ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown

SPEAKERS
Kevin Palmieri (70%), Dave Erickson (20%), Botond Seres (10%)

Dave Erickson 0:03
Can your emotional and mental state 2X your business growth? Want to improve how to deal with life and business stresses? We are going to get mental to discover how you can change your mental and emotional state to grow your business, and then use a podcast to help others on this ScreamingBox Podcast. Please like our podcast and subscribe to our channel to get notified when the next podcast is released.

Does your state of mind and emotional health directly affect your business? How can you improve your mental and emotional state to grow your business and help others as well?

Welcome to the ScreamingBox technology and business rundown podcast. In this podcast I Dave Erickson and my esteemed co-host Botond Satish are going to get mental with Kevin Palmieri, CFO, founder and co-host of Next Level University, a top global 100 self improvement podcast. After hitting rock bottom in his 20s, Kevin went on a holistic self improvement journey to overcome his anxiety, depression and to finally live a happy life. As a result, he now has a successful podcast earning six figures with a content base of 1000s of episodes, and additional training and speeches on next level universe.com. Many of Kevin's podcast speeches and training involves discussions about mental health, emotional stability, and how to deal with life and business challenges that people and entrepreneurs face every day. So Kevin, how to hitting rock bottom change your life?

Kevin Palmieri 1:54
First of all, thank you both for having me. I appreciate it very much. Yeah, for me, I made six figures in my mid 20s, I assumed external results was going to fix internal voids. That was not the case. So I ended up starting a podcast because I figured you know what I've lived most of my life unconsciously. The opposite of unconscious is hyper conscious. I'm gonna start a podcast all about becoming hyper conscious. I fell in love with podcasting, as I fell out of love with my job because I reached the pinnacle of quote unquote success at my job, and I was not willing to do what it took to get there again. And then I ended up sitting on the edge of a bed contemplating suicide the next year because I was so miserable, I was so misaligned. I had very little fulfillment in my life. I was always working, I was always tired. I was always answering messages. I just, I felt trapped. And I felt stuck. So rock bottom changed my life, because it created the necessity for me to say, Okay, what do I actually want to do? And that was really the first time I'd ever asked myself that question, and sat with it and forced myself to answer and ended up leaving my job three or four months later, and then starting the very challenging journey of being a very broke entrepreneur, very unsuccessful. podcaster. And that was in 2018. So it's been a long journey since then.

Dave Erickson 3:13
People think that just making a podcast and it just instantly becomes successful, is the illusion that you have, you're into a rude awakening. On the other hand, I love doing podcasts, and I love learning and growing through doing them and helping others do the same. So I'm sure that that's quite fulfilling.

Kevin Palmieri 3:35
Oh definitely, and I get to do what I love. I I think a lot of us, and I was very guilty of this, a lot of us, we dive into a pool, and we convince ourselves that we're doing what we're doing, because we're passionate about it. When in reality, we're doing something because it's profitable. And then we try to convince ourselves we're passionate about it. For me, I was really passionate about podcasting, I still am, I love it, I'm absolutely in love with it. I wanted to figure out how to stay in the pool. I got in the pool and said I love this water. I need to learn how to swim, I need to learn how to tread water. When a lot of us, we do something because we convince ourselves we're passionate about it. But we are trying to get out of that pool as soon as humanly possible. The second we can retire we go. The second we get our pension we go. That isn't really the way I think humans are supposed to live their lives. And again, it took me many years to figure that out.

Botond Seres 4:25
So Kevin, as a CFO and the founder of a successful podcast. I mean, I'm sure you encounter many, many entrepreneurs and just busy people as usual. Have you observed any sort of mental and emotional health patterns impacting their business performance and just their personal lives?

Kevin Palmieri 4:44
One of the biggest things we've seen is most people either struggle with inaccurate self worth or inaccurate self belief. And all I mean by that is there's a lot of people out there that don't believe in their own unique abilities to create a successful business they start, but then they get stuck in imposter syndrome. And I don't know how to do this. And I'm afraid to ask for help. There's other people who have delusionally high self-belief where they think they're going to win by default. And that's just not going to happen either. Then if we look at the self worth side, there are people out there who do not believe that they deserve to be successful. So they unfortunately, self sabotage everything they have going on. And then on the other end of that there are people who have delusionally high self worth who it's almost like they can't see what they're doing wrong, because they think they're doing everything right. Now, I know those aren't necessarily mental health things. But we've seen a lot of that and low self worth can lead to depression, low self belief can lead to people not taking action, and then not getting the results and then feeling bad about themselves and it can lead to that. So that's really the big thing that we've identified. I had very low self belief, I had very low self worth, I didn't think I was very valuable. I acted that way and I got results based on that. So that is one of the most common things we've seen over the last six years and working with many, many different people, I would say, misaligned self worth, misaligned self belief, and then the manifestation of what those actually bring.

Botond Seres 6:16
It's funny you mentioned that, that you used to have really low self worth and low self esteem. I can start with, on the other end of the scale. I had way too much chioce. And then I, right now I feel like it overcorrected. So now it's a bit too low. Do you see that as anything that happens? Is it a usual thing?

Kevin Palmieri 6:39
We call it the Drive to Five. So somebody who has very low self worth self belief, whatever it may be, is zero, and doesn't mean you don't have any, but just for this zero, somebody who has very, very high as 10, the goal is to get to five. Unfortunately, sometimes you go by five, and you end up with three, sometimes you go by five, and you end up at seven, we had somebody new join our team recently, and I quite literally on the first call with this person said, I want you to be very, very careful, because you're going to have more people pouring into you than ever. And they're quite literally or not many communities like we have within our team, I said, you're probably going to get a little arrogant, because you're going to get confident you're just going to keep going. I said, so just, so just be aware of that, it most likely will happen. It's happened to me, it's happened to everybody. So yes, it is definitely something we have seen. It's definitely something I've experienced as well, I understand very well.

Dave Erickson 7:38
So what are some of the, I don't know, tools or methods that people can use to help them try to find five, right to to help them bounce, and obviously throughout life, it goes up and down. It doesn't stay the same throughout life, you're always having to kind of adjust it. As things happen. What are some of the things though, that you find important.

Kevin Palmieri 8:04
At the end of the day, action is the cure all from either end. So what I always say is, if you're low on the Drive to Five, you have to start fear chasing. So what I used to do in the very beginning, I would, I used to track five habits, I would work out every day I post on social media, I track my finances, I track our listens, and I would do something called fear chasing. And every day I would say okay, what did I do today? That scared me. Alright, let me check that off., t me make a check how many things that I do this week. So if you are low on the Drive to Five, especially when it comes to belief, we have to figure out what is a level. So if you have a level two belief, what is the level three action that you can take? I think a lot of us have been deluded into thinking we must set massive goals that scare the hell out of us, when in reality, a lot of us are already scared. The last thing we need to do is set goals up for failure. So if you have low self worth, low self belief, boundaries for low self worth is a great place to start. Low self belief we have to set small goals and we have to build some self trust. If you're high on either, you need to get humbled. So my business partner one day said I could run, I think I could run a marathon on a whim. And I said what do you mean? Oh, yeah, sure. And, and, he said, I'm gonna run a marathon this weekend. And I was like, okay, and he said, I need it. I need to know whether or not I can do it. And if I can't do it, I need to be humbled. He's very self aware. He ended up, that the first half was very easy. And they said by the end of it, he was walking and he felt broken completely and it humbled him. So it's almost like if you're low, you need to be lifted up. If you're high, you need to be cut down to five. We're not very good at cutting people down. That's why our team tends to be on the lower end of the Drive to Five. I'm not good at knocking people down. I don't like it. It's weird. It makes me uncomfortable. I feel like a jerk. I don't like doing it. But as somebody who did not have any belief in themselves It's very easy for me to lift other people up. Because most people that are attracted to our community are better than they think. Now, there are a lot of people that aren't as good as they think I'm not good at knocking them down. So that is what I would say, Action. Action is the cure all, we either have to create proof of positivity or proof of contrast that you're not really where you think you are,

Dave Erickson 10:22
Yeah, it seems to me like knocking, the knocking down part is more coming from yourself, meaning you have to do something and fail at it. Whereas the uplifting part is better done by the community helping to reaffirm that you have values. Is that correct?

Kevin Palmieri 10:43
Yeah, I would say that's fair. The problem is, if you're very high on the Drive to Five, sometimes you need somebody to challenge you, you need somebody to give you a little kick in the butt. So this is a good example and I don't mean any negativity about this, this is just a really good example of this. So we have a group coaching program that we do. And we were the second or third call into one of our groups. And I said, How's everybody doing? Is everybody finding value, how, how's everybody doing? And one of the things that we do in that group, as everybody tracks their habits, myself and Alan included, and you can see our habits, you can see our percentages, you can see what we're doing. Somebody butted in, they said, Honestly, I should be running this group coaching, like I should have my own one of these, I shouldn't even be in this group. And I said, I mean this respectfully, but you got 65% of your habits tracked last week, I've tracked 27 Habits every day for the last four months, that's why I get to coach and that's why you're right now a student. That was just a gentle level set of I don't think you're as good as you actually think you are. And nobody else is going to be able or willing to tell you that. I hate it. I know, it makes me sound like a jerk, it made me feel very uncomfortable. But that person signed up for growth. Growth for that person is not necessarily me saying, Hey, you can do it. growth for me might be saying, Hey, you're gonna have to do things differently if you think you can actually do it. Because you're not where you think you are. Everybody, everybody's growth is different. Some people need to be level set, some people need to be lifted up. And it's, that's the challenge of it. That's the challenge. But as long as you're in it for growth, hopefully you'll respond in a positive, constructive manner.

Botond Seres 12:16
I mean, very interesting that you've been tracking habits because habits, we are creatures of habits, and I think habits we choose to have and the habits we develop, or, or work on or suppress or strengthen. They have much more control over us than we realize.

Kevin Palmieri 12:37
Yeah, it's one of the interesting, and I was, I'm excited to talk about business to business owners, people in business, tech, all that. Because this is one thing that happens. We go to a job and we have KPIs, we have key performance indicators. We have measurements, we have things that we're reaching for projections, goals, but then when we go home, we don't. Once we leave the office, it's almost like okay, I got my KPIs at the office, what are your KPIs for home? So what we have done is breaking into health, wealth and love. Imagine if you had three habits under health, three habits under wealth, three habits under love. How much progress could you make at home, at the gym, or whatever fitness or exercise means to you, and with your intimate partner or yourself? So just as an example, three under health, weigh yourself, drink a gallon of water a day and exercise for 30 minutes a day, you don't have to start with all three, you can start with weighing yourself under wealth, learn for 30 minutes every single day, connect with a potential prospect and track your finances. Right, it's not gonna take that long. And then under love, if you're not in a relationship, you can play the gratitude game with yourself, what is something you're grateful for about yourself, write down your wins for the day, and then do something that fills your cup. If you're in a relationship, there's many apps where you can play question and answer with your partner. My wife and I played a Gratitude Game with each other every single night. So if we looked at it more from that perspective of why aren't I getting my wealth goals? I'm working really hard. But where am I not putting in the time? Why am I not getting the health results I want, I'm not really putting in the right amount of effort. The same thing for the relationships. It gives you data. So I can say I've been crushing the gym, but if I look back at the last month, I only went 11 times out of 30, I'm not crushing it as much as I think. And now at least I know, I got 33% of the results based on 33% of the effort that's on me. That's, that's my own responsibility. And I think just seeing the data creates an opportunity for change and it creates an opportunity for that awareness.

Dave Erickson 14:47
We do a lot of business mechanisms and theories based on feedback. You know, you're you do something and then you track all the KPIs and you track what happens. I, you know, the idea that you do that with yourself to also manage your performance and what you're doing, it makes total sense. But I definitely do not hear many entrepreneurs talking about that.

Kevin Palmieri 15:13
It's a challenge.

Dave Erickson 15:16
Yeah, I've tracked habits of mine, not as thoroughly or for the, the actual reason, but more from, I just naturally am a person who looks at data. And I like analyzing data. So whether it's mountain biking, I track all my stats when I go for rides, and how many rides and all that type of stuff. But also in business, I'm very aware of, you know, how many people visit our website and how many, you know, accomplishments we have. I think it does help engaging, you know, where you fit or where you are, how you're performing. But sometimes it can also get you down because you're not reaching the goals you want. But I think that that's important, as well. When people are managing their habits, and they're finding that some of them are not going where they want them to go, or they're not able to motivate themselves to achieve or to do the performance they would like, what are some of the things that they can do to help themselves or to get better at it?

Kevin Palmieri 16:22
You know, one of my favorite things in the world, I just did this with two clients the other day, we call it creating a commitment device. So I have it over here somewhere. I, I was struggling with my fitness for a while. The gym was just not a priority. business was growing, the team was growing, I was newly married, I was really struggling to keep up with my, my fitness regimen. And I just wasn't motivated. I didn't care. I didn't want to go. So I went to my wife and I said, Babe, I need you to do me a favor. And she said, Yeah, what do you need? And I said, I'm gonna give you this $100 bill. And if I don't go to the gym every single day, for the next seven days, I need you to rip it up in front of me. And she said, Kev, I am not going to do that. I'm absolutely not going to do that. I said, Babe, I promise I won't let you down. I promise I won't let you down. Believe it or not, I went to the gym every single day for the next seven days. We have to create some sort of locking mechanism where it is more painful not to do the thing than it is to do the thing. So I just did this with two of my clients. They're business owners. If you're a business owner, you're not posting on social media, especially if your business is dependent on social media, you're in trouble. And they just kept saying, you know, I know we should be doing it, but we can't figure out how. And I said, Well, this is, this is a good opportunity for us to try this. I said what are you doing right now that you absolutely love? One of them said I go rucking with my husband. We go on these long walks with rucks. I love it. Awesome. The other person,

Dave Erickson 17:47
What the hell is a ruck?

Kevin Palmieri 17:49
It's just a backpack that you load a lot of weight in so it makes it a little bit harder.

Dave Erickson 17:54
So rucksack. Yeah. Got it. Sorry. I was just…

Kevin Palmieri 17:58
No, no context is important. So she loves doing that with her husband, that fills her cup, helps her relationship, helps her health, awesome. The other person in the, in the business, she, I go to tennis, she said three, four times a week I go to tennis. I said, All right, from now on if you do not post on social media that day, you're not allowed to go for a ruck, you're not allowed to go to tennis. What do you guys think of that? And they were both very hesitant. They're like, No, I love rucking, post on social media. I love tennis, post on social media. I have seen a drastic uptick in their social media every single day I go on, I see their posting. The reason is because there is a short term pain associated with not doing it. If, if the second you picked up a cigarette, you got cancer and died, people wouldn’t smoke. But it's such a long term thing that we, it's hard for us to wrap our mind around that. It's the same for a lot of business stuff where what is, if I miss one day posted on social media, it's not that big of a deal. It might not be, but it also could be one day where somebody was ready to purchase from you, and then they missed the post and you lose that person forever. So creating extra necessity, I think is always there. Creating extra accountability publicly is huge. Get a peak performance partner, hire a coach, those are both very big things. And then the last thing is, I call it the so there's two R's when it comes to consistency, right, we have somebody Well, let's, let's just do the two Ds, there's a bunch of different letters. The two Ds are discipline or design. If you design your life, so your habits are easier, you have to rely on your discipline less. If you do not design your life to make your habits easier. You have to rely purely on discipline and discipline fades, but design doesn't necessarily, when you get on a plane, one of the reasons planes are safe is because they have the discipline to do the pre-flight checklist. And the pre-flight checklist is designed for your safety. If they started winging it, I'm sure things would be less safe in the sky and I would be taking less planes than I am because I already do not like them.

Botond Seres 20:00
Back when I was actually on my fitness journey, and since then, obviously I've fallen off. But I had the one, one thing that always kicked my brain into gear. aSo every time every, every single day I woke up, that was right next to my bed. So I know that's right, and put them on and go for a run. Design. That just works, right?
Kevin Palmieri 20:32
Yeah, yeah, design, you can if you are struggling to be disciplined to tap into design, if you're struggling, if you're struggling for design, you're gonna have to be ultra disciplined.

Botond Seres 20:41
But discipline is a finite resource. So you cannot be disciplined in all areas of life.

Kevin Palmieri 20:47
It's, it's definitely, it's hard to juggle all things in life, for sure. But again, in the beginning, if you can start with one thing, right, maybe it's maybe it's weighing yourself to get started, 30 second activity, you get feedback, you get data, you can see where things are progressing, okay, then we can build on that I would rather start small and build and start large and collapse
.
Botond Seres 21:10
Those will start by just starting with diets. Not every single meal, but like halftones. That's a really huge improvement. So I see this all the time, why people are afraid to go on a diet because they think that, alright, if I'm on a diet, I literally can never eat anything else. But, but you can. It's enough. If you stick to the diet like 50% of the time, there's gonna be a massive improvement over eating chips and drinking Coke all day.

Kevin Palmieri 21:42
Yeah, yeah. One of my, so we had a guest on, early on her name's Laurie Harder, she's very big in our space. She said something super powerful that I don't know if I fully understood at the time, because this was 2018, it’s a long time ago. She said consistent 70% days are better than spotty, one hundreds. And at the time, I was like, yeah, that sounds like a really good quote. But then when you start to do the math, seven times seven, so say you do 70% times seven 490%. If you do 100% day, and then you don't do anything, and then 100% day and you don't do anything and 100% day and you don't do anything, then you take the weekend off, that's 300 490 is better than 300. So I like to think of that from your habits to okay, maybe you didn't post on social, maybe you posted on your story. Maybe you didn't connect with a potential client, maybe you connected with a current client. That's, anything is better than nothing. And if we're looking for long term progress, we can do a lot of short term lever pullings that might not be the full the full pole,

Dave Erickson 22:41
Fitness and emotional and mental health. And entrepreneurs are notoriously bad at fitness, because they're so focused on their business. Can you kind of give a little you obviously struggled with it as well. What are some of the things that people can do to help maintain their fitness but also how important is fitness to your emotional health, your outlook and how you perform as a business leader.

Kevin Palmieri 23:12
There have been many studies lately, I cannot cite them, I don't know them off the top of my head, but that have connected that moving your body, exercise, weightlifting, that type of stuff is as good for mental health as any antidepressant. And there's a lot of people who probably don't know that yet, because maybe they haven't seen it or they haven't read it or their doctor hasn't talked to them about it. Exercise is huge. If you are more capable from a physiological standpoint, everything is you're more capable of everything you can learn, you can work more productive hours, you can work longer, you're more patient in your relationship, you're a better leader, because you're leading by example, not just by words It is absolutely everything. Small things, bring your if you work in a building that has a gym, bring your gym clothes, and potentially workout on lunch. If you have time. Bring your clothes with you. That way you can stop on the way home. If you work at home, get a standing desk, get a walking treadmill. Now is the easiest time ever just in terms of technology, we bought a treadmill, it was like $299 if you wanted to buy a treadmill 10 years ago probably would have cost you $1000. Things were,things were different. So you have to make it a priority. That is, that is the truth where I think this balance thing is, it once was thought to be an empowering belief. I think balance has, has become somewhat of a disempowering belief, because people think they should be doing everything at the same time. Or they think if they're doing something and they're not getting another result, they shouldn't be doing it. When I'm at the gym. The business isn't winning. But when I get back from the gym and I'm all fired up and I have more energy and I am fulfilled because I had a great workout and I feel like I'm making progress. I'm going to be more positive, and I'm more likely to bring business to the business anyway. Things cross over from one section to the other. So that's, that's what I always say about fitness, and exercise and health, whatever that means to you. Now, I do want to be transparent. When I say I struggled with fitness, I was still going to the gym three times a week, it just wasn't up to the bodybuilding standard that I had set for myself in the past, so that it hasn't been a real real struggle with me, but to my standards, I was letting it go and that was very, very frustrating to me. The last thing I would say is, business is very stressful. Owning a business working at any level of business, but a very high stress environment, you going in working on your body, and sweating and raising your heart rate and doing all that stuff is going to be super beneficial for you. And then if you have a partner and you have a family, you owe it to them, you owe it to them to take care of yourself. Because if you don't take care of yourself, it's gonna be very hard for anybody else to take care of you.

Dave Erickson 26:01
You know, I'm a mountain biker. And so for me, I have to really plan to have that hour, two hour and a half during the day or afternoon, morning whenever I can squeeze it in, to do a ride. And sometimes it is hard to get motivated, but the thing that I liked the most about it is, is that it's an hour, an hour and a half in which my body's doing something and it gives my head time to kind of think about things and figure things out. And it's a great meditative kind of environment. And I find I get a lot of work done just by writing. Yeah, right. And then I come back physically exhausted, but mentally refreshed.

Kevin Palmieri 26:43
It's a crossover. Every, so every morning, I do 15 minutes of mobility. And it's one of the it's one of my favorite parts of the day, it sucks. I don't like getting down on the floor and trying to put my leg up over my head or anything. I don't really enjoy it. But it's quiet, it's calm, it's relaxing. It is, it's a little bit. It's a little bit of a meditative state for me. And the rest of the day is mayhem. I'm on calls. And I'm sending DMS and I'm getting texts, and I'm on interviews, and I'm interviewing, it's just mayhem. So any calm, you can create whatever that means to you. If it's a mountain bike ride, a treadmill, walking with your partner, and it's going to pay dividends.

Dave Erickson 27:19
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think entrepreneurs emphasize it enough of how valuable it is.

Kevin Palmieri 27:25
Yeah, I would agree until something happens, until something happens. And then you have the necessity, but you have to, you have to try to create the necessity in advance. And that's just a very challenging thing to do.

Dave Erickson 27:35
I'm sure as a, you know, a successful entrepreneur, you face some of these moments, of motivation, of using exercise. But even doing exercise, you can still find yourself in a position where you're struggling mentally or emotionally. When you did get into those situations where things were going great, you're doing all your habits, right? Everything's good. But then all of a sudden, you found you're struggling, for some reason, right? Something wasn't going right, you're getting depressed or frustrated. What kind of things or techniques did you use to kind of get yourself back in the groove, so to say?

Kevin Palmieri 28:16
I used to do a lot of meditating. I used to do a lot of meditating, I would take time, I take a half hour in the middle of the day. And I would say, Okay, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to listen to something, I'm going to lay in bed, I'm gonna close my eyes or sit on the porch or whatever it may be. That was a big thing. The thing I do most now is I do a lot of reflection. One of my favorite thoughts around time is from day to day, progress is invisible. From year to year, it's impossible to miss. You might feel like you're struggling right now. But if you look back five years, a lot of the problems you have today might be the problems that you would have wished for five years ago, I tried to have that perspective of gratitude. Now again, things still suck, you lose clients, things happen, right? There's still going to be ups and downs. The other thing that I tried to do is I try to be vulnerable with the people around me. We were a self improvement company. So I can go to my CEO who's my best friend and say, Hey, man, I'm struggling, I don't know, I don't believe in what I'm doing lately. I feel like I'm taking a lot of losses. I need a little boost of confidence. What do I do? So I rely a lot on the people around me. When I'm struggling. I search for mentors. And I try to show up vulnerably humbly and asked for help or support. The hardest thing about vulnerability with people though, is you have to plan for it when it's sunny, because when it's rainy, it's kind of too late for the umbrella. If you're if you're if you can think about that, eventually you're going to need we don't have to call it a favor. But eventually you're going to need a favor quote unquote. How do we make sure we're setting up our relationships to actually have the opportunity to do that so you can feel safe being vulnerable with someone When I hit rock bottom, and I had those suicidal ideations, I reached out to Alan, I sent Alan a message. And I said, Alan, I'm struggling brother, I don't know what to do. I feel trapped, I feel hopeless, I feel helpless, what do I do? But that wasn't in that moment, that was all the previous years of our relationship where he had made me safe and I trusted him. And I knew he wouldn’t judge me. So I think that's the biggest piece of advice I can give. Being an entrepreneur is lonely. Being a business owner is lonely. A lot of people do not understand the amount of pressure you're under, if you have somebody who is in a similar position, or has similar experience to you, befriend them, and try to get some sort of vulnerable relationship going, because I promise you, you will thank yourself for it. Especially if you walk around thinking nobody understands me, nobody gets me. I know those feelings. But it's our responsibility to go find people to do, it's not necessarily the responsibility of the people around us to figure out what it's like, I tell my wife that all the time, I do not ever want you to know what it's like to be an entrepreneur. No, absolutely not. I don't want you to have to deal with it. It's brutal. But I have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs. So I think that's the biggest thing, I could say, there's a lot, you can do journaling, you can do meditation, figure out what fills your cup, there's a lot of stuff you can do there reflect. But I think talking to somebody is the best thing to do.

Botond Seres 31:22
There by, I wonder if you have any tips for situations where you are vulnerable, and the other party takes advantage to push it down even more. Because that, that happens.

Kevin Palmieri 31:34
That definitely happens. It is an unfortunate byproduct of opening up to somebody is oftentimes when you open up, somebody likes to take a punch. In the moment, I think you have to just deal with it and then you most likely want to either reallocate time with that person, reach shift the relationship. So there's something called the vulnerable problem solver, where what you can do is you can say, hey, I'm afraid that our relationship is never going to really be the same. Because last time I opened up to you, I felt very taken advantage of. My fear is that I'm not going to be able to open up to you anymore. And if I do, I'm not safe to do it, you can start a conversation like that and try to reset the relationship. But what I've seen in the past is, again, it's very hard to get other people to change. So I would, I would ask yourself, Why is this person in my life in the first place? Do they have similar core values, similar core beliefs, similar core aspirations? If you start coming up with zeros on those questions, that person might not even deserve to be in your life. And unfortunately, you picked the wrong door, when you went to be vulnerable, you should have picked door one, but you picked door two. It happens, it's happened to me, people have come back and used it against me, you know, when they leave, or whatever it may be. So I definitely understand it. I think you just have to learn from it, learn from the loss, take the lesson, and try to avoid it. Moving forward. I wish I had a hallmark quote for it. But that's the best I could do.

Botond Seres 33:06
So sometimes it does work to reset the relationship and bring attention to how it is not possible to be vulnerable around the person. But when that doesn't work, it does seem like there is no no choice then. Right? It's, it is what it is.

Kevin Palmieri 33:21
yeah, there's not a lot of options. Yeah, I mean, you can decide, you can decide, You know what, I'm just never going to be vulnerable with this person. I mean, you could definitely decide that. But usually the quality of a relationship is connected to the vulnerability in it. So I can't, I can't imagine it would be a very successful, fulfilling, aligned, connected relationship. So yeah, I just read, reallocate time and revisit why the relationship is there in the first place and then just take the lesson. Now, easier said than done, I completely understand. But I don't know an easy way around something like that.

Dave Erickson 33:59
I've been a sole entrepreneur, I've had companies where I was the only person. It really is lonely, very stressful, you're the only person who can deal with it. You know, if you're lucky, you have a good life partner or wife or somebody who you can kind of help unload but they're not in it so they can't really provide much in the way of solutions or anything. It's one of the reasons that people form partnerships in business. It expands the ability to do things, it allows, you know, the partners to take on other responsibilities so that you can focus on things that you know you're good at. So having a good relationship is like that. And I've, I've encountered it myself personally. I've also seen other businesses where there clearly is a partner who is insecure or, you know, whatever their mental state is not a positive one and they're dragging down their other partners or they have extreme arrogance about themselves and, and putting their other partners down or in a low place and the partners become so miserable doing the business that the business starts failing, right. And sometimes, you know, it's really hard when you're in a partner situation to have to go to a partner and say, Hey, this isn't working. We've, we've tried over and over, and we're trying to work with you and it's time to either end the business or go our separate ways. It is one of the more difficult things to do in life and in business. Do you have any kind of recommendations or tips on, on how to actually do that once you kind of recognize that somebody is not good for you?

Kevin Palmieri 35:44
So I haven't experienced that from a business perspective in terms of a partnership. I'm very lucky and very blessed to have a wonderful business partner. Yeah, I always start with, are the people in your life the best from your past or the best for your future? That question changed my life. I started reallocating time with friends after that. So once you get to that understanding, oh, you know what? Yeah, I don't know, if, if partner C what's best for us, partner A, partner B, you go to them and I think you have to figure out why did they, why did they make it as a partner in the first place? What was the deciding factor that determined that they were going to be a valuable piece of the business, we always rely on core beliefs, core values and core aspirations. That is really my business partnership with my business partner. So good, because we have very similar core values, we have very similar core beliefs and we have very similar core aspirations. We've had very honest conversations where if I ever get to the point where I don't want to work every single day like we are today, and my aspirations change, I will most likely have to re-allocate time and figure out a different position and things are going to change. We're very mature about that, but I know not everybody is. I would have that conversation. Hey, when we started this company, this was, this was the play, right? These were our core beliefs. These were our core values. These were our core aspirations. This is what we were doing this, the amount of time we were putting in, this was our leadership style. One of us was very confident, the other person was very balanced, you know, somebody was insecure, blah, blah, blah. Today, it doesn't seem like that is the case anymore, can we re align and check in on what our core beliefs, core values and core aspirations are? Then from there, draw conclusions. And if it's not, right, it's not right. And you have to make and again, this is the hard piece, because it's personal, you have to make the decision that's best for the business. Because if the business dies, everybody connected with the business takes a hit, where if one person is steering the ship in the wrong direction, you can take them away from the wheel, and you can save the rest of the ship. So I don't know if there is an easy answer other than core values, core beliefs, core aspirations, at least as an outline and a framework. From there. It depends on your conversation style, it depends on how courageous you are. And it depends on the amount of feedback you're willing to receive when you give somebody feedback,

Botond Seres 38:03
I am a bit late to the party, but you mentioned earlier that some people may drag down the morale of a business and what I find quite often is. I don't know if you guys saw Gemini man, but it is Will Smith, hunted by a younger clone of himself. And this is a great shot and is taking a sniper rifle looking at the rooftops trying to find out who the hell is coming after him. And that scene was captioned, employers looking for the person bringing down the morale. That one person Yeah. And that's a great job because it works on two levels. So on the first level, it works because more often than not, it is the person at the top who, who can just ,the other biggest boost to morale. And the second level it works on as it may not be their current actions that bring down the morale, but it could be their past actions.

Dave Erickson 39:05
I think a topical comment on that is some of the things that have been going on with Elon Musk and the changes and stuff he's doing particularly recently like changing Twitter to X and some of this other stuff. My understanding is, is in some of these companies are extremely enthusiastic about him and others, he can bring down the morale really fast. And that's kind of an example of someone doing a roller coaster. Nobody can predict what he's going to do. And so they're all insecure about what's going to happen tomorrow. So yeah, that is one of the aspects of leadership that you know, it'd be good to have stable leaders, leading all companies and countries maybe. But the fact of the matter is people are people and nobody's really as stable as they think they are. And life throws things at you.

Kevin Palmieri 40:00
At the end of the day, the leadership capabilities are connected to the person's self improvement. setpoint. Elon is a very smart man, he's a genius, right, but that doesn't mean he's emotionally intelligent. It doesn't mean he understands the intricacies of communication, there's a lot of things that he might be missing. A lot of the, a lot of the biggest leaders in the world are just very logical, heavy tech people. They don't really understand what it's like to communicate with emotionally driven human potentially. So that's, I just, I lean, so heavy on self improvement. Self improvement, I think, is the answer to so many things. Because when you improve yourself, you start to understand things, and you can have empathy, you can have empathy for, oh, there's a lot of uncertainty within the team right now, what can I do to bring more certainty, so everybody feels a little bit safe, or a little bit more safe? Because when people are, they feel safer, they're more committed, when they're more committed, they stay there longer, when they stay there longer, they do better. But it just, it depends on the person self improvement, really, at the end of the day,

Dave Erickson 40:58
I think empathy is an underestimated superpower of CEOs, it really is very important to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and, and understand what they're dealing with. It gives you a very important perspective.

Kevin Palmieri 41:15
And if you can't at least admit it. I think that's another piece of empathy to our team is the majority of our team is women. And many of them are moms. I always say, I can only imagine what it's like to be a stay at home mom with three children. I have two cats. That's it, that's that's my experience with parenting. I can take care of them. But they're pretty self sufficient. I can only imagine, or I what I'll say often is I can understand to the level I can understand. I will never say I yeah, I know. I know what it's like, I don't. I don't. I know what it's like to be a podcaster. So I can say that, right? I know what it's like to do certain things, but that, the language around the way you communicate it, there's a, there's a very important piece of that that really helps the culture of inclusiveness. People listen, people listen to the words you say, even if you say them kindly. They can tell if you don't understand what you're saying.

Botond Seres 42:10
I think this ability to recognize if, if it is impossible for me or you to put ourselves in someone else's shoes is something that is missing for most of our politicians.

Kevin Palmieri 42:23
Yeah, a lot of the higher ups.

Botond Seres 42:25
Yeah, the thing I find stunning is when they get some very simple cash questions like, Do you have any idea what it feels like to live on minimum wage? And, and they just won't admit that they cannot even imagine, because they were rich when they were born. They are rich now. And between those two points, they were always rich. So they can't even imagine the struggles that most people have, will not imagine.

Kevin Palmieri 42:50
Most people have. And if they just said,

Botond Seres 42:55
Like, yeah, I

Kevin Palmieri 42:56
I can only imagine. I don't know what it's like, but I can imagine it's not easy.

Botond Seres 43:01
Yeah, because then it opens up a conversation like, Alright, fair enough. Let me tell you about it's like,

Kevin Palmieri 43:06
yeah, but that's vulnerability, too.

Botond Seres 43:10
Yeah, definitely. That's, that's something I do a lot of times, like, when someone comes to me with whatever their problem is, oftentimes, they just go like, dude, I'm sad for you., but I literally can't even imagine what you're going through.

Dave Erickson 43:27
Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how you got this whole thing started? But also, how did it go from podcast to Next Level University and even though it's not technically a university, it's kind of a collection of the podcasts and training and lectures and speeches and other things. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what that is, how you kind of evolved that from its humble beginnings? Why did you go in that direction? Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri 43:56
So I always start by saying, I'm a graduate of YouTube University. So in the very beginning, I was like, Okay, I want to start a podcast, what do I need? So I went on Google, I went on YouTube, and I figured out I need a microphone. I got a mixer and that was it. I went on Fiverr, I found somebody to do my artwork and I was like, Alright, cool this is what I'm gonna do. I wasn't taking it super seriously, in the first year. I loved it. But I didn't know. I didn't see a lot of potential. In the very beginning. I just, I was doing it for fun. I never planned on this being a business. When I left my job. That's when we went all in and started to work on, we started to work on our characters first, because we realized that most of our listeners were women. And here we are in our mid 20s, we're kind of Bros and nothing wrong with that, but I wasn't a very mature man yet. I didn't have a great communication style. I didn't have empathy. I didn't understand vulnerability. I didn't really understand any of that. So for the first year, year and a half, we worked on our character. But one thing we did and this is the best thing we ever did. I would literally give out my phone number to our live listeners and I would jump on free FaceTime calls with them. I would just say, Hey, I don't, I'm not, I don't have any coaching, I can't sell you anything, I don't have anything to sell you. Let's just hop on free FaceTime. I want to know what you're going through, I want to know about you, I want to meet you, I want to get to know you. And I did that a lot in the first few years that helped us figure out one, who is our audience? Two, what are the problems they go through? Three, How do we help them solve them? That's what you're doing with a podcast, you're helping people solve problems. So we just kept going on with that. Eventually, we started coaching. So we do one on one coaching, then it got to later on, it got to the point where somebody reached out to me and said, Hey, I want you to produce my friend's podcast. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what I'm doing. Not going to work. And he said, you've done 300 episodes, or whatever it is, just trust me, you should do it. So we ended up starting a podcast production company, okay. Eventually, we had to figure out how do we do web work. So we hired somebody to do our websites. And then we started doing other people's websites, what turned were what went from a podcast to a service providers. We were just trying to solve the problems that our audience deals with. So that was the very beginning. After that, we said, well, in the future, we want to create an online campus, we want it to be a building for health, a building for wealth, and a building for love. And that is very much what we are trying to create. Right now. We're in the very early stages of that. But we have the content to do it. I mean, there's plenty of content. So at some point, eventually, we will have a building for health that has physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health, and it'll have courses and episodes and all that wealth, wealth creation, saving money, investing all that, and then love, right, maybe we'll have the interviews we did with relationship professionals and courses and stuff like that. So we wanted to go that route. Because not everybody can afford to come to an event, not everybody can afford one on one afford one on one coaching, group coaching. But if we have a website that is loaded with value, completely free, that is really what we aspire to anyway, I mean, that's why we do an episode every day, we do an episode every day for free, because we want to help you get a little bit better every day for free. So that is the big piece of it. And then there's a lot of other things and opportunities underneath that are involved in the business. But I also have a firm belief that if you give the most amount of value away, eventually if people want to pay you, they're going to come to you, it just makes logical sense. So why not just give it all away for free in the beginning?

Dave Erickson 47:33
People like to find out what you know. Are you knowledgeable? It doesn't necessarily mean because they watch a video on How do you produce a podcast, that they want to produce a podcast themselves. They may want to watch the video to figure out what is involved. And as they get into it, they realize I don't want to do that. That's not something I'm interested in, I'd rather hire somebody, these guys obviously know what they're doing. I'm just gonna hire them.

Kevin Palmieri 48:03
Or mechanics, imagine a mechanic video, right? How to Fix a four wheel drive on a Toyota four runner. Yeah, you might tune in because you have a Toyota four runner that you need to fix 4 wheel drive on. But you might also see that person and say, Oh, that person is actually pretty close to where I live, I'm gonna bring my stuff to them. It's a very, it's a value add. But it's also a, it's an opportunity to self identify. People self identify as I'm the type of person who would work with that person, or I'm the type of person who likes that person. Content is a beacon of what your capabilities are now more than ever, really. So, yeah, I'm always gonna be a fan of giving it away for free, probably to a detriment, honestly. I mean, there's, you know, we've given away a lot of free stuff that we probably should have been charged for. But that's just our business model. That's why we do it.

Dave Erickson 48:50
You know, I have found that when you're doing good things, people, you know, like to, you know, they want to do more with you, right? If you're helping, they want to help back, even this podcast. I'm not making money with it. I don't have this expectation that, that somebody's going to come back to us and say, hey, I want to do business because I saw your podcast. On the other hand, if somebody watches our podcasts and learns something that helps them even watching this current podcast, and they've learned some techniques that help them be more stable or find some positivity and even go to your website and get some training from your website. It's, it's a real positive thing. The dividend is something good was done. That's how I always look at it. And people come back to us and say, Hey, you, we really appreciated what you did. How can we help you?

Kevin Palmieri 49:42
I had a client, I had a client cancel on me today. They messaged me and said, Hey, we're right now we want to focus on saving. We're going to get rid of all of our services. I had a conversation with them two weeks ago when I told them to do that. I said can everything including us if you have to. I want you to make sure you're saving as much money humanly possible. And in the message, they said, We love you, you're the best. You're a great human being, we're going to come back. Once we're financially stable, we're going to come back. That's not why I did it, I just want what's best for you. So I sent him some book recommendations and said, let me know if I can be of service, just message me that when you're in it for the long run, you don't have to play the short game. Anything else? It's like, well cancel everything else. But make sure you stay with us. Because if you don't stay with us, you're not gonna be able to win. That's not true. That's not fair. That's, that's not good. So if they're, if, if I added enough value, and they really feel like I did, they will come back when the time is right. If not, they should. That's my belief. You

Dave Erickson 50:43
know, somebody starting out with a podcast, I guess? What would you recommend that they focus on? First, and. and having a future vision? How important is that? Or is it more important to just start something and get it going? And being consistent?

Kevin Palmieri 50:59
I think it depends on what your expectations are. Because I've had a lot of people come to me and say, I want to have a million downloads the first year, it's like, Alright, cool, you're good. You're ready to grind your face off, right? And they'll say, Well, no, I just want to drop an episode a week. It's like, no, that ain't it. Unless you have a big audience. If you have a big audience, it's honestly, it's that wouldn't even be that challenging with a large enough audience. Okay, this is always my frame. And it's completely different than I probably what you expect, I don't know, what you do before the podcast. And what you do after the podcast episode is as important if not more important than the actual episode. So the three things I would say, get very familiar, very comfortable, and very consistent on social media, not just posting, but building real, authentic relationships with people, because those are the people that are gonna listen to your show. Do not ever miss on your podcast, do not ever miss an episode, if you tell people it's going to be out, find a way to get it out. And then always try to keep up with 1% improvements. So say you're doing audio only. Alright, cool. Let's make sure our audio quality is as good as humanly possible, let's make sure we get an intro and outro a trailer awesome, then maybe try to do video doesn't have to be a high quality camera, use your laptop cool, then let's try to throw that on YouTube, then let's try to create micro content, and just try to get a little bit better with everything, eventually buy a new mic and a new camera and new guests. So 1% improvements there. My question is always, why are people at this level of your business? What do they expect? And then where do they go next? That, where do they go? Next piece? What should I say after the podcast? Where do they go? A lot of people say I want them to go to my website, okay? Why? So they can purchase something. Now, I understand. But that's not necessarily conducive to a long term listener. I would say create some sort of community, Facebook group, Discord, whatever you want. I like Facebook groups, because our audience is on Facebook. But here's the interesting thing about a podcast, you might have 1000 people that listen to your show every single month, you have no idea who those 1000 people are unless you create an opportunity for them to self identify those 1000 people have no idea who else is listening unless you create the community. So, that those are the big three, I would say right off the bat, social media 1% improvements on the show, create some sort of group. And then yeah, long term, creating freebies and having products and services that's big. But you have to know what problem you're solving for what person in what unique, specific way, and don't ever lose sight of that. Because if you lose sight of that your audience is going to go find somebody who actually solves that problem. So yeah, that's what I would say. And then eventually you start going on other shows, and make sure everybody runs through the Podcast, the podcast is a piece of your business. It's not a silo off of it. A lot of people make that mistake as well. Those would be the simplest ones.

Dave Erickson 53:50
You mentioned. Earlier on, we were talking about how community and your peers are important in helping you with your mental and emotional health and stability. And you just mentioned in podcast that one of the things is to build a community. So I'm going to kind of come back around to that. How did you start building your community and was it? How has it helped you in becoming better at what you do?

Kevin Palmieri 54:21
We have tried to treat the podcast like a business from the second we started understanding it was going to become one. So what we would do is every single week, we did a free live podcast in our Facebook group. And it started out even before we had a Facebook group, anybody who ever attended, we would take down their information, we put it on a list. So right now we're building a list, right? There's, it's not a community yet, but it's an opportunity for community. Then eventually we started doing Facebook Lives. Okay. Then we started doing monthly meetups. What we did is the calls to action on our podcast, are always join our Facebook group. So every single episode we not every episode at least three times a week, we say, hey, if this resonated with you make sure you join our private Facebook group. Right, the warmest people are going to come through the podcast, me promoting it on social media, it's not the same, because those people don't listen to the show. If they don't listen to the show, it's not going to matter as much. So our calls to action are very, very, very specific. And our I don't want to say prospecting hygiene because not everybody's ever going to be a client. But our community hygiene in terms of our lists are very good. We have very, very deep lists of people who this person signed up for this, this person is part of the email list, this person does this, this person does this. That way we can figure out oh, This person is comes the book club is in our Facebook group, there has been one on one coaching and group coaching has attended a live event that somebody who's probably going to say yes to something. Okay, we'll send those messages first, boom. But yeah, it's it really has been the Facebook group. I mean, that's the biggest thing. And we have a lot of free offerings that we invite people to, that really is the big two. And then the third, the last thing about it is everything connects nicely to the next layer. But even when you get to the bottom of our business, and you're working one on one with us, you still can listen to the show, you still can like stuff on social media, and you can be a pillar in the Facebook group. So it's a very enclosed ecosystem, where once you're in it, there's so many places for you to go, you're going to end up kind of where you want. If you don't want to pay, that's fine. We have so many free things, awesome. If you want to pay awesome, there's a lot of that, too, that's really helped facilitate the community. I would say the free offerings are probably what does it because I don't really care whether you give me money or not. If you're not supposed to, I don't want you to. I'd rather you just hang out in the Facebook group and take value and contribute. And there's

Botond Seres 56:47
It’s a known fact, I believe that the amount of free contents can can affect conversion. Yeah, for sure. And on that note, or sort of off topic, I guess. You know, with, with Dave, I feel like I've been extremely lucky to find someone to host this podcast with and the topic of finding a co-host for a podcast. Do you have any recommendations? I have a feeling you're gonna say cool.

Kevin Palmieri 57:18
Yeah, yeah. People have to be in it for the right reasons. That if, if somebody is in it, because they want to get, you know, rich quick, or they want to get famous quick. And that's not why you're doing it, it's not going to work. There's just going to be too much conflict, there's going to be too much resistance, you have to be in it for the same reasons. So yeah, I would, I would go back to the canned answer. My friend of core, core values, core beliefs and core aspirations. I haven't found anything that works as well as that yet. And we've had a lot of our business mentors who said, You guys are making a mistake, don't partner up. I think you're wrong. I just don't think you have similar core values, core beliefs and core aspirations with the people that you partner with. Right? If there's any ego, it's not going to work. There's when, when we were doing when we were coming up with who's going to be CFO who's going to be CEO who's going to be CMO. We're doing all that. I Alan and I had a very real conversation, I said, you have to be the CEO. If I am the CEO, we are going to fail. I don't know, I don't know the first thing about being a CEO. I love money, and I'm very focused on money. I can be the CFO, that's fine. I'm in there. I can focus on that, I can track the numbers, we're good. But if, if I had an ego, and I said, Well, what if we're both CEOs? Would you like CO CEOs? That's an ego thing. That's an ego thing. We don't, we don't need that. So if there was any ego, our, our relationship wouldn't work. And you have to sniff that out from a mile away.

Dave Erickson 58:48
I am not a believer in this Co-CEO thing. It doesn’t…

Kevin Palmieri 58:54
I agree.

Botond Seres 58:55
I was not aware it was a thing.

Dave Erickson 58:57
It's a thing. Yeah. And I stay away from it. When I see Co-CEO, it's like, Okay, you guys enjoy

Kevin Palmieri 59:06
Yeah, it's not, it's not for me. I mean, there's one position. There's one player for each position on the field. That doesn't mean it doesn't mean if you get hurt, somebody can't step in. But I'm not the quarterback, I can't even see over the line. It's not me, somebody else has to do that. I'll do something else. It just leaning into your expertise and leaning into what you're good at. But that requires some communication and vulnerability.

Botond Seres 59:31
So for us, it's not, burnout is not really an issue with our frequency episodes, but I do see a lot of podcasters that do try to do daily content and they do feel burnt out after a while. So I do wonder, Kevin, if he has some great strategies to avoid burnout in general, I think that is extremely valuable in just day to day life for everyone who works any job any Yeah,

Kevin Palmieri 1:00:00
It's a great question. I mean, I deal with burnout, like everybody else, it's less than ever. You have to rely on your systems. One. So we have a video editing team, we have an audio editing team, all we do is record and then we send it off to the team and the team is amazing. They do the rest. That's a necessary system, because there's no way I could do all of that. I did at one point, but not with seven episodes a week. So part one is figure out are your systems, buying you time or taking your time? That's one. But I think the biggest thing when we think about burnout is it's either you're doing too much, in general, or you're doing too much in a season. So if every single day, at the end of the day you feel burnt out, you gotta lighten the workload. If every single week, when you get to Friday, you feel burnt out, I would say scale back 10%. Unless you're okay with being burnt on a Friday, then take Saturday and Sunday. That's up to you. But it's either a mechanism of too much work and too little time, or too much work and too much pressure over the long run. I would approach it from how much productive output am I actually doing, versus how much can I handle. And this is my other thing to what used to burn me out. doesn't burn me out any more. I had a I had a day last week where I had four calls. And I was like, this is the easiest day I've had months. When I first started, I would have one coaching call and I would have to take a nap after it was like Do not call me Do not text me, I have a coaching call today. I can't do anything else. So you also have to understand your own unique capability to grow into the workload. But you have to be very honest with yourself, you have to be very honest with yourself. So I would tap back into yet another thing we talked about earlier, that consistent 70% days instead of the spotty when hundreds. If you're doing spotty on hundreds and you're getting burnt out, I'd focus on consistent 60s.

Botond Seres 1:01:55
I feel like the most insidious part of burnout is that it feels like the productive workload that is possible in an ever increasingly burnt out status is ever reducing. So after years of burnouts, you may be at 50% or 40, or 30, or 20, or the 10% when you scale back from then? Like that some people go and somehow I don't know if you do.

Kevin Palmieri 1:02:24
One thing that I have found to help with burnout is make sure you're filling your cup. I know it almost sounds counterintuitive. But if you Okay, what about this, if you get to the end of the week, and you feel eight out of 10 burnt out. Saturday morning, you wake up and you think to yourself, I really really really love photography, I should go take some pictures today. But you don't do it because you say you're burnt out. I wonder if you'd be more burnt out on Monday than if you actually went and filled your cup doing something you love, even though it's Oh, that's

Botond Seres 1:02:59
Oh that’s a great tip. I mean, even if you're at work, you could still go ahead and score on your personal fitness. Yeah,

Kevin Palmieri 1:03:05
Now, you have to test it, right? I don't know, is it gonna make you more burnt out? That's a personal thing. But my wife and I had that conversation recently, Where we wake up and we're like, oh, we're gonna go for a walk this afternoon. And I'm tired and she's tired. And then the afternoon comes, and we're both sitting on the couch. And we're like, you know what? Now, we're not gonna go for a walk, don't worry about it. Then we had a conversation. And I said, Dave, I think we need to do the things that we know, we'll be grateful that we did. In the moment, I want to watch Netflix. But I will not be grateful. I watched Netflix most likely I will be grateful for going for a walk with my beautiful wife and having great conversation and being outside and having nature and making a memory. I think filling your cup like that might actually lend itself to less burnout and more. So that's worth the test.

Botond Seres 1:03:51
Alright, so, Kevin, in your opinion, what does the future of podcasting look like?

Kevin Palmieri 1:03:59
Oh, my goodness, everybody is going to have a podcast. Everybody is going to think podcasting is the way 99% of the people who start will quit. And if you can just hang on longer than anybody else you will be successful. A lot of it, I mean, AI is going to shift the way podcasts are done. Accessibility for audio, and video editing is going to be at an all time low based on AI. So the excuses are going to continue to go down. But I do think the attrition rate will continue to rise at the level it has. So there's going to be a lot of opportunity for creators, a lot of opportunity for consistent creators, but there's also going to be a lot of disappointment for people who think jumping into it is the way to success.

Dave Erickson 1:04:43
Kevin, thank you so much for helping us work through mental and emotional stability, and podcasting and understanding how it all fits together and can affect one's business. Well, that's about all the time we have for this episode today. But before you go, we want you to think about this important question?

Botond Seres 1:05:03
How are you going to improve your Mental Health this month? For our listeners, please subscribe and click Notifications to join us for our next ScreamingBox technology and business random podcast. Until then, be stable.

Dave Erickson 1:05:20
Thank you very much for taking this journey with us. Join us for our next exciting exploration of technology and business in the first week of every month. Please help us by Subscribing, liking and following us on whichever platform you're listening to or watching us on. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and please let us know any subjects or topics you'd like us to discuss in our next podcast by leaving a message for us in the comment sections or sending us a Twitter DM. Till next month. Please stay happy and healthy.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
podcast, business, habits, relationships, facebook group, struggling, self improvement, burnout, entrepreneurs