In this episode, Nick speaks with Kevin Palmieri, a successful podcaster, but becoming this podcaster was no easy road. It started with Kevin working a regular job and making good money. From the outside, it looked like he had it all. He had money, a girlfriend, a house, cars, tattoos, and everything most of us think about, yet he was miserable enough to debate suicide. Knowing there was no choice, he quit his job and promised that he would never clock in for anyone else ever again.

He took a giant leap of faith, and the only goal right now was just to get rent paid. Starting something new from scratch takes a little while before money comes in, so Kevin struggled with money, struggled to get to the studio, and struggled mentally, feeling like an imposter. He never gave up.

He persistently kept pushing forward. Eventually, everything started to come together.

About Kevin Palmieri 

Kevin is the founder and co-host of the Next Level University podcast. Early in his life, Kevin found “success”, but after a brush with suicide, he realized he wasn´t living the life he truly wanted.

He became passionate about self-improvement and decided to make it his purpose in life to impact as many people as possible by becoming a role model podcaster and speaker. He has succeeded to make his podcast one of the top 100 with over 1000 episodes and listened in over 125 countries.

He has taken his life to the next level and achieved both personal and professional success.

Resources:

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

00:00:08:08 – 00:00:27:17

Nick McGowan

Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.

00:00:31:22 – 00:00:34:03

Nick McGowan

Hey, Kevin, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

00:00:34:11 – 00:00:40:02

Kevin Palmieri

I am doing well, Nick. Thank you so much for having me. We had a little conversation behind the scenes, but I’m excited to see where we go in front.

00:00:40:11 – 00:01:00:13

Nick McGowan

Yeah, exactly. Especially, man, I love having another podcast host on the show. I have them every so often and it’s stuff like that where you start talking about the shit that we talked about right before, just like a normal podcast though. So dude, I appreciate it. And you’ve had your show for a long time. You’re what, over well over a thousand episodes at this point, right?

00:01:00:13 – 00:01:08:12

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah. Yeah. As of today, 1141 we recorded this morning. So yeah, we are we are across the threshold and I never thought we would get to.

00:01:08:19 – 00:01:25:16

Nick McGowan

Wow. That’s awesome. So that’s one of the that’s one of the reasons why I want to have you on here. But as the Mindset Self-mastery show, there’s a lot of shit that you’ve gone through that will kind of get into. And with you being 1100 plus episodes and I think you’re going to be number 63 for me. So I’ve got a little ways to catch up with you.

00:01:26:06 – 00:01:33:01

Nick McGowan

But Kevin, why don’t you all set the stage for us, man? Tell us what you do. And one thing that most people don’t know about you, that’s maybe a little odd or bizarre.

00:01:33:11 – 00:02:03:22

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah. So I am Kevin Palmieri. I am the CFO, the host and the founder of Next Level University. We’re a global top 100 podcast, 1100 and somewhat episodes, top 100 show listeners in 125 plus countries. Honestly, that is really me in a nutshell. I’m a podcaster, first entrepreneur, speaker, coach, but that all really comes second to me. And I would say something that most people wouldn’t know because I don’t have a ton of followers on social media is I like rapping, I love rapping.

00:02:03:22 – 00:02:15:00

Kevin Palmieri

I feel very comfortable in front of this microphone and somebody who never had any musical inclination, if you give me an hour to to bust out some some bars, I can usually do pretty well. Pretty well.

00:02:16:06 – 00:02:21:23

Nick McGowan

Where did that come from? Did you grow up listening to rap? Were you in a household where your mom just had like eighties rap just blasting?

00:02:22:05 – 00:02:43:00

Kevin Palmieri

No, it’s interesting. I remember and this is this was weird. I remember Nelly dropped an album called Country Grammar. I believe that was one of his first albums. And I remember I listen to that in my bedroom with my mom. The unedited version. And I was like, This is unreasonably uncomfortable. Good album. It was a good album. But I remember.

00:02:43:04 – 00:02:46:02

Kevin Palmieri

Were you I’m assuming you were on AOL Instant Messenger?

00:02:46:02 – 00:02:46:23

Nick McGowan

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:02:47:09 – 00:03:05:17

Kevin Palmieri

I was. I was virtual with a buddy of mine and we said, hey, let’s try to rap. Like I’ll say cat, you say fat, I’ll say bad, you say bad. Let’s just rap words or rhyme words back and forth. And when we started to get into like two, three, four or five syllables, I realized that I could do it and he couldn’t.

00:03:05:17 – 00:03:17:19

Kevin Palmieri

And that for me was like, Oh, maybe I’m good at this. Like, I understand the syllables. I understand the way it’s supposed to flow. Okay, cool. And then I started just writing on on Facebook notes, and that was really kind of the beginning for me.

00:03:18:11 – 00:03:25:12

Nick McGowan

What a cool thing. So do you actually do you have an album that you’re either dropping or you want to tell us that you’re like, Oh, I did this album like ten years ago?

00:03:25:15 – 00:03:39:20

Kevin Palmieri

No, I think at some point I probably will, honestly. But I it’s hard, right? There’s so much going on that I don’t want to I don’t want to take time away from the main thing to do something like that. When I know in the future I’ll have the means and the time to do to do more of that.

00:03:39:20 – 00:03:46:02

Kevin Palmieri

So in the future, Nick, I will send it to you first. Until then, it will remain behind behind closed doors.

00:03:46:13 – 00:04:11:10

Nick McGowan

Well, it’s interesting that you say that. You know, there’s I think there’s a thing about being passionate about what you’re doing, loving what you’re doing. But you at times, at least for myself and a lot of people I talk to, they need to step the fuck away at times like you. Have you ever found yourself just kind of beating upon something where you just takes you focusing your energy a bit differently, maybe rapping or something just to be able to kind of get out of that space that you’re in?

00:04:11:18 – 00:04:31:09

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, I’m a big I’m a big mixed martial arts fan. So when there is fight cards on, I work I’ll work in the morning on Saturday, but then I kind of shut it down. But the thing about it is, in a way, the goals that we have are dictating the day to day. So honestly, no, I haven’t shut it down in five years.

00:04:31:18 – 00:04:59:18

Kevin Palmieri

Really. Like I haven’t taken a week. I haven’t taken a day off in probably five years because the mission that we have is to change the world. And it’s not going to happen if I’m out here. BSN And hanging out, there’s a lot that has to go into it. So but I always and I always try to preface that with, look, if your, your goals are going to dictate the journey and it’s very important that you understand that, especially when you’re setting big goals, but also if you want to be a millionaire, quote unquote, that might not be as challenging as you think you’re still be.

00:04:59:18 – 00:05:12:16

Kevin Palmieri

You know, you’ll be able to do vacation and have weekends and go to the kids soccer practice or whatever there is. There’s an important understanding that your results that you want are going to dictate the journey. And I try to make sure I’m focused on that.

00:05:13:03 – 00:05:33:06

Nick McGowan

Yeah, that makes sense. And I’m sure you’re also smart enough. There are times where you just go, All right, I don’t want to do this anymore. But you talked about being able to step away. So kind of thinking through a week when maybe there’s like a UFC or something like that. On Mondays, you’re like, All right, maybe I need to crunchies a little quicker because I don’t want Saturday to come bite me in the ass when I just want to go watch that.

00:05:33:15 – 00:05:57:07

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, yeah, 100%. The other thing too, though, is we’re in this interesting time now where finally demand has caught up with supply. So like there’s an an unreal amount of demand for my time, which I’m so grateful for it. We’ve been working so hard for that, but Saturdays it’s like there coaching calls, there’s podcast, there’s team stuff. So Saturday is now a working day too.

00:05:57:17 – 00:06:10:00

Kevin Palmieri

Even if I do all the work on Monday through Friday, there’s always going to be something to do Saturday. Sunday is Family Day. I do not do anything front facing Sunday I’ll I’ll do some behind the scenes stuff some back office work, but only like 3 hours. Nothing crazy on Sundays.

00:06:10:11 – 00:06:40:13

Nick McGowan

Gotcha. So let’s talk about the 1100 episodes you’ve done so far. And I know their milestones should. Even when I first started, people were telling me, if you get to do number one, that’s huge. If you do ten, most people don’t get to ten. If you get to 50 or 100, but you’ve started to hit those clips. If you look back at some of those and knowing the conversations you’ve had and about this being about mindset and self-mastery, how would you say that your life has changed over the course of those milestones?

00:06:40:13 – 00:06:47:13

Nick McGowan

And can you look back and go, you know, it was about episode 98 where things really changed or, you know, 428, you know.

00:06:48:05 – 00:07:06:12

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, I always say this. It took me 150 podcast episodes to feel confident as a podcaster. Before that, when we would have guests on, I wanted to jump out the window because in my mind it’s in posture Syndrome. This person’s going to know you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What if you mispronounce their name, which has happened?

00:07:06:12 – 00:07:34:02

Kevin Palmieri

Of course. What if you forget what you want to ask? What if you mess up? What? Whatever. What if you’re sweating through your clothes? That for me, I crossed the chasm after that because it was like, okay, you’re not. It’s not pretend anymore. Now you’re doing a real thing. Most people don’t get to where you’ve gotten. And then eventually I think we were probably like, maybe 300 episodes in 350 episodes and and we ended up getting our own custom studio.

00:07:34:09 – 00:07:56:04

Kevin Palmieri

And that was a shift for me too, because it was like I felt more like a professional. And I think you have to check in with does your environment match your energy? If your environment doesn’t match your energy and your attitude, that’s very, very important. Like my studio is set up in a special way because I want it to be this way for me because it helps me remember podcast or podcast or podcast or so.

00:07:56:13 – 00:08:13:09

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah. And there were some guests that we had too that I didn’t, number one, I didn’t expect to get and I didn’t expect the interviews to go as well as they did. And I think that was kind of like a chasm of, oh, you know what? We’re actually pretty good at this and we’re getting a lot of really positive feedback.

00:08:13:13 – 00:08:19:05

Kevin Palmieri

If these people believe in what we’re doing, I could probably stand to believe in myself a little bit more that was very important for me.

00:08:19:16 – 00:08:23:00

Nick McGowan

Yeah. Was there any that come to mind? You’re like, Man, this was kind of a pivotal one.

00:08:23:16 – 00:08:41:22

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah. Evan Carmichael. We interviewed Evan Carmichael. For those who don’t know, he’s very big on YouTube. He’s spoken with Tony Robbins. He’s a very successful entrepreneur. And he we were scheduled to interview him for 20 minutes. And we got to the end of the 20 minutes. I said, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Plug your book.

00:08:41:22 – 00:09:05:09

Kevin Palmieri

You know, whatever whatever you do at the end of podcasts. And he said, no, no, no, keep going. I want to keep going with you guys because you guys are really good. I’m having a blast. You guys are awesome. I want to keep going. That interview was one of the best we’ve ever done. Then they his team emailed us like six months later, invited us up to Toronto to interview him in person at his Toronto dance, also, which he owns.

00:09:05:18 – 00:09:22:15

Kevin Palmieri

He ended up speaking at one of our events that we we co-hosted and he actually just DM’d me out of the blue. So we had a very surreal moment for a kid who did not expect to get to this point. He sent me a video and said, Hey, Kev, congrats on a thousand episodes. Let’s do a 1000 episode reunion.

00:09:23:06 – 00:09:40:23

Kevin Palmieri

Just reach out to the team and we’ll get a book. So somebody at the beginning that we wanted as a guest and weren’t sure if we could get is now DMing me saying, hey, I want to come back on so that yeah it’s come full circle in a lot of ways and it feels really good but it’s just a reminder in the beginning you can’t expect much.

00:09:41:03 – 00:09:44:05

Kevin Palmieri

It compounds, it takes time. It’s just par for the course.

00:09:45:01 – 00:10:08:17

Nick McGowan

Yeah. I mean, easy to say, harder to do for most people. But as you get further and further and further, I’m sure at some point have you experience where you’re like, well, you know, if I can come this far, can’t really turn around now, can I can’t really shut it down. So you’re already in it. Does that bring a different does that bring a different set of problems mentally at that point?

00:10:08:17 – 00:10:28:19

Kevin Palmieri

So I was making I made $100,000 when I was 26, and I ended up sitting on the edge of a bed debating suicide because I was so miserable with my life. And I thought money and the girlfriend and the body and the tattoos and the car or whatever, I thought all that stuff was going to fix my the inner voids that I had.

00:10:28:19 – 00:10:44:13

Kevin Palmieri

And when it didn’t, it actually made it worse because I said, well, now, now what? I don’t know what else to do. So when I left that job, I told my mother and I told my grandmother, I said, I will never punch a clock for somebody else ever again. I will either succeed at this or I will die trying there.

00:10:44:22 – 00:11:08:07

Kevin Palmieri

There was no other option for me and I think part of it is the ego part of me and the pride. But I said it publicly. I said, Look, I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to do this for as long as I can. And I had the the fear I had Nick was I remember in the very beginning, my process of thinking was, I need to find a way to make rent at the end of the month.

00:11:08:07 – 00:11:24:10

Kevin Palmieri

I just going to make enough money to pay rent. I got to make enough money to get this car payment down. Like that was where I was. I was in the pool. I was so obsessed with just learning how to swim. I didn’t want to go back. I was so afraid that one day I was going to wake up and have to go back.

00:11:24:17 – 00:11:41:17

Kevin Palmieri

I was terrified of that and I think that made me do a lot of things that I probably wouldn’t have normally done learning sales, learning about money going so far outside of my comfort zone to the point where I was having panic attacks regularly, I don’t think I would have done any of that stuff. So it’s a pressure for sure.

00:11:41:17 – 00:11:58:03

Kevin Palmieri

It’s a heavy, heavy, heavy weight. But I don’t know that I would have succeeded any other way because I think if I I do think if I had a plan B, I probably would have would have taken it because it got hard. I mean, it was you know, there are two years in a row, my I couldn’t buy Christmas presents for my girlfriend.

00:11:58:03 – 00:12:15:19

Kevin Palmieri

She’s my wife now, but I, I couldn’t afford Christmas presents. My car broke down and I was literally driving to the studio with a car that the brakes barely worked. There was a hole in one of the pistons. So every time I stopped, it would stall. Or any time I was going like below ten miles an hour, the car would just stall.

00:12:15:19 – 00:12:31:00

Kevin Palmieri

And I’m driving an hour to the studio three times a week to record episodes. And I was in debt a ton. I had creditors after me at one point. It was brutal. It was brutal. So if I think if I could have gone back and I had an out, I might have taken it. So I’m very grateful I didn’t in retrospect.

00:12:31:11 – 00:12:36:06

Nick McGowan

Yeah, what a thing. You’re like, Oh, thank God. It burnt all the ships. All of them are done.

00:12:36:16 – 00:12:37:01

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah.

00:12:37:09 – 00:12:56:07

Nick McGowan

I it’s it’s an interesting perspective, man, especially being so far into what you’re doing. I know there are a lot of people that are debating that jump from either their job they have now or from the business they have into a different business. And there are often times I get asked the question, like, how do you know when to do that?

00:12:56:13 – 00:13:01:03

Nick McGowan

How do you know when to actually go forward and do that thing? So what sort of advice would you give those people?

00:13:01:15 – 00:13:23:09

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, I always say, pick your mud. So there’s any time you’re transitioning from one thing to another, you’re going to have there’s a couple different pieces of mud or I guess paths of mud. You could have a number one. You leave the safety of what you’re doing and you risk being broke and you risk circumstantially failing. If you have a family, you have a home, you have a mortgage, you have car, you know, you have kids.

00:13:23:09 – 00:13:40:08

Kevin Palmieri

That’s a different thing. So I always say, pick your mud. What I mean by that is if you’re working 45 hours a week, it’s something you don’t like. Then start working 5 hours a week, something you do, and then get that 5 hours to ten and that you know that 10 to 15. Is it going to suck? Yeah, absolutely.

00:13:40:13 – 00:14:01:06

Kevin Palmieri

But is it going to suck as much as you doing something you don’t like for the next 25 years? No, that’s the mud. The mud is there will be discomfort from discomfort to happiness or joy or fulfillment, whatever it is. But most people only see unhappy. It’s going to create more unhappiness for me to try this, I don’t believe it will be worth it.

00:14:01:11 – 00:14:24:05

Kevin Palmieri

So yeah, you number one, you have to believe it will be worth it. If you do not believe the shift will be worth it, you will not do it. And you have to figure out what level of mud is the most sustainable for you. Leaving a six figure income for most people to become a broke podcaster is not sustainable because I didn’t have kids, my car was paid off.

00:14:24:10 – 00:14:46:09

Kevin Palmieri

Shortly after I left, I lived with my buddy. I was paying 500 bucks a month for rent, so I set myself up circumstantially. My mud was being broke. Other people’s mud might be staying at the job a year and a half longer than they want to. But yeah, you really got to get very, very clear on the mud that you’re willing to crawl through and ask yourself, do I believe it will be worth it, my bones?

00:14:46:09 – 00:14:52:09

Kevin Palmieri

Because if you don’t, you will not continue because it doesn’t make sense logically as a human being to do something you don’t believe will be worth it.

00:14:53:04 – 00:15:12:06

Nick McGowan

Well, logic when you’re talking about crazy people doesn’t really matter. They don’t fucking care. They can’t handle it because they’re not logical, you know? So it’s funny, I have conversations at times. I’m like, Well, is that person being logical with you or they being crazy? Like They’re fucking being crazy? I’m like, Well, how do you do your crazy with crazy?

00:15:12:06 – 00:15:27:15

Nick McGowan

Okay, got it then, you know, thinking about even out on yourself when you think about that, if you’re in a spot where you’re like, I want to get out of this thing or I want to do this. Now, in your case, where you would you let go, or is that something where you literally had to shift yourself out of it?

00:15:27:15 – 00:15:30:17

Nick McGowan

Like, I have to pull myself out of this thing or it’s all going to fucking end.

00:15:31:11 – 00:15:51:13

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah. No, it was at that point I was already mentally out. I was calling out of work, I was leaving the job site early, I was showing up late, I was already mentally out. And what happened was I was working a job. So the vast majority of the work that we did was on the road. So I lived on the road the year I made the most money.

00:15:51:13 – 00:16:09:17

Kevin Palmieri

I lived on the road for ten months. Every single week I lived in hotels. After that year we were doing a job close to where I live, so I was able to commute. And I remember I called my company, I said, Hey, you don’t know this yet. I don’t know how you mess this up, but we’re not working.

00:16:09:17 – 00:16:26:07

Kevin Palmieri

Second shift on this job. We’re working first shift, and I can’t do that because I have prior commitments a.k.a the podcast and I was told I’ll be working second shift and they ended up calling me back and saying like, we’re going to have a problem if you don’t if you don’t work this shift. And I said, I don’t care.

00:16:26:07 – 00:16:42:22

Kevin Palmieri

Like whatever problem we’re going to have, we’re going to have I’m not coming. I have podcast stuff to do and I’m going to do that and whatever, wherever the chips fall, they fall. And then they messaged me later that day or the next day, and they said, Hey, do you think we should part ways? And I said, Yeah, yeah, I don’t think this is going to work.

00:16:44:03 – 00:17:07:13

Kevin Palmieri

I mean, it’s interesting how when your priorities shift, everything else shifts. Like the way you’ll the way you’ll accept being treated shifts the level of your self-worth and how much you value your own time will shift. You don’t want to get jerked around. So for me it was very much a grow up moment of, Look, I do not want to do this for somebody else for the rest of my life.

00:17:07:13 – 00:17:25:02

Kevin Palmieri

Like the fact that I, I have something very important to do and I can’t do it because you messed up. That’s not fair. And I may never get this opportunity again. I may never get this opportunity again. So what that was, was we were working out with one of our friends. She her name’s Catherine Nash. She’s very big on Instagram.

00:17:25:12 – 00:17:40:00

Kevin Palmieri

And we went to the gym with her. We later interviewed her and that was our biggest episode at the time. That was the biggest episode we had for the first couple of years. If we didn’t go to the gym and then end up interviewing her. I can tell you with certainty we wouldn’t be exactly where we are today for sure.

00:17:40:01 – 00:17:40:16

Kevin Palmieri

100%.

00:17:41:12 – 00:18:03:04

Nick McGowan

Wow. And you wouldn’t have had that had you not gone through all the stuff that you’d gone through. But that takes you knowing inside when things are no longer acceptable. You know, like I feel like you get to a point where you’re like, Oh, that’s that point where this is no longer happening, this is no longer allowed. And in being able to make that shift.

00:18:03:04 – 00:18:19:18

Nick McGowan

So that’s huge, man. Especially being able to look back at that stuff. Now when you think about that, let’s take those couple of years where you’re going through like you know that you’re doing the thing and you feel like you’re doing the right things, but you’ve got you know, a post that you’re driving and some shit that’s going on.

00:18:19:18 – 00:18:27:12

Nick McGowan

And just how do you manage in those moments? No. One, look, I need to just keep going and keep doing these things. But did I make the right decision?

00:18:27:22 – 00:18:46:15

Kevin Palmieri

And I tried to lean on the people around me. I’m very blessed because my business partner is just one of the most intelligent human beings ever. He’s just a genius. And he he understands everything’s going to work out because he reverse engineer is everything. I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t understand that. But I remember I, I just talk to people.

00:18:47:01 – 00:19:10:17

Kevin Palmieri

I have I had very, very good humans around me. The two people that I was closest to were both entrepreneurs. They both understood that I was living with my best friend who is becoming a real estate investor. So we I literally helped him, flipped his his first house together like we did it where we lived. So there was a lot of camaraderie with the people I was around because we understood what each other was going through.

00:19:11:07 – 00:19:31:19

Kevin Palmieri

That really was the biggest thing for me and honestly, it really was. It was the belief that ultimately, no matter what I went through, it would be worth it. It was the belief that we’re going to figure this out eventually. And when we do figure it out, none of this other shit is really going to matter. Like I’ll be able to pay off my debt, so that’s not a big deal.

00:19:31:19 – 00:19:47:01

Kevin Palmieri

Just survive. I’ll be able to find a new place to live, like whatever. Just survive. I’ll be able to get a new car. Don’t worry about it. Just survive. So I think for me, I always I don’t know if I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I think I wanted there to be one, but I think I was always aimed at that.

00:19:47:01 – 00:20:06:06

Kevin Palmieri

And I said, look, I, I just have to keep going. And I’ll also say this too, and I don’t mean any ego with this, but I’m just pretty good at suffering. I’m just my ability to suffer is is pretty high, just based on I was a bodybuilder, you know, I’ve been in the gym my whole life grappling Muay Thai, that kind of stuff.

00:20:06:06 – 00:20:16:03

Kevin Palmieri

Like you’re going to suffer quite often when you’re putting yourself in those physical situations. So I have a pretty high threshold for pain, which if I didn’t, I would have quit a long time ago.

00:20:16:23 – 00:20:21:07

Nick McGowan

Yeah. Where do you think that comes from? Is that an innate thing or were you kind of raised in that?

00:20:22:02 – 00:20:42:11

Kevin Palmieri

What I what I lacked in skill and size, I made up for in durability and resilience. I was a really good baseball player. But one of the reasons I was good is because I was reckless. I would I remember in one of the games I did a front flip over the catcher because he was holding the ball and I did a front flip over and I landed on my head in the plate and I was safe.

00:20:42:19 – 00:21:09:14

Kevin Palmieri

But that’s that’s one of the things that I had that other people just weren’t willing to do. When I when I did something, I did it fall out. The other thing is, I wanted to be when I was younger, I wanted to wrestle in the WWE, WWF at the time, and my cousin and I used to put on pretend matches and he I remember he used to hit me in the head with a legitimate metal folding chair, not like one of those lightweight ones, one of those heavy ones.

00:21:10:00 – 00:21:25:04

Kevin Palmieri

He used to throw me into the thorn bushes. He beat the hell out of me with a wiffle ball bat one time, and there’s a sick part of me that kind of liked it was like, Oh, this isn’t that bad. I can I can handle it. So, you know, after that, I wanted to be a stuntman and then I wanted to fight professionally with mixed martial arts.

00:21:25:04 – 00:21:41:22

Kevin Palmieri

So I think for me, it’s just like it’s not that bad, you know, it’s if there is a if there’s an end to it, it’s not that big of a deal. You have tattoos, I’m sure. Like when I sat down to get this done, I was like, Oh my God, I have to sit for another 5 hours. No way am I going to make this.

00:21:41:22 – 00:22:08:12

Kevin Palmieri

But as you get closer to the end, it gets a little bit easier. So yeah, I think for me what I lacked in skill I could get through with just pure resilience and, and that’s really, that’s really served me later in life. Even that job I had, we would I remember we would wake up it, you know, two in the morning, we would drive 5 hours to a job site and then I’d work an eight hour day and then I’d go to the gym.

00:22:08:12 – 00:22:27:13

Kevin Palmieri

And that was like normal. That wasn’t part of the back of a job. That was like, that’s what you do, you know, that was just kind of kind of normal. So I think a lot of that I’ve adopted to today and and that’s just a great message for everybody out there of the fact that you might be doing something right now that you absolutely hate, but you might be putting things away for later, right?

00:22:27:13 – 00:22:35:05

Kevin Palmieri

You might be putting money in the bank for skills that you might need later, and you never know until you reflect. But it’s possible. It’s very possible. It’s happening for you, too.

00:22:35:11 – 00:22:58:23

Nick McGowan

Yeah, it’s a huge point. Steppingstones. You know, some people get really, really, really upset with things that are happening. And it could be easy to be like kind of a fly on a wall and be like, yes, but from my perspective, I can see these things. But when you’re in it, it’s difficult to see that. But being the understanding of, all right, maybe this is just kind of a stepping stone, even just changing that perspective a bit and going, Oh, well, what the fuck sort of questions do I ask then?

00:22:59:09 – 00:23:08:10

Nick McGowan

How do I look at this thing a little differently? So from you kind of hitting all these different stepping stones, what led you to the podcast?

00:23:08:10 – 00:23:31:15

Kevin Palmieri

Mostly accidental. I was interviewed, so my business partner had a YouTube show and he said, Hey, I want to interview you about fitness and mindset. And I was like, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if the hell we’re going to talk about I’m I have no idea what I’m doing, but yeah, whatever. And he interviewed me for an hour and a half and then when we got to the end of the interview, I said to one of my other buddies, I said, Imagine if you could do that for a living.

00:23:32:06 – 00:23:57:15

Kevin Palmieri

And he said, Well, there’s there’s people that can and I did a bunch of research on what equipment I needed and all that. And then right before that, I had I had really started to hate my job. So it was very much I found a new purpose with the understanding that, okay, money is not the issue. I feel like my awareness has been super low and if my awareness was higher, I would be happier.

00:23:57:19 – 00:24:18:14

Kevin Palmieri

Okay, cool. What does that mean? And then I saw the opportunity to create a vehicle with a podcast, and then I created my my first podcast, which evolved to today is it was hyper conscious, it was called the Hyper Conscious Podcast, acutely aware, understanding everything that it just came in a very, a very aligned, opportunistic time for me.

00:24:18:14 – 00:24:25:16

Kevin Palmieri

So yeah, I was interviewed, I said, imagine if you could do that for a living. Somebody said You could. And then I went and bought all the equipment and I was off to the races shortly thereafter.

00:24:25:16 – 00:24:41:04

Nick McGowan

Love that shit. We’re just like, and here we are and it just works. Yeah, it’s interesting how that stuff works because I hear different people at times that are like, Man, I thought of the idea of doing a podcast, but I don’t know. And then the time hits and they’re like, Oh, I want to do it specifically about this thing.

00:24:41:04 – 00:25:00:12

Nick McGowan

I want to talk about this thing, and there’s just passion in it. And I think that’s kind of a message for people that are even in that spot in a job where they’re like, I fucking hate this. Think about what you hate and what you enjoy, and then start to do a little bit of that. And that’s kind of the message you get from you too, with like if you’re working the 40 hours, can you work another five doing something else that you want to do?

00:25:00:20 – 00:25:10:22

Nick McGowan

So when you were first working this was that one of those things where you thought, maybe I can do this kind of alongside and hate this a little less? Or you just like, and here we go, fuck that. I’m out.

00:25:12:09 – 00:25:35:05

Kevin Palmieri

I If I didn’t have that suicidal moment, I probably would have kept doing both. And honestly, I probably would have the podcast probably would have died really, I tried to do both, but it’s very hard. It’s very hard when it doesn’t seem like it matters in the beginning because nobody’s listening. You’re not getting any love. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

00:25:35:22 – 00:25:54:05

Kevin Palmieri

So, yeah, I, I don’t think I was aware of what was actually going to happen. And I also didn’t have a high enough awareness to understand that you could actually be successful with a podcast. When I started this, there was no goals of making money. I had no I had no idea how to do it. There was no plan for that.

00:25:54:12 – 00:26:12:04

Kevin Palmieri

I just wanted to have deep conversations with deep people. That’s how it started for me and I edit the show on the road and all that, but no, I definitely I probably would have done it for like a year and then I probably would have called it quits because I wouldn’t have gotten any results and said, okay, that was that was a fun try, too.

00:26:12:08 – 00:26:15:08

Nick McGowan

Sure. But that’s that’s not how your personality is.

00:26:15:08 – 00:26:35:02

Kevin Palmieri

So you’d be surprised. Nick I don’t a lot of this personality is new to me. The I’m not a natural high achiever. Like that’s just not that’s not who I was. I’m really hard worker. I’ll grind my face off. But I’m not a visionary. I’m not somebody who can, like, see how things will play out into the future.

00:26:35:10 – 00:26:51:13

Kevin Palmieri

And believe it or not, I’m not as ambitious as I think people would guess a lot of it’s adopted over the last five years. This isn’t I’ve changed more in the last five years than I did in the first 28, for sure. For sure. So I think people would probably be surprised.

00:26:52:03 – 00:27:12:11

Nick McGowan

Well, you’d also touched on the people that are around you. So if you had shitty people around you, then yeah, you probably wouldn’t be thinking this way if you hadn’t gone through all these things. But I think it also really gets back to that that deep passion to just say, well, fuck you guys went outwork you because I at least know I can do that and I can figure this thing out.

00:27:12:11 – 00:27:31:17

Nick McGowan

And I’m not going to let myself stop from that, but I want to touch on the suicide stuff. So when you’re in that moment, not even the suicidal moment, but the moments that were hovering around it for the weeks kind of leading up to it and all that sort of stuff. I feel like that’s one of those pieces that people are aware of, but they don’t really talk about it.

00:27:32:08 – 00:27:49:00

Nick McGowan

Almost like when you think about the cell, you understand there’s the nucleus, but you don’t think about all the stuff that’s around it that’s leading up to it. And that’s really where the signs are and the stuff that’s happening. So I know that it can be a breakthrough like it was for you, like it was for me. But some people, it’s not so leading up to that.

00:27:49:00 – 00:27:57:07

Nick McGowan

What were those sort of things looking kind of like from a third party perspective? Could you see that was outside of that that you would be mindful of at this point?

00:27:58:00 – 00:28:18:06

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, it’s it’s interesting because that wasn’t that wasn’t the first time I had those thoughts. That was just the furthest those thoughts I’d ever had ever gotten. I remember I was home. We lived in Boston. It was at the time it was my girlfriend myself and we lived with another couple and we had this really nice apartment. There was three stories.

00:28:18:13 – 00:28:44:09

Kevin Palmieri

We had the loft upstairs and one day I was home alone. Everybody else was at work and I was just playing Call of Duty on the bed. And I had this moment where I put the clicker down and I just remember thinking, If this is what life is, I don’t want to do it. Everything is gray and I’m depressed and I’m not excited about anything and I’m anxious all the time and if this is what the next 70 or 80, 90 years of my life are, I don’t I don’t want to do this.

00:28:44:09 – 00:29:10:05

Kevin Palmieri

This is brutal. This this sucks. So my girlfriend came home that night and I expressed that to her vulnerably. And she she recommended I go to a therapist and I was like, no way. No, I don’t need a therapist. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. And eventually I did I went I went to a therapist in downtown Boston. And I remember walking up this spiral staircase and this old building creaking and I’m thinking, I’m going to cry.

00:29:10:21 – 00:29:35:08

Kevin Palmieri

I don’t want to answer these questions. It’s going to be brutal. And it was honestly one of the best experiences of my life because what happened, I learned more about myself. I left there with a higher awareness that I walked in with. And when you when you’re more aware, you have more opportunity to make changes. So when I when that happened, I thought I was healed because I went to therapy five or six times and I was like, I’m good, I know everything now.

00:29:35:08 – 00:29:55:15

Kevin Palmieri

I know all about myself, were good. And I think what happened was I was so burnt out, I was under slept, I was eaten like garbage. My fitness was on point because I was working out a lot, but I don’t think I understood physiologically how much damage I was doing to my body. And then that was just taking a toll on my mental health.

00:29:56:01 – 00:30:18:05

Kevin Palmieri

So I probably would have said, Kev, you’re living like a rock star, but you don’t have any of the rock star benefits like you need to sleep. You can’t stay up for 35 hours in a row like that’s bad, that’s very detrimental. And I was doing that often. So I think I probably would have tried to get to the root of your lifestyle is very toxic and that’s not helping your mental health.

00:30:18:05 – 00:30:22:04

Kevin Palmieri

I think that would have been an interesting thing to to understand and recognize earlier.

00:30:22:18 – 00:30:28:14

Nick McGowan

Well, now that you recognize it, you understand it, what is the what would your lifestyle look like now compared to what it looked like before?

00:30:29:03 – 00:30:51:08

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, I have a I have a non-negotiable amount of R and R, so I, I try to do I guess the goal is 80% on, 20% off. So if you figure if you are sleeping 8 hours a day, then that leaves 6 hours for you to do activities. So 10% of that would be 1.6 hours. 20% of that would be 3.2 hours.

00:30:51:08 – 00:31:14:07

Kevin Palmieri

So 3.2 hours of R&R. And I don’t get that. I’m probably like 9010 right now. So I get like an hour of R&R every night where I get up it when I’m on, I get up at 4:30 a.m. at the gym by five. I’m home by 630 in the office by seven, and then 7 to 6, 7 to 7 most days.

00:31:14:20 – 00:31:33:09

Kevin Palmieri

But then after that, it’s just my phone stays in the office. I don’t bring my phone into the bedroom. I spend time with my wife and we watch something. We eat in bed. We have deep, deep talks. So it’s a lot it’s a lot of output. But and this is this is important for everybody. My favorite question to ask is how aligned is your grind?

00:31:33:20 – 00:31:59:17

Kevin Palmieri

The the being on a bunch of podcasts and doing seven a week and being on 15 shows a week too. Yeah, it’s a challenge. One, it’s easier than it’s ever been to. I just have. So many reps in this arena that it takes less of my conscious energy and effort than it would somebody who’s never done it. So my grind is the most aligned it’s ever been and that’s one of the reasons we’re getting the results we’re getting, but it’s also one of the reasons it’s sustainable now, too.

00:31:59:17 – 00:32:02:13

Kevin Palmieri

So that’s important to note.

00:32:02:13 – 00:32:21:21

Nick McGowan

So that’s a big thing right there, the alignment of your grinding and how you go about it. I think to the people that I talked to that are like, this is the first show or the second show that I’m doing. I’m a little nervous. And from the host perspective, I’ve got to kind of love on them. Be like, You’re fine, everything’s going to be great.

00:32:21:21 – 00:32:41:11

Nick McGowan

You’re going to be great. It’s wonderful. Go through stuff. Then there are people like yourself that are like, You could probably be sleeping right now and we wouldn’t really know. Like you would just be having these conversations, but meanwhile you’re just completely passed out just because you’ve done it so many times. It’s like when you think about driving to the store, like you don’t think about driving to the store.

00:32:41:11 – 00:32:48:01

Nick McGowan

You just you’re magically taking your groceries out back to the car and you’re like, Oh, I should have been here 45 minutes. What?

00:32:48:06 – 00:33:06:16

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, a lot of it’s subconscious, right? When you practice something 1500 times, the just the pathways are just connected. I don’t I usually don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t really know. I don’t I don’t know what the questions are usually. I don’t look I don’t even look. I don’t want to know because if I know the questions, I’m I’m going to manufacture answers.

00:33:06:16 – 00:33:23:17

Kevin Palmieri

I want to do it. I want to figure it out live. So yeah, it’s interesting. But the other thing too is I have a very high standard for myself. That’s that’s an interesting thing too, where I don’t care if somebody else thinks my two is a ten. I know my two is a two and I want to make sure that I’m I try to overdeliver.

00:33:23:17 – 00:33:37:04

Kevin Palmieri

That’s always my goal. I people ask all the time, I don’t know if you know anything about my show. Yes, I do. I try to do research. I try to listen to an episode. I try to just do more than the the bare minimum. I don’t want to just show up with a bare minimum.

00:33:37:18 – 00:33:47:06

Nick McGowan

Gotcha. Do you feel like not looking at questions and all is potentially about bare minimum or that somebody would see it as a bare minimum? So do you go ahead of that because you’re like, I want to fucking look at your questions.

00:33:47:12 – 00:34:09:19

Kevin Palmieri

That no, for me it’s like, this is this is the thing. Most people I know you’re not sending those questions for me. I know you’re sending them for yourself. So, like, that’s fine if you want to send them to me. And those are the questions are going to use. Awesome. It doesn’t do me any benefit to know it because I would rather say honestly, Nick, I don’t think I have a good answer to that rather than like research.

00:34:09:22 – 00:34:24:00

Kevin Palmieri

Okay, what are the five things that you should be doing to build momentum? I don’t think regurgitate it. Yeah, I don’t. If I don’t know the answer. It’s my job to say honestly that’s not my my area of expertize. Like I don’t know that I can add that much value there, so I’d rather just be real. That’s I think.

00:34:24:10 – 00:34:43:10

Kevin Palmieri

And the other thing too is you can only prepare an obviously you should prepare and focus on preparation, but I want to make sure this is who I am more than what I do. And I think the identity of, yeah, I’m just going to show up and I know I’m going to be as ready as I can. Worst case scenario goes horribly wrong.

00:34:43:10 – 00:34:49:10

Kevin Palmieri

I learn best case scenario. Hopefully I’ll impress myself. I think it’s a good approach, especially this many reps in.

00:34:50:02 – 00:35:06:06

Nick McGowan

Yeah, we, we both agree on that. I kind of think of it often as, look, I have one thing I can fall back on or a couple of things I can fall back on no matter what. But worst case scenario, if somebody looks at me, goes, Oh, you’re a complete fucking asshole. I know that I’m not a complete fucking asshole.

00:35:06:12 – 00:35:22:14

Nick McGowan

I’m a partial. So even in that case, I’m totally fine, you know, and just being able to go into it and go, Cool, what are we doing? I was having a conversation with a podcast host recently who’s talking about how they’ll get on shows, and people will expect that they have the answers to the questions that they sent them.

00:35:23:01 – 00:35:38:20

Nick McGowan

They’re like, I sent you these questions. These are the exact things. And they’ll go One by one by one where they’re like, Question one, Kevin and oh, Kevin, that’s crazy shit about your family. Oh, all question to you. Like what? I just told you crazy shit about my family. How were you not going to play jazz with that?

00:35:39:07 – 00:35:50:02

Nick McGowan

And were you kind of in that spot when you first started? Were you like, I have to kind of know what these things are specifically going to be? Or we just right off the bat you’re like, Fuck it, we’ll figure it out.

00:35:50:22 – 00:36:09:12

Kevin Palmieri

No, I was definitely the first. I, I was very regimented. I did 2 hours of research per guest we had on it. I always looked at it and again, it’s different because I had a co-host who his only thing was scratching his own curiosity. That’s just the way he’s built. He has to ask questions that he he wants to know.

00:36:09:19 – 00:36:30:06

Kevin Palmieri

My job was always to deliver value from the guest to the audience, so I usually knew more about the guest than anybody would have known that I knew. But it was my job to bring out value. So I would say I was overly prepped and but this is the problem with that. And I tell my clients this all the time, I don’t know how to explain this.

00:36:30:06 – 00:36:48:16

Kevin Palmieri

I don’t know how to visualize it. I don’t know how to get it to land. You’ve got to remove the safety net, whatever that means to you. Practice it. That’s that’s why I want to show up and not know, because then at least that can be real and worst case, I can just say honestly, Nick, I don’t know or hey, can you repeat that again?

00:36:48:16 – 00:37:08:13

Kevin Palmieri

I forgot what you said. Whatever it is that if that’s the worst thing that happens, then, then that we’re totally good where it’s way better than you think. So I, I think I realized later than I wish I did, honestly, that if you go in with a safety net, you’re almost afraid to, to fall on the safety net.

00:37:09:02 – 00:37:19:19

Kevin Palmieri

You know it’s there, but you’re so afraid to make a mistake where if you just say, honestly, let me remove safety net and just focus on being me, everything else kind of comes naturally that way.

00:37:20:09 – 00:37:44:01

Nick McGowan

Yeah. What a great way to look at that. Especially to be able to say like, well, I don’t know the next question or, you know, what’s the worst thing a lot of people will think? And this just kind of goes for almost like a metaphor for life, in a sense, where they’ll think, Oh, if I do this or if I do that, or if I have this conversation with my wife or I have this or that, like they’re going to turn into some giant, hairy, scary monster and just bite your fucking head off.

00:37:44:23 – 00:38:02:19

Nick McGowan

Most times that’s not going to happen. If it does and there’s an alien invasion, that’s a completely different set of fucking problems. Then like your argument no longer matters, man. We’ve gotten into a lot of stuff. I want to be mindful of your time. I appreciate you being on the show today. What sort of advice would you give to the audience?

00:38:02:19 – 00:38:04:11

Nick McGowan

That’s on their path towards self-mastery?

00:38:05:02 – 00:38:24:09

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, this is one of my favorite things in the world, and I’m very, very visual. I guess I’m philosophical with certain things, but one thing that stuck with me for the last five and a half, six years, your reality will become the parts of your imagination that you hold on to and pour into the longest. In five years.

00:38:24:09 – 00:38:39:09

Kevin Palmieri

Ten years you will be in a different place than you are today. I just want it to be the place of your choosing. And don’t forget that the imagination is a powerful thing. I was just a kid from a small town who want to have a podcast and I wanted to be my own boss. And that’s the thing that I focused on.

00:38:39:13 – 00:38:58:01

Kevin Palmieri

That’s the thing that I poured into. That’s the thing that I prioritized and that’s the only reason I am where I am today. There was trust me, there was very little luck involved, much to my surprise. So make sure your focused on the things that you want and not the things that you don’t want, the things that you desire and not the things that you’re afraid of.

00:38:58:05 – 00:39:01:14

Kevin Palmieri

I think you’re you’re going to be in for a different future if you can focus on that.

00:39:01:14 – 00:39:07:13

Nick McGowan

That’s awesome. Kevin, I appreciate you being on. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Hey, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

00:39:08:02 – 00:39:25:06

Kevin Palmieri

Yeah, so I always send people to the podcast. That’s where you’ll get to know us at the deepest level. Next level university. We’re on all the podcast platforms as well as YouTube. And then if you want to reach out to me, my handle on Instagram is at Never Quit Kid. I do all my own social media, so you will hear from me probably an audio message or a video.

00:39:25:10 – 00:39:27:12

Kevin Palmieri

Again, I want to I want to over deliver if I can.

00:39:28:09 – 00:39:30:15

Nick McGowan

Get stuff again. Thank you so much for being on. I appreciate it.

00:39:31:04 – 00:39:31:22

Kevin Palmieri

My pleasure, brother.

00:39:33:14 – 00:39:56:06

Nick McGowan

Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. So what did you think of the show today? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Check out the Instagram or Facebook page to join the conversation. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes and subscribe rate and leave a five star review. It helps us be found and helps others be healed.

00:39:56:18 – 00:40:17:10

Nick McGowan

If this episode opened your eyes, made you think or smile at all, then I’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends. Check out the show notes for more info from today’s episode and check out other episodes on the mindset and Self-mastery Show dot com as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and look up the mindset and self-mastery show.

00:40:18:01 – 00:40:36:09

Nick McGowan

Thanks again to our incredible guests for. Being real honest and vulnerable with us today. I’d like to thank our sponsors and most importantly, I’d like to thank you, thank you for hanging out with us today. Your support the world to us. And with that, remember, your mindset matters and so do you.