't smart enough. She went back and got a 4.0. You know, so it was just that reframe of, instead of completely holding her hand, it was Amy do you remember the time at the mall when you didn't think you could do this, you're smarter than you think you're more capable than you think like you can do this, then she went, did it. So it's just smaller every time, but yeah, it really is just, it's redirecting from a higher level of awareness. It's just redirecting, redirecting, redirecting, and then finding the root cause of why there that limiting belief is holding them back in the first place.

Mike O'Neill: In your experience, finding the root cause. That's where the real art comes in. Finding the root cause. Is that just by hearing the story about what's going on? How do you help them find that root cause? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah, it's, it's exploration and I think it's more often than not. It's looking back into the past for trends. It really one of the best exercises. I don't know if you've heard of it or not Mike, but it's the seven whys. So you, you ask somebody a question. Okay. Why are you afraid of rejection or what is your biggest fear? Rejection. Why? Because when I was in high school, I got rejected by a girl and I was embarrassed. Why? Because it made me feel like I wasn't good enough. Why? Because she dated all the jocks that were way bigger than me in way taller than me and I'm short. Okay. Why does that bother you? Because I don't feel like I can be a real man if I'm short. And I'm five foot six. So this is my, my story. And then you'd go, you'd go a couple of Whys deeper and it might get to the point where the root cause is I grew up without a father and I've always wanted to be the super masculine person. And anytime I'm getting rejected, I don't, I don't feel masculine. I don't feel strong. I don't feel, I don't feel worthy. And like that root cause that one realization has probably created 80% of your experiences. And if you can shift that one thing, then everything else connected to it shifts. So it's exploration. It's searching through the past, it's searching for trends and oftentimes it's answering the questions that you don't want to answer. Honestly, it's very uncomfortable. Raising your level of self-awareness is painful. Genuinely. It's not easy. It sucks a lot of the time, but you also are able to have an entirely different life. It's it's not supposed to be easy, you know, I wish it was, but it is definitely worth it for sure. 

Mike O'Neill: Kevin, I've heard the expression. If you own a business, if you're in sales, if you're managing a business or managing people that you have to be willing to eat your own dog food. And you use the term self-awareness Kevin, what do you do personally, to maintain a sense of self-awareness?

Kevin Palmieri: That's a great question, Mike. I asked the people around me. I, I always want feedback of where I'm doing well and where I'm not. I'll listen to this podcast after it launches. I'll relisten to see, like I could have told that story better. I try to rewatch all my speeches. I ask the team for feedback. I ask Alan for feedback. I try to ask my fiance for feedback. I think that your self-awareness and that's also dangerous too. Let me just speak to that. There are people out there that will give you feedback based on insecurity. So make sure you're vetting the feedback that you're getting. Cause that's, that's an important distinction, but for me, I know there's, I know through experience and through humility that there's some things I'm just not that good at that Alan is better at. And we know together that there's some things that I'm just better at, than Alan is. And I run those things. So I would say asking for feedback from trusted people. Really understanding your unique strengths, like in leaning into them and then trying to mitigate your weaknesses through people who can fill those strengths fill those as their strengths. And then reflect, reflect if you're watching your performances, whatever that means, right? If you had a meeting and you said, oh my God, I could have done that so much better. My leadership was not on point. Why? Okay. Cool. Let's let's improve that next time. I think you just have to look at your, your most recent proof. I think that's one of the best ways. 

Mike O'Neill: So in practical terms, we have the advantage in that we can go back and replay a podcast. We can go back and watch a presentation, a speech that you've made it's recorded, but life's not recorded. If you don't necessarily have it recorded and you want to reflect. You mentioned seek feedback ,but when you get the feedback, be mindful that you need to vet that feedback. 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah. 

Mike O'Neill: But in terms of, if it's not recorded and you want to reflect on impractical ways. Let's say that there was nobody else in the room that you asked your opinion on. How do you, how does one go about personally reflect on whatever it is they need to reflect on? Does that question make sense? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah. I think a lot of it for, for people is feelings because this is what, and this is the reason I say you gotta be, you gotta be careful when you take feedback. We do, every week we do a live podcast. We're on week 80. We did week 80 last night and we used to ask the team at the end, like, what did you think wins losses? Like what were the best points? What kind of missed? And every, almost every week the team would be like, Kev, 10 out of 10, you did amazing 10 out of 10. 9, 10, eight out of 10 that you could have done this little thing better. And it got to the point where I was like, I love you and I appreciate your feedback so very much, but you don't know what I was feeling. I don't care how it looks. I care how I felt, because how I feel determines how it looks in this, in this way. So I think you have to go with the feelings that you have as much as the results, because only, you know, what it feels like. So I would reflect on the feelings. I would reflect on the prep. Before this what did I do? Like, I feel pretty dialed in. I feel like I've hit flow. What did I do differently? Is that the coffee? Is it the water? Is it what I had for breakfast? I didn't work out. There's so many different things to dig into that you just have to be curious. You have to be curious about yourself. And this is another thing I tell people all the time. Like I tell my clients, this take your phone wherever you are in the world. You're not a podcast or you're not a speaker. I want you to record a video to yourself of where you are in your life right now. I want you to say it is, October 19th, 2021. Right now my business is doing pretty well. My relationship could do better? I'm not happy in my body. Like there's a lot of things I really want to improve. These are the things I've been doing well, these are the things that I want to continue improving. This is what I'm grateful for. This is where I am. This is where I want to be in my future. And then you go look back at that thing in two months, three months, four months, five months, six months, and start to see that's a great amount of feedback. And that's a great way to build self-awareness because you'll realize very quickly I set this giant goal that I didn't think I could get, or I set this small goal that I really crushed. That is a personal podcast for anybody out there who doesn't have one. 

Mike O'Neill: Well, I love that as an example. I want to go back to something you mentioned a moment ago, and that is, we were talking about limiting beliefs. And maybe I'm looking at this simplistically. But if limiting beliefs is a thinking process, you said that you find it, you really are reliant on feeling, which sometimes can be very much at odds thinking and feeling. Can you speak to, that? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah, I think there is, there's two kinds of people. So Alan and I co-created this thing called the P M E S system. Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual. So that's a, everybody has a code. So for me, I'm E P M S I'm Emotional first. I am emotional. I am an emotional thinker. I'm not super analytical. I'm not numbers driven. I'm feelings driven. Alan is M first. So, this is what happens. I have to oftentimes feel my way into taking action. Alan thinks his way into taking action. And I think that's an important distinction. If you're out there and you don't feel like doing something, think of the way you'll feel after you do it. And if you're out there and you, you know, you should do something, but you just can't do it in this moment. Or you know, you'll be happy if you do something after, but you can't get the motivation. Sometimes it's just like taking the leap. It really is. It's difficult because there is no one size fits all. I think most human beings are emotionally driven. If you're listening to this, you're probably not. Particularly if you're in business, a lot of business people tend to be strategy thinking. So for, for that, it's more of like, you have to know the outcome. You're looking for. You might not enjoy the experience, you're in it for the outcome. Most emotional, many emotionally driven people are in it for the experience, not the outcome. I liked the way my coffee tastes. I'm not drinking this for the caffeine. I'm drinking this for the flavor. There's some people out there who drink their coffee black because they only care about the caffeine, their strategy, I'm emotion. I want it to taste good. I don't care if there's any caffeine in it at all. So I hope that sheds a little light on the difference between the two. 

Mike O'Neill: It's a perfect illustration. By the way, I typically drink my coffee black because I want the caffeine.

Kevin Palmieri: Makes sense. 

Mike O'Neill: Yes, it does. You know, Kevin, as you kind of reflect on this conversation, which I hope is just kind of a continuation of kind of what you now do, and your team does. But if you wanted to make sure that folks really heard certain things that are what you would describe as takeaways. What would those be? 

Kevin Palmieri: One of my favorite quotes that I've ever come up with is, the biggest difference between the person you are and the person you want to be is your habits. I know habits is a very sexy word that a lot of people are talking about now, but you know, if, if you want a better relationship that is a habit. If you want more money, that's a habit. Whether it's prospecting or selling, delivering whatever it is. If you want a better body, that's a habit. We all already have habits. Genuinely. We all have habits. It's just whether those habits are serving us or not. I have made the intentional decision to make more coffee at home, and not stop for a $4.71 ice latte, because that adds up. And I just got a whole bag of coffee for 12 bucks. Like that that makes sense to me. So I took what was in less aligned habit and made it a little bit more aligned, a little bit more aligned, a little bit more aligned. I would say, check in with your habits because your results are a delayed result of the habits that you're practicing. And then this is, this is another one of my favorite quotes. Your reality becomes the parts of your imagination you hold onto the longest. I didn't tell this story, Mike, but on episode seven of the podcast, way back in the day, I did an episode called Chase Your Effing Dreams. I was done with my job. I was miserable. I didn't want to be there anymore. And I said, honestly, if I could do anything in the world, I'd be able to wake up when I want. I'd be able to go to the gym when I want, I'd be able to podcast with amazing people. Spend time with my friends, spend time with my family, and I would be my boss. And here we are four and a half years later, and that is my reality, but I was, I had the audacity to dream it. Your dreams, your, the things that you really want. If you hang onto those long enough, they, they can become your reality. Now we all have quantum abilities. I'm not going to be dunking on LeBron James or winning any math awards, most likely, but I can pursue my potential in that given arena.

Mike O'Neill: So beautifully said. Kevin, as folks are listening and watching and because you are in the zone here, I suspect there will be folks who would like to reach out to you. What's the best way for folks to connect with you? 

Kevin Palmieri: Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. Just search Kevin Palmieri. I'm @neverquitkid on Instagram. I have it tattooed, never quit on my arm, so I don't forget it. And then if you want to listen to our podcast, we do an episode every single day. We're on apple, we're on Spotify, we're on Google or on Pandora. All of our episodes are on YouTube, just search Next Level University. And then nextleveluniverse.com is our website. And you Can find out a bunch of stuff about us. We speak, we coach all that happy jazz. 

Mike O'Neill: We will include links to just about everything probably, and then some, in the show notes. So if you're driving, listening to this, don't worry about it. It will be in the show notes, with links that you can immediately reach out to Kevin and to his organization. Kevin, what a treat. Thank you. 

Kevin Palmieri: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate you. 

Mike O'Neill: I also want to thank our listeners for joining us today. Every Thursday, we upload the latest episode of this podcast to all the major platforms. So if you haven't already please subscribe. But if you're an entrepreneur with big dreams, but you're tired of letting your business keep you up all night, it's time to take action, head to bench-builders.com to schedule a quick call, to see if we can help you grow your business. So I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you've picked up some tips from Kevin that will help you Get Unstuck & On Target. Until next time.