Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success.
Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick,
your host, and today my special guest is Kevin Palmieri, founder and co-host of the Next Level
University podcast. Welcome to the show, Kevin. Sheila, thank you so very much for having me.
I'm excited to chat. I am too and to learn. Well, hopefully, I was going to say you're
setting me up here. Hopefully, I can live up to the reputation you're creating for me.
Who does your podcast cater to? Our podcast, and it was never designed this way. This is just kind
of how it worked is we found out that we had a lot of emotionally driven women listening to
our show. I don't know if it was the vulnerability or the low self-worth that attracted people,
but yeah, we found out pretty quickly it was a lot of women that were listening.
And 1700 episodes later, we're going to get into some of those insights that you've learned from
all of these audience members. What was that pivotal moment that led you to do podcasting?
Podcasting what you do today. When I was 26, I was from the outside looking in very, very,
very successful. I had all the measures of success. I had a six figure. Well, it was
soon to be a six figure income. My girlfriend was a model. I had just competed in a bodybuilding
show. So I was in the best shape of my life. I had a sports car. I had all the things, all the
measures of success, but I was very, very, very miserable. You just never would have known it. I
did not believe in myself. I did not understand what self-worth was at all. I felt bad about
myself all the time. I was a shell of the person you would have thought I was.
And I proceeded to work really, really hard to make as much money as possible. Cause I assumed
if I make money, I'll feel really good about myself. Made the most money I'd ever made.
And I realized that I lived my life unconsciously. I didn't ever really have a reason to do the things
that I was doing. I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing. So I realized that for most of
my life, I lived unconsciously. The opposite of unconscious is hyper conscious. So in 2017,
when I was 27, I started a podcast called the hyper conscious podcast. And I wanted to have
cool conversations with cool people. That was it in the beginning. I fell in love with podcasting.
The second I started, as I fell out of love with my job, I don't want to do this job anymore.
I've reached the pinnacle of where I'm going to climb. And it didn't fix any of my problems.
I don't want to do it anymore. And I started to get more depressed and I started to get more
anxious. And I started to watch my mental health kind of slip down a darker path as I left for
work and I left for work and I left for work and just contextually, my job required a lot of travel.
So I was spending weeks on end living on the road, living in sketchy hotels, driving up
and down the East coast of the United States. So one morning I was working in New Jersey,
staying in a sketchy hotel, six hours away from where I lived. And when I woke up that morning,
I sat up and I slid to the edge of the bed and I was lacing up my work boots as I had done a
thousand times before. But that morning it was like there was 10 televisions onto my head at
the same time. And every single one was on a different station. Sheila, one was saying,
you're stuck at this job forever. You're never going to leave here and make more money.
This is it. You got lucky to get this job. Don't you dare leave this behind.
If you ever did leave this job, what would your friends think? Make more money than any of your
friends. And there's a lot of significance that comes with that. What would your family say?
You're the most successful person in your family by far. It's not close. What's your family going
to say? And if you did decide to leave this job, what are you going to do with your life?
You're going to be a professional podcaster. That's our fallback plan. That doesn't seem very
realistic. And it was in that moment, Sheila, where I thought to myself, well, if I was just
to take my life, I would take my problems with me. I wouldn't have to deal with any of this.
I wouldn't have to figure it out. I wouldn't have to start over. I wouldn't have to lose my reputation.
I wouldn't have to do any of that. Luckily, I have really good people in my life. I'm very blessed.
So I reached out to one of them. I explained what was going on. And he said, Kev, over the
last couple of years, your environments have remained the same, but your awareness has changed
a ton. You're way more aware than you've been, but you're still going and doing the same things
you used to do. I think it's time for you to change your environment. So 2018, I left my job
and I became a very broke, full-time entrepreneur and podcaster trying to figure out how to do this
thing. That was the shift for me. I was so depressed. I was so anxious. The necessity was
really high for me to take a chance to do something else. And I wanted a podcast. So we gave it a shot.
That was that was the goal. And we gave it a shot. Well, thank you for sharing that story.
Of course. And I'm glad that you found that friend, that strength to move forward. But it sounds like
you didn't just take action that day. It's not like, all right, I'm going to unbutton my boots.
I'm going to go launch the podcast. You what did that journey look like for you? What were some of
the challenges that you had to face? You know, transitioning from I don't know quite what your
career, what you were doing, traveling up and down the coast was right versus starting the podcast,
which requires some skills and technical skills, communication skills, way more than I had for sure.
I think the hardest things for me, a lot of the hardest parts were the internal stuff being broke,
obviously, and making money and figuring out how to make money. That was terrible, right? I was
very broke $30,000 in debt. That was terrible. But I realized very quickly that I was somebody
who had a ton of self doubt. And I had almost no belief in myself or my capabilities. And I was
wildly insecure. I just never was able to pinpoint that before. So honestly, that was some of the
hardest things I had to overcome before every time we would like do an interview. I always thought
I'm going to ask dumb questions. This person's not going to like me. I'm going to fail. I'm going to
make mistakes. It's going to be bad. That ran my life for the first several years. It took me 150
podcast episodes to feel confident as a podcast. That's a long time to do something before you
feel like you're even remotely capable. And I started to realize that I'm wild. I was wildly
insecure. It was really hard for me to see somebody very successful in me not to villainize them,
not to tear them down, not to imagine that they must have cheated, lied, steal to get their
results that they had. That was a really hard realization because it was about me. It was very
personal. Do I like myself? Am I able to like this version of Kev who's super insecure?
Sheila, those were the hardest things because they were internal. And when we did start making money,
I still had to work on those. Right. I still didn't believe in myself. I still had low self
worth. So I would say that the two biggest ones were low self belief and low self worth. Those
are the two biggest things that I dealt with. And I still have minutes and moments where I deal with
them today. So it sounds like your consistency. 150 episodes later, you found that aha moment
where you're like, Hey, I finally feel comfortable, you know, with the microphone yet today when we
met, I was like, Wow, are you always this, you know, cheery because you're a natural. I would
have thought you've had all kinds of communication skills training or perhaps a toast masters.
I appreciate that. I've I've just done this. I mean, this is probably my 2900th episode.
I've just done this thousands and thousands of times. That's all it is. It's just
that to speak to the consistency. Yeah, it's the consistency. The reason I am where I am is
because I've done it more than other people have and mostly so I can believe in my own unique
ability to do it. It just takes me a long time before it locks in like, Hey, Kev, maybe you're
kind of maybe you're kind of good at this. You're not as bad as you think. It's still
it's one of the hardest things to have self doubt. But it's also one of the most
beneficial things if you can use it as an opportunity to just over prep and over
deliver and over practice. So that's an important lesson for everybody is sometimes what feels like
your kryptonite might actually be your superpower if you can you can flip it.
Yeah, and continue growing and continue learning from our mistakes because we all make mistakes.
So how did you pick your niche? Let's get back to who you serve with your podcast and see what we
can learn from your guests and your personal experiences. Yeah, I don't I don't know if we
really picked it. I think when my business partner and I connected, we were just talking about the
stuff that we were going through. And a lot of what we were going through was being single and
heartbroken and trying to figure out how to be better partners and trying to figure out how to
be more confident and try to figure out why do I struggle with setting boundaries? Oh, does that
come from self worth? Interesting. Why do I currently and constantly run away from rejection? Is
that low self belief? Interesting. So it really became us just trying to talk about how do we grow
as men. And eventually, it transitioned into, all right, we're going to talk about consciousness,
and how to know everything about yourself and be super self aware. And then eventually that
transitioned into Okay, now I feel like we're pretty self aware. I want to talk about how to
become holistically self aware, like when Yeah, you're that's good. Like I know myself at a deep
level. But how do I know more about relationships? How do I know more about health? How do I know more
about wealth? So ultimately, our niche now is level up your life, your love, your health and your
wealth, where the place you go to if you want to get all of those improved. And now we've noticed
that it's not just women who listen anymore. Now we have a lot more men that listen, but it's humble
humans. People that listen to us are very humble, heart driven humans. We're unsexy fundamental
self improvement. I'm not going to hit you with here's how to become a millionaire tomorrow.
It's not going to happen. I'm not going to say here's how you manifest your dream partner
tomorrow. It's not going to happen. We're very unsexy with our stuff. But we're heart driven,
but no BS heart driven. I love you enough to tell you the truth. No BS. I'm going to tell you the
real truth, even if it makes me not look so good in the moment. So that's now really what our niche
and our brand has become. So if it's you and your partner, how do you help your audience?
Is it just through the podcast? Do you have any other platforms where you take their questions?
Or do you invite them to be guests on the show? So the podcast is the are free. We do it every day,
always going to be free value add to the audience. And then from there, we have a Facebook group
that gets content in every day, we have an email list, we do free monthly meetups, we have one on
one coaching, we have group coaching, we have free courses, we have paid courses, we have an app,
we have a bunch of WhatsApp groups. So there is a lot going on behind the scenes. And ultimately,
our thought is no matter where you end up in the business, whether it's always free or always paid,
our goal is to add as much value to you as humanly possible. And that's really how we we help the
the community. It's you work with us with one on one, you work with us in group coaching.
It really depends on where the person is and where they're trying to get to. But our business
is built on adding value. If we're not adding value, we're not we're not helping. And we want to help.
What is your next milestone?
I would say the next milestone is probably when we cross two thousand episodes.
In the beginning, we would celebrate every like 50. It's like I episode 50, episode 100, 150.
And then I think when we got to 500, we started celebrating like every 250. And then we went to
a thousand. It was like, all right, maybe every 500. And I think as of today, we're at 700, 1770
or 1780. So when we get to 2000, that'll probably be pretty surreal for me, because that's a that's
a lot of episodes. And then after that, probably when we get to another million listens or at like
one point one million, when we get to two, that'll be a it's weird. I didn't see any of this happening.
I didn't predict any of this. This all feels very surreal to me. That's why I try to show up with
positive energy all the time, because I'm very grateful. So, yeah, 2000 episodes, two million
listens, those will be the next milestones for us. Well, I love it now. And you've monetized it.
You've turned it into a business way beyond the podcast with everything that you mentioned.
So if anyone wants to find out more about you or your business or your podcast, can you share
with our audience where they can find you? Yes. Just search Next Level University. You'll see us.
We're on all the podcast platforms. Every episode is in four K on YouTube as well. And then our
website is next level universe dot com. Sheila and I had a little giggle behind the scenes.
It's next level universe. Somebody wanted a lot of money for the other
URL and we were not willing to pay it at that time. So the podcast is university website is universe.
Yes, your branding should all be the same. And I'm still that is true. I'm going to help you
find that perfect domain. It's just universe. I typed it in wrong. I'm like this page doesn't
exist. No, no, you typed it in right. You did. So if you could share one out of all of these
episodes, all of these people that you've helped. Right. And I loved humble humans. I'm wondering why
perhaps you don't start a new one or do an episode called humble humans.
But if you ought to use that title someplace, I like if you could share a key takeaway or a piece
of advice. So humble humans can take that next step in their life. What would that be?
Yeah, I remember we interviewed someone early on and I was like, my goodness, what a story and what
a level of adversity that person had to overcome. We'll probably never hear a story like that again.
And the next guest had one very similar and the next guest had one very similar and the next
guest had one very similar. And eventually I put together that if you do things the right way in a
certain order with a certain belief system and you work on yourself, your adversity can be your
advantage. The thing that you're going through right now that is terrible might end up being
the thing that you dedicate your life to helping other people avoid in the future.
I, my goal is to be the person that I needed at my lowest point. My adversity
became the advantage that then became the purpose. I think it's very similar and I think it's very
appropriate for a lot of people. That was a lesson and a pattern I saw. And all of these people were
living in their calling, living in their purpose, living in their mission, trying to help people
avoid the stuff that they struggled with. So you might be going through something right now
that might end up eventually being the greatest gift you've ever been given because then it becomes
your purpose, your mission, your being. And it might be hard to believe that in the moment, but
I know that I would have struggled to believe it as well. And now I am hopefully an example of that.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. You're very welcome.
And I encourage everyone to tune in the Next Level University. It's available on the very same
platform you're listening to this podcast today to hear more. And thank you all for joining us
in another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.