Go to the Next Level with Alan Lazaros

Intro: 0:01
The right habits put you in control of your health, relationships, mindset, and more. But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits long enough to see results that is about to change. Welcome to the unshakable habits podcast with your host, habit change specialist and speaker Stephen box. Join us each week as experts share their stories, experiences and insights and give you the tools to build unshakable habits so you can live life on your turn. It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Stephen Box: 0:47
A everybody welcome to another episode of the unshakable habits podcast. I am your host, Stephen box. And I am joined today by Alan Lazarus from next level University. Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Lazaros: 1:03
Thank you so much for having me. That intro was awesome. And I think I think about habits every single day. And so this is going to be fire.

Stephen Box: 1:13
Yeah, man, I'm looking forward to we, we had a chance to talk before we get the pre interview get to know each other a little bit. And you have a great story. But we also have a really good match in terms of our philosophies and the way that we view habits. So I know this is going to be a fantastic episode. And one of the things we're going to actually discuss with you today is for your own podcast, you've done 780 consecutive episodes, as of the time of this recording, by the time this episode comes out, you'll probably be like, up in the 1000s the way you're pumping things out right now. But you've not missed a single episode. So we're going to talk today a little bit about how you get to that point of consistency. And the way we're going to do that is very simple. We're going to talk about the unshakable habits framework, because that's how we're going to frame this. The first part of that is a vision. And we'll get into your story here in just a second. But part of your vision started when you were 26 years old, and you had a near fatal car crash. So we'll dive into that. And then over time you started building up all these skills, building skills is a second part of the framework. Because if we don't build skills, then we can't really achieve a vision. And it's important that people realize visions are not goals. Goals are all about outcomes. Goals can be a part of a vision. But visions are really about who you are as a person, your behaviors, your choices, the things that you do. So once you get the vision, once we get the scales, well, how are we going to build them, we're going to take actions, that's gonna be the third part. And we're going to dive into a lot of the specific actions you've taken to change your life and to build that kind of consistently consistency to do all of those episodes. So that is our framework. Are you ready to do it? I'm ready to rock. Cool. So take us back to 26 years old Allen. And okay, talk to us about this accident and how it changed your life.

Alan Lazaros: 3:17
Alright, so first, I'll tell you, I'm currently on November 17. I'm going to be actually 33 years old. So I'll take you back to when I was 26. Alright, so I'm 26 years old. And up to this point. I'm in corporate America, and I'm working for an industrial automation company. And it's called Cognex. And I'm actually not working at the time I'm up in New Hampshire with my little cousin. And we're playing Call of Duty. We decided we want to go to TGI Fridays. And I'm not familiar with the area very well. I'm looking down at the GPS, it's 2016 at the time 2015 rather. And it was one of those really, really bad winters. And so I thought the road stayed right. It actually stayed left but the snow was actually up above the signs. And so I couldn't see the yield sign. And so I ended up on the wrong side of the road entirely my fault. I look up in front of me. And there's what I thought was a Mack truck truck like 10 feet in front of me. It actually ended up fortunately being a lift kidded truck. There's a lot of pickup trucks with lift kits up in New Hampshire. I'm driving a 2004 Volkswagen Passat unfortunately, I used to call this car the tank. He used to call it a steel trap. It was German engineered car both airbags did deploy. My cousin was okay and I was okay physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I was very, very shaken. Because I had that life or death moment where the lights are 10 feet in front of me and I actually thought to myself like this is the end. This is it. There was no part of me no part of me that thought I would survive it because again, I thought it was a Mack truck And I also didn't anticipate in that moment that the steel trap the Volkswagen Passat would be so so safe. So physically, my little cousin hurt his knee on the airbag I hurt my face on the airbag, both airbags did deploy, we're okay. But mentally, emotionally and spiritually I am nothing short of rattled. The part of my story I haven't told anyone listening right now yet is that when I was two years old, my father was 28 years old and my father died in a car accident when he was 28 years old. And normally when I give my speeches, and I tell the story, I usually show you know my car, because my car was looking very similar. I've seen pictures of my dad's car. And they look very similar. And so I'm 26 at the time remembering and I grew up my entire life hearing about John hearing about my dad. And so for me, it wasn't like, oh, that could have been it. Like, intellectually, it was like, Oh, my God, that could have been it. Because I grew up my whole life hearing stories about John my, my dad didn't have a second chance. But I did. So I'm sitting in an armchair drinking whiskey, contemplating my life and questioning absolutely everything. Am I proud of the man I became quite questioning, I had so much regret, remorse, guilt, shame, regret. I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't a bad guy. But I wasn't really living life on my own terms. And from a very young age, when I was seven years old, my mom gave me the best lesson I've ever got. And it's an aim high, and you'll have choices. And she basically told me that if you aim high, she said, Alan, you can be a CEO, or you can be a farmer, she always had a way of explaining to me as a kid, and you can be a CEO or you can be a farmer. But if you aim high and decide to be a CEO, you can wake up one day and just decide to be a farmer. But it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. So make sure you aim high, and you'll have choices. And so I did, I was an achiever, the achiever in me was born. Lots of self belief, lots of achievement, straight A's in high school president's award went to one of the top tech schools in the planet. It's like a mini MIT, it's called Worcester Polytechnic Institute, got my computer engineering degree, also got my MBA, and there I am in corporate America as as this really really successful multi six figure job. You know, corporate, corporate, corporate, all that beautiful girlfriend, tons of friends, corporate friends, college friends, high school friends, and I thought that I had it made. And I had achieved most of my dreams, the only dream remaining was I wanted to be a fortune 50 CEO, like Steve Jobs. My hero at the time was Steve Jobs, and still a hero of mine. So I'm 26. And I get in this car accident, and I realized Holy crap, like I thought life was about achievement. And what I didn't realize is that life is actually about living in alignment with your highest self based on your core aspirations, core values and core beliefs. And so I live by the saying, Now, you can't see the stars during the day. They're always there. But sometimes it takes the darkness to see clearly that what you simply could not within the light. So if you're out there listening right now you have adversity in your future. It's a guarantee health challenges, financial challenges, family challenges, you name it, Adversity is in your future, that's a guarantee for me and for you. What's not guaranteed is when you're in mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical pain, anguish, suffering, what are you going to do? What are you going to decide what are the choices you're going to make when you're there? So I saw two stars. When it was dark, I saw two stars I'd never seen before. The first one is Tony Robbins, TED Talk. Regardless of what you think of Tony, his TED talk is unbelievable, best TED talk of all time, in my opinion. Second, and more importantly, a woman by the name of Ronnie where she's an Australian woman. I've since interviewed her on the podcast. This was four years later. She wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. And so for those of you out there that's listening to this and interpersonal development you've heard start with the end in mind. To me, there's nothing more important than learning from the terminally ill. She worked in hospice, she worked with the terminally ill for eight years. And she noticed over and over and over again, the same regrets, I wish, I wish, I wish she was there to listen and hear them reflect on their lives. And just like me at 26, I was reflecting on my life with all this regret. The number one regret of the dying according to Bronnie Ware, according to her book, is I wish I lived a life true to myself, and not what others expected of me. Hindsight is 2020 the first 26 years of my life while I was a good intentioned man. I was living a life trying to appease others without realizing it. I was achieving goals that weren't as fulfilling as I'd hoped once I got there. And I didn't really realize that fulfillment was really what I needed. And that fulfillment is a byproduct of aligning with virtuous positive choices in alignment with your highest unique self. And now I realized that and so after 26 Now I'm 33. So that's eight years ago, seven years ago, rather bad math seven years ago. And basically now what I understand is that I have to make choices in alignment with my inner calling, I was always so focused on external results, and external achievement. And now I'm much more focused on alignment. And that's really, you know, sort of what I'm here to talk about is habits align you with your highest self. And this is a podcast called unshakable habits. I absolutely love the title. And I went all in on my own personal development and my own mission. And to say, I went all in on you know, self improvement is an understatement, this point, but that's when the hyper conscious podcast, I met someone named Kevin, I had a podcast called Conversations change lives. He was my first guest. And then he had me on his podcast called The Hyper conscious podcast, hyper conscious means to be acutely aware. And then we teamed up. And we did a podcast called The Hyper conscious podcast meets conversations change lives, eventually, it was like, Okay, we're doing this, we're like 20 weeks in, like, let's just merge. We stayed with the hyper conscious podcast for 400 episodes, and then we rebranded to next level University. And here we are today, 790, episodes, top 100 self improvement show clients all over the world, huge business, 13 person, global team. But that's not where we started, I started from Ground Zero, just like anyone else. And after 26, I made massive positive change. And here I am today, luckily, talking to all of you about

Stephen Box: 11:45
that. So couple of things that you talked about there man that I really liked. So first of all, let's let's go back and maybe just normalize a little bit for anybody listening, right? If you're in your mid 20s, a lot of this may have sounded familiar to you, even if you had not had the experience of being in a near fatal car crash, because I think that's kind of the age where a lot of us do start to question where we're going in our life, right? It's like, okay, I've gone to school, maybe I've gotten into degree, do I really want to use it? Do I want to be in that field? Like, where am I going with my life? Right? It's kind of that point where you start to make ask those questions anyways, you had on top of that, this extra thing, with not just having the car crash, but you know, having your father die at a very similar age, from the exact same thing. And so I can only imagine how hard that must have been to kind of hit that wall. Can you share maybe a little bit there in terms of it because you covered a little bit about, like, how you started looking to better yourself and kind of questioning about life or whatever. But um, I'm sure and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm just kind of making a little bit of an assumption that you didn't like, literally wake up the next morning and go in the seat for wisdom, right, like, so what what did that process look like? How did you like, was it kind of a funky we're in? And if so, how did you pull yourself out of that funk? And start looking for improvement?

Alan Lazaros: 13:20
You know, great question. And the truth of the matter is, is yeah, it's it's so interesting, because I can intellectually Say it seven years later, like, you know, I got on track, but for a long time, it was an absolute struggle. Um, part of the story that I haven't talked about yet that I'll bring up now is, I used to drink a lot. So in the tail end of high school, my house was hosted some of the so my older sister was three years older than me. And she basically introduced me to drinking when I was 14 years old, because she hung out with older kids, so 21 year old plus kids, you know, I think she was, you know, 18 or so at the time. And so I was like, introduced to the whole party scene very, very young. I remember I had a shot of wild turkey when I was 14 years old. And that was sort of the first time I had started drinking, but after that drinking was a pretty consistent theme in my life. And I also grew up in an environment that did have you know, a lot of alcohol in it. And so you know, part of a little bit talented high school part in college and then I went into corporate and parted in corporate a bit, too. And by party, I think I think what I mean is go out, have fun. I had what I now refer to as a pleasure centered paradigm, not a mission centered paradigm. It was achievement and life. The subconscious belief was life is about fun. And I grew up and adopted that paradigm. Some people have a work centered paradigm. Some people have a pleasure centered paradigm. Some people have a church Centered Care Some people have, you know, a family centered paradigm families first work is first churches first, I have now a fulfillment centered paradigm, a mission centered paradigm, a principle centered paradigm. And that's the core that I live from now. But it wasn't always the chord that I live from now is how do I maximize my own unique potential and help others do the same, but I didn't after that car accident, I didn't know all that to your point. What I did know, however, is that the pleasure centered paradigm was not the answer. And so like you said, a lot of people in their 20s really start to question and contemplate life. And that's very important. Very, very important. I've always been insatiably curious. And I've always been a an achiever with a lot of self belief. And I think that will be come clear to anyone listening. And I think that's a critical component. Because when you are in the dark, if you don't have self belief, you probably won't climb out. Because we all have a choice, when we're in the dark after that car accident was in the dark, you have a choice between virtue advice. And if you don't believe in your own ability to create a brighter future, on your own terms, you are going to choose device, drugs, alcohol escapes Netflix, whatever. And I've been there too, right. But to answer your original question, I definitely had PTSD. I was definitely lost for quite some time. Crowds bothered me, I struggled with claustrophobia. I still was drinking. But although I was questioning that now, and I remember I kept getting pulled over. Because I was too far on the right side of the road. Because double yellow lines scared me because I was on the wrong side of the road. In the car accident, I had like serious trauma about double yellow lines. So I kept getting pulled over. I think I got pulled over like six times. And I just told the cops I'm sorry, I'm I just got a bad car accident, I'm having trouble staying close to the yellow lines. And they were very kind. Because I was I remember I parked my tire multiple times, because, you know, there's debris on the right side of the road. So yeah, it was it was definitely a soul searching time. And that's when I found personal development, though, and and what a coincidence, it's not a coincidence. Coincidence. In other words, I almost get in a nearly fatal car accident, and I pick up a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, I get in a car accident. I'm filled with regret. And then I notice a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. That's the thing, right? When you're in the dark, you're gonna see the star you never could have seen before. It was always there. But it's just like when you buy a new car, and then you notice everyone else has that same car. Now it has significance to us. So you notice it, right? So I think the answers are always all around us. We just don't always see them, we can always access them. And it's when we shift the inner world, that's when we can notice. And so that massive shift of deep regret, pain, remorse, guilt, shame, like of like, well, I drank and partied. And you know, I wasn't proud of all that. So yes, I had a lot of PTSD. But I also had a lot of PTSD, which is post traumatic growth. You know, we talk about PTSD, and I used to have to literally puff my chest up and walk in and out of doorways just to get over claustrophobia. Remember doorways would like bother me for a time after that car accident. So PTSD is a real thing for sure. When trauma happens, it's definitely real. But post traumatic growth is a thing too. And that's really the journey I embarked on is like, Okay, I'm, when you get to hell no. It's it's a lot easier to swing the pendulum to hell yes. You know, I have a mentor, and he says, you know, Alan, everyone has their price. And I said, No, I don't, you know, he said, Alan, if I gave you a million dollars, today, what could you turn it into in five years. And I remember saying to him, like, I'm not interested, you know, he has a bunch of billionaire friends. And he said, there's no shortage of capital, there's just a shortage of projects, like we believe in you, like, come, come meet my friends. And I just, I would rather stay in alignment now. And so that's kind of the cheat code is when you know, who you are and who you aspire to be. And you've lived a life outside of alignment with that, and then you've gotten the near death experience. People call it mortality, motivation. You know, if you're blessed enough to live to 100 years on this planet, that's still only 36,500 days. And I use this analogy and I'll you know, I'll end here in terms of this question. If you only had $36,500 and you could never spend another dollar how carefully would you spend that money you know, but yet we're fuddling away our days all the time and not living from that that core that calling and so now I do that every single day and to answer your question I'm more percentage more percentage more percentage living in alignment with my calling every single day. At least that's the goal. I slip up I fall off the horse it took me five years to quit. Taking a drink at a wedding couple times, like now I'm three years ago and coming up on three years. But like, it took me so long. I'm seven years later, I tried to quit drinking for seven years. And I'm three years sober. So you can see how many times I slipped up in between. And so the narrative bias, it's hard to explain how much I went through. But it was definitely a challenge and an uphill battle. And, you know, I remember waking up a couple years later being like, holy crap, I have all new habits. And I know this podcasts about habits, but I mean that I remember I used to write down three columns, current habits, bad habits, current positive habits, current bad habits, wishful habits. And I remember like a year later, I looked at one of my old lists, and it was like, all the bad habits were replaced, and all the wishful habits were like, a part of my life. And it's like, wild, I don't even drink anymore. And at one point, that was such a big part of my life. So that's possible for any of us. And yeah, it was an absolute uphill battle. It was nothing short of brutal, but the best kind of brutal.

Stephen Box: 21:02
Yeah, so I'm going to hit on a couple things there. So first of all, I don't want to give people the impression that anything that we're about to talk about is to suggest that you should not seek out professional counseling, because you absolutely should, if you are struggling to get over something. But that doesn't mean there's not steps you can take on your own. And one of the things that I've noticed, in interviewing a lot of the guests that I've interviewed is, regardless of what your belief system is, so whether that's you know, a religion or whether it's just the universe, or whatever the case may be for you. What I've noticed is, when people get that bigger sense of something, when they feel like there's something out there bigger than them, that they're connecting to something that's mission that they can kind of focus their energy on. That's when things start to happen. That's when opportunity start to present themselves. And you kind of hit on that, you know, yourself or it's like, here, you were in this really dark place. And it wasn't until you started that process of thinking that okay, what what do I need to change what needs to be different in my life, then all sudden, you saw that star as you put it, you saw that book there. And it's like, it's almost as if the universe or God or whoever put that right in front of you, instead of callin, you're ready for this? Now's the time now now's when you're actually ready to take this information and do something with it. I think it's really powerful man. Because I think sometimes people are so afraid to take that step. They're so afraid to step out. But time and time again, I've seen it and you testify to it. When you take that first step, everything will conspire to make you successful. I mean, would you would you agree with that, what would you say that's an accurate description of what your situation was,

Alan Lazaros: 23:06
as long as you do your part. And by your part, what I mean is we have a formula at NLU next level you that that we talk about the it's a we call it the manifestation formula, and it's in our team dashboard. And basically, it's how you take something that you're imagining and make it real. But there's steps in that process. And when I say do your part, what I mean is like, it's not just gonna happen by default. And I know, I know that people know that. But if you have a vision, Kevin actually has a great quote that explains this. He basically says, Your future is the parts of your imagination that you hold on to the longest. And so if you've imagined that brighter future for yourself, and you have that vision, like you talked about, and you hold on to it long enough and work toward it long enough, and you know, virtues, the key, right work ethic, compassion, sweat, equity, due diligence, self discipline, like a virtue is the answer. And by the way, virtue is a universal language. Compassion is always going to be a virtue. whether people like it or not, alcohol is always going to be a vise. It's literally a toxin. Okay? So as long as you do your part and live a virtuous life in alignment with your calling, and chase fulfilment, not pleasure, then yes, you will achieve your dreams. But if you don't, you certainly will not. And that's, that's my belief.

Stephen Box: 24:37
Yeah. Now, you mentioned the the TED talk, what was the subject on that one?

Alan Lazaros: 24:43
It was the six human needs. Tony Robbins has the six human needs. Yeah. So I can I can give you them if you're interested. So, the first four is what he refers to as the needs of the human certainty is number one, number two is variety. Number three is significance. Most men are chasing significance. Most masculine energies, I should say, I don't want to do men or women, but masculine energies tend to want significance, especially at young ages. And then love and connection is the fourth need. Most feminine energies are craving love at the deepest level. And we all have both masculine and feminine within us. And then the last two are the ones that I think people miss. And he agrees, growth and contribution. Yeah. And so I have this, I'm reading a book right now called optimizing for fulfillment, and fulfillment, the formula, it's unique to each of us, but it's a formula. And it's based on fulfillment is is a byproduct of virtuous choices in alignment with your highest growth and contribution. And if you can, if you can understand it, it's a pyramid. So there's five levels of the pyramid, it's kind of like my, my 21st version, my 21st century version of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but a far more evolved, I think, a more practical, better version. And of course, I'm biased. I think that but whatever. It starts with, like sleep, like I would you say, that's a no bias at all right? No bias at all. Right? Exactly. It's my pyramid. So whatever, pyramid of fulfillment, so I was on the phone with a client. And she was talking about all these challenges she was having with family, and, you know, her health and all that stuff. And we go through the pyramid, and it's a diagnostic. And I asked from zero to 10, on each of these categories, right, there's level one through five, and, you know, the bottom is physical needs, then the next is like, you know, mind, it's mostly body, then mind, then emotional, then the third level is like mostly emotional needs. And then the fourth level is growth, maximizing your potential. And then the fifth level is basically your own unique contribution, your mission, calling whatever you want to label it. And the thing about the pyramid is that you can't get to level two until you have a rock solid level one, and the higher the pyramid, the true north, I have this some this TrueNorth around my, my neck. For those on video. It's it's like a North Star. And it's my guide. And again, it represents the like, you can't see the stars during the day type of thing, but they're always there. But sometimes it takes the darkness, emotional pain to see what you couldn't. And so the higher the pyramid goes, the stronger the foundation needs to be. A lot of times what happens is people let that foundation erode, you know, and and I was talking to this client, and she gave me a three out of 10 for sleep. And I was like, Well, how much sleep are you getting? And she's like, oh, like, probably three, four hours, maybe? Like I'm like, really like REM sleep like, you're she's like, Yeah, I'm interrupted all night. Like I said, with all due respect, like until you fix that. None of that other stuff is gonna go away. But it's always gonna feel like the sky is falling if you're getting three hours of sleep. Yeah, right. That's just neuroscience. That's just biology. And so the diagnostic and the period fulfillment is a formula. You know, I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 20. And my mom asked me, she's like, Why do you care so much about intelligence? Like, why is that so important to you? I said, I just, I don't know. I feel like it's important. I said, Mom, I'm trying to figure out the formula to not end up old and miserable like everybody else. And I know that sounds hardcore. That was my ego. 20 year old version of it. But basically, I looked around man, and I got scared. I looked around, people were telling me, like, Alan, these are the best years of your life in high school. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I hope not, you know, like, this is my high school was not, you know, it was brutal, right? And I can relate. Yeah, I'm 33. It's only gotten better. But that's because I've gotten better. And so I looked around, and I saw a lot of unhappy marriages. I'm just gonna be honest, small town, small minded town. Okay, in Massachusetts called Oxbridge. And I saw a lot of unhappy people, I saw a lot of unfulfilled marriages, I saw a lot of unfulfilled people, lots of alcohol, lots of you know, whatever. And not a lot of dreams and goals. And the truth of the matter is, is I knew it, I knew there was another way, you know, and I've been to my 10 year high school reunion and life doesn't get better unless you get better. And that is a fact. I mean, you know, sometimes good things happen to bad people, sometimes bad things happen to good people. But overall, you have a choice and you can get better every single day and and if you get better, your life will get better. And that's that's what I know for sure.

Stephen Box: 29:21
Yeah. And I think to the point that you made there were about it's really about you putting in the work, right? It's very much in alignment with what I preach to people as well. Because if you go back and you look at the framework, so you get the vision. And what people a lot of times they do is they seek out information. Information, if it's good information, like like the TED talk in the book for you were good information. They helped to create a vision. Visions are great, they're mandatory. You need to have them they really create what you referred to as that Northstar, right. But here's the thing, or that TrueNorth, excuse me, but here's the thing. If you don't take the next two steps, if you don't develop the skills, if you don't take the actions, it doesn't matter what vision you have, it doesn't matter how much you get inspired, doesn't matter how motivated you were on Monday, if Wednesday, you're not doing anything with it. So I love the fact that you, as you pointed out, man, because like you hit it on the head there, it's really about what steps are you actually taking to make this happen. And one of the things that I loved when I was coming up with the this idea of the framework and kind of putting it together and and using it as the format for the show, was, I wanted a way to explain to people, the messiness of this whole process, right? Because Because here's the reality, people have this impression, like people will like when you accomplish this, what did it look like? Well, it looked a lot sloppier that it's going to look for you, because I'm going to coach you through it. With the advantage of hindsight. Yeah, but going through it a real time, I didn't have the advantage of hindsight, unless you got lucky enough to have a coach or somebody yourself, who gave you that information. But most of us, this is not a formula that we followed. It's from what we could have followed. But it's really something we intuitively found. And know. And what I found is that just plays over and over again in people's lives. So for you, you got the vision from the book and from the TED Talk. So talk to me about the skills like where did you start to look at and say, I need to develop some certain skills to be able to get things done. And you might not have said it obviously, in that way. But like, where did you start to get better?

Alan Lazaros: 32:02
You know, I'm really grateful that you talk about skills, because I think that's really overlooked. I remember one time I was talking to Kevin and I said Kev, you know, this is not fluffy, feel good. You. This is next level you. Okay, and, you know, on our podcast, we we pride ourselves on being heart driven, but no BS. And so I'm grateful. You're like that, too. And this is awesome. Okay, information is everywhere. I googled last month that there's 4.6 6 billion people online right now. Okay, awesome. What are you gonna do with that information? Right, 4.6 6 billion people online, maybe you could start an online business? Do you think one of those 4.6 6 billion may or may not need your services or your coaching? Of course they do. Right? And so but here's the thing, if you don't develop skills, it's not going to matter. Right. And we have a 13 person team, and everyone champions sort of their own lane. And it's, it's, we have a big, you know, business model, and everybody champions their own part of the business model. And I'm, I'm in charge of making sure everyone's sort of rowing in the same direction, and it's awesome. But I'm always looking at skills. And I think what's important, specifically in the marketplace, and I'll bring this value to your show as well. I, for me, whenever it came to me manifesting my own vision, I always felt very capable of it, whether it was getting straight A's in high school, or, you know, a certain you know, LSAT score, or graduating with high distinction in college, even though Computer Engineering was the hardest frickin thing I've ever done. Pardon my French if I'm not supposed to swear. But basically, I always felt very competent and confident in my own ability to achieve. And I always have been trying to figure out why what makes me so different in that, but what I wasn't good at was identifying that and other people. And now I've become much better at it. And one of the things I overlooked was skills. There's four types of value. And I was only looking at one of them. That was my problem. And I recently stopped this. The first type of value is intrinsic value. Okay, intrinsic value is equal. We all are born naked, scared and ignorant. And we are all you know, sons and daughters of source, the universe, nature, God, whatever you want to call it. We are all humans who have a spirit. Okay? So intrinsically, we're all equal. There's three other types of value that I forgot about. Okay. Now I break them down into passive value, primary value, active value. I'll start with primary value. primary value is why you do what you do. And what are your skills physical, mental, emotional, spiritual development, so oratory, my ability to speak and coach and consult and play Podcast is a skill. I've got hundreds of reps and and hundreds of speeches and coming up on 1000 coaching calls. If I'm even remotely good at this, it's not natural talent. It's reps it's habits. It's unshakable habits. Okay, so the primary value is my actual tangible down to earth value skills. Okay? Passive value is my body of work. You better pay Leonardo DiCaprio more to act than someone who's brand new. Why? Because he's got a body of work. Steven Spielberg, JAWS, Jurassic Park. Lincoln. You know, et like, of course, you're gonna pay Steven Spielberg more you should. You should he has a body of work passive value. If Matthew McConaughey walks into a bar and says, Hey, who wants to party at my house? Half the bar is gonna be like, hell yeah, let's do it. Matthew. If Allen Lazarus walks into a bar and says, Who wants to party at my house, everybody's gonna laugh and say who the hell are you, man? What a creep. Why? Because I haven't added value to their lives yet. Right? Okay. We all know Matthew McConaughey. Nobody knows on Lazarus. Yet. Not nobody, but very few people compared to Matthew, right? Okay, so that's passive value. What is your body of work? Where are you adding value to the world? So Interstellar, great movie. I love that movie. Matthew McConaughey is in it. He's adding value to the world even when he's sleeping. Okay, your podcast adding value to the world, even when you're sleeping passive value. Now, active value active values what I'm doing right now. I'm live. And I'm actually adding value hopefully to your life. That's active value active values, what you're doing in the actual moment. Okay. And so to answer your original question, you can have a vision, right? But if you don't develop the skills to increase your value, passive value, primary value active value, then you should not be paid more. And this is a weird belief that a lot of people don't like, I got paid $7.25 an hour when I was a cart kid and a busboy at a golf course. And I do believe that I was overpaid. Believe it or not. Why? Because I was 16 years old. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't have any skills. Yeah, you get paid in proportion to the following three things. How needed is what you do I have a client who's an Android developer gets paid a lot of money. Why? Because there's very few people who can do what he does. And there's a huge demand for Android developers globally. Okay, how how in demand is what you do your skill. Okay, Android development is a skill. Number two, how good? Are you at doing it in comparison to the statistics of the other people? The Bell Curve? Right? Number three, how difficult would it be to replace you? Okay, my assistant is unbelievable. Okay, she's so good. I've been training her for three years, we worked so well together, she's incredibly valuable to me, okay, to this business to this mission, okay. And I'm very valuable to her as well. But my point is, are you thinking that way? intrinsic value is wonderful, we all have the same intrinsic value, I understand that. But when it comes to the persons, places, things and ideas that you surround yourself with, to be at your best, you're going to have to be discerning, and you're gonna have to look at unfortunately, more than just intrinsic value.

Stephen Box: 38:24
So something that that you kind of worn out there that really like to is you didn't give people specific list of skills, right? You didn't say like, here's skill, a your skill be your skill seat, right. And that's what a lot of times we want people to do. So you talked about how you had to develop the skill of understanding these different values, and really understanding how to best help people in those different areas. You mentioned the intrinsic value. And the reality is that yes, we are all technically born equal. But you know, because of where we're born, because of the family we're born into, because of the way we look when we're born, because of our physical status. There's different things that may have an impact on us, it may affect the quality of education we get, it might affect the financial flexibility that we have growing up. There's so many different things that can be impacted that we have zero control over. But the key and I'm sure you will agree with this, but please let me know if you do not agree is that all of us have the ability to develop skills and bring ourselves up to that point. The difference is, one person may just have to go a little further on the climb that somebody else. So for example, if you grew up in a household where every person in your house was in sales or management or was a public speaker or whatever you probably naturally develop the skill to stand in front of people and talk and communicate and be persuasive, you probably naturally have those tendencies based on what you grew up around. If, on the other hand, if you grew up in a household full of workers, where there was no leaders, there were no speakers, there were no people who are in those positions, you're probably completely unfamiliar with those skills. Doesn't mean you can't develop them. It just means that if you're going to get to those positions, you have to develop those skills. And so that's why I actually liked the fact that you didn't just say like, oh, yeah, step one, step two, step three, let's go, right, because this is gonna be different for everybody.

Alan Lazaros: 40:40
Right? I think everyone needs to reverse engineer the vision. Like, um, I asked my clients this all the time, like, you know, what is your decade look like? And I usually go beyond that too, right? You know, let's say you live to the average life expectancy on this planet is 72. For males, 73 for females, at least according to Google, right? And I think, you know, when we get towards that age, it'll, it'll be higher, obviously, with technology and healthcare and all that. But a lot of people say like, YOLO. And it's like, well, you only live once, like, what if I died tomorrow? It's like, well, what if you don't? Yeah, statistically speaking, you're not going to die tomorrow, most likely. Right? It's irrational to think you are, and based on the statistics. And so I think what's important is to play the long game and to have a vision and to reverse engineer the finish line. And one of the things you have to reverse engineer is, like you said, not just the actions, but the skills. I've reverse engineered the skills that I will need to achieve my vision. Yeah. And oratory is one of them. oratory is speaking. Finance is one of them. Business is one of them. I'm a business consultant, right, I better master business. Another one of them is delegation, team leadership, right? Podcasting, speaking, coaching, coaching is my main one, that's my nucleus, I have a target in the corner of my room right here. It's called Alan's genius zone. It's my nucleus. And there's three, three is a target with like three layers. The first layer is coaching slash consulting. Second layer is speaking slash training. third layer is podcasting. I only do those three things as much as possible. And I try to eliminate automate, delegate the rest of those things. And that doesn't mean I don't do other things. I wait train, bla, bla, bla, I have a relationship. I have a family, all that stuff, but but I'm trying to do more percentage more percentage more percentage of my own unique gift. And that's my calling, I believe. And maybe at 3435, I'll have even more awareness, most likely on what my calling is. And maybe I'll do even more coaching and consulting and maybe even less of the other things I don't know. But what I do know is that you got to figure out, what's your vision, and you got to reverse engineer the skills you need. And then work on those because information is everywhere, skills are actually rare, and skills monetize forever. That's the cool part.

Stephen Box: 43:05
You know, one of the things that I also like to point out here is the idea that people always think about goals, right? Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna set some goals and achieve this goal. And like I mentioned earlier, we don't really have for outcome over goals. But the thing that I find actually helps people stick with stuff long term, is when we stop worrying about the outcome, and we start focusing on the mastery. And that's what you just hit on right there. It's really about mastering something. Because you know what, when you're 2530 years old, you're not sure what you want to do with your life, you didn't maybe have the advantage that Alan got of getting that realization in his mid 20s. Maybe it's taking you a little longer to come around. That's okay. It took me to my mid 30s to get things start to figure out so and I'm 43 now and I've just in the last two years feel like I really figured out the absolute direction I want to go and that's perfectly okay. The thing that I want people to hear and realize is that all of this stuff, when we start talking about mastery and develop new skills and realizing your special, you know, talent, everything else. It doesn't come from just saying, Oh, this is my thing. It comes from a lot of introspective, it comes from doing a lot of things in finding out that it's not the right thing for you.

Alan Lazaros: 44:27
Right. It comes from an exploration. I believe that life is a dance between exploration and refocus. Yeah. We don't show up in the world and go I know exactly who I am. No, you go explore and you're like, Oh, hot stove. Ah, cold stove, right and you try to figure out what's your center? What's your calling, and I think we all have to hit some guardrails along the way, you know, and sort of pinball our way up to our calling. But a lot of times it's like, Oh, I know who I am not. Right. It's like for me I tried the alcohol thing I eventually was like, nope, not for me. So you just got to figure out that for you. And I agree, it's not an overnight thing. It's an infinite game. I'm more aware at 33 than I was at 32. I'll be more aware at 35 than I am at 33. The key is, Are you are you getting better every day? Are you are you? If you don't know, your calling, the only wrong answer is to stop searching. Yep. And you know, to your point there, it changes, right? For your, your priorities are different when you're single. They change when you meet your spouse.

Stephen Box: 45:37
If you add kids on to that, that's a whole nother level of engagement. And there's not even a universal thing there. Because for some people, they have kids, it's like, hey, my kids, my family are my most important thing. Nothing else is more important than that. Other people are like, hey, you know what, I believe in hard work, I believe and my, my business and providing for my family. And I want to set the example for my kids that hard work is how you get places, right? So even within the context of you talk to people who are similar situations, they might have completely different ways that they're viewing it in different priorities. 100% That's what we call them unique abilities. Right? Exactly. Imagine that. So let's, let's kind of go back to your to your podcast here for a second. Because I think this is a good place to maybe kind of finish up by zeroing in and showing people what skill and action development actually looks like. So you get the vision, if you want to share it in like maybe 30 seconds here, your vision for the podcast, like why did you first start it? What was your motivation behind that?

Alan Lazaros: 46:47
I know, I knew after that car accident that self improvement was not something that I grew up around. And I knew that self improvement was the answer. For me, I think there's two causes of all human suffering ignorance and apathy. And ignorance is not knowing any better. Apathy is not caring enough to do anything about it. And so I wanted to solve that problem. I wanted to, you know, if you, you know, be the change you wish to see in the world, Mahatma Gandhi, that kind of thing. And so our mission is to nothing short of bring personal development bring holistic self improvement to the masses to as many people as we possibly can through the podcast. And the podcast is the vehicle to do that. But so is speaking, so is coaching. And, you know, coming up on 800 episodes, now, you know, we do an episode every single day, you brush your teeth every day you can you can listen to self improvement every day. And you know, health, wealth and love health as physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Wealth is how you make your money. In other words, do you love what you do? And is it in your calling? You know, how much do you make? Is that increasing or decreasing over time? And then where do you invest your money, your capital, and then love which is your intimate relationship, immediate family, business partners, colleagues, clients, mentors, mentees, friends, that whole thing. And so relationships, health, wealth, and love, those are the majors. And that's what we focus on in our show. Yeah, and we want to bring personal development and self improvement from a holistic perspective and be the male role models we never had. Because Kevin and I never had fathers growing up. I had a stepdad from age two to 14, and my stepdad left at 14. And I had to figure it out how to be a man. And he did too. And so that was sort of the common wound that brought us together, which brought us to this common mission. Now we have a charity that actually, every single Father's Day, we're gonna rent out a rec center. And starting in 2022, actually, because we've been spending the last three or four fathers days together ever since we got together on the business. And we're going to rent out a rec center and kids without fathers, we're going to invite and we're going to bring like a celebrity, a character driven celebrity that kids know and look up to to like, teach them. So we can, you know, a day that's typically very sad, will actually be a beautiful, wonderful day for them, so they can just get the chills so they can, you know, aspire and grow.

Stephen Box: 49:07
Now, that's, that's awesome, man. You know, I My father actually passed away when I was like 11 years old. So I can definitely relate to what you're saying there. And just knowing how tough that is to grow without that influence. So I think that what you're doing there fantastic. Kind of going back to the podcast, obviously, you that that's like the very polished like 800 episodes later, you know what it's about? I'm sure when you started it was just like, Yo, I had this epiphany and I want other people to know about it. Podcast. That sounds like a great idea. Right?

Alan Lazaros: 49:43
Yeah. You already go into that. Good.

Stephen Box: 49:48
Well, what I was gonna ask is when you first started with the podcast, just like five or 10 Quick skills that you had to personally develop that you didn't already have

Alan Lazaros: 50:01
The first one is vulnerability. Which I still work on vulnerability, the ability to I mean, I remember I never used to talk about my father, I never used to talk about my stepdad, I never used to talk about my alcohol problem, right? So vulnerability, the ability to be truthful with yourself and others, to open yourself up to the idea that you're not perfect. And be okay with that. That's huge, huge. I think a lot a lot of us and I struggle with this, too, is like, there's this cognitive dissonance between what we wish we were and what we actually are. And until we hit that, what we actually are that humility, that humble place of rock bottom, so to speak, can we really build from the truth so that truth will definitely set you free? So vulnerability is number one. Number two is his interview skills. You know, you know, it's all thing to interview people. speaking skills is next. So speaking, you know, there's tonality, there's word choice, there's inflection, there's, there's volume, there's pauses, I noticed you have really good pauses as a matter of fact, so good that I actually interrupt you on it unintentionally a couple times. Sorry about that. But pauses are powerful. You know, you can always tell an amateur when they're just like rambling, right? Um, and I'm still working on this stuff all the time, I had to stop saying, um, we had an M jar, I had to put dollars in an M jar. You know, I probably I've started a few times in the SU. So speaking is another one. Also. I just said, for the podcast, I also had to develop unreasonable consistency. Yeah. And, and the skill of long term consistency, which is a skill. And it's, it's, in my opinion, the most important thing, and I'll borrow a quote from a friend of mine, his name's Steven Kotler. Friend of mine, we're not like buddies. He, we interviewed him once. He wrote a book called The Art of impossible. And we interviewed him about his book. But yeah, so so he said this in his book, and I love it. He said, you know, very little is actually impossible, given a decade. But I like to flip things. I'm like a math guy. I like to invert things. Very little is actually possible. If you can't be consistent. Yeah. So very little is impossible, if you can be consistent for the long run. But almost nothing is even possible if you can't be consistent. And there's no more important lesson than that. Because it's the hardest thing in the world, humans. Humans are naturally inconsistent. I mean, we love variety, you know, and there's 1000 Different games on my phone, I could be playing right now. Right? So the skill of consistency is, I think, the most important skill you can develop.

Stephen Box: 52:49
Yeah, so let's, let's actually dive in with that one for a second. So this is, to me a very interesting one. Because when I look at consistency, and thinking of it in terms of it being a skill, the way I like to explain it to my clients is, you're gonna start off really bad, like, you're gonna suck. Terrible. When you are at that stage, take the smallest possible action, that you can win a workout, but you hate working out, start putting your shoes in front of you, okay, you're not working out yet, you're not gonna get results from putting your shoes in front of you every day. But it starts to develop that mindset, right? If you want to do a podcast every day, start by actually just interviewing somebody, like when you started your podcast, you started at once a week, and then twice a week, and then three times a week, and then four times a week, and then five times a week. And that didn't just happen over the course of a month. That happened over a very long period of time. So people need to understand, you start small, as you're consistent. Consistency starts to build as you start to develop that practice. And again, it goes back to need to be in alignment with who you are, as a person, your values, your priority, your belief need to be in alignment. Because if you're doing it for the listeners, if you're doing it for the likes, if you're doing it for the money, then you're going to be disappointed if those things aren't flowing in. But if you're doing it from a standpoint that you're it aligns with what you believe the message you want to deliver to the world is getting delivered, super easy to stick with, because now the passion is there. Right? As long as you don't overburden yourself, right. And this is the point that I wanted to get to here was with you. I'm going to make an assumption that when you started before you met your partner, you were probably doing everything on your own. Maybe if you were lucky and you had a little extra money, you're paying someone to do some editing or something like that for you. But more than likely you're like every other entrepreneur starting off and you were doing it Everything you were wearing every single hat. And had you continue to do that you would have burnt yourself out

Alan Lazaros: 55:07
100%. And that was another way to do that at the beginning. Yeah, exactly.

Stephen Box: 55:13
Because because now in order to delegate, right, so now you had to learn to work with somebody else, you had to learn what tasks to delegate out, you had to learn how to explain things clearly. So they get done the way you want them done by other people, right? These are all skills. And this is what I this is why I wanted to dive into this idea. Because I want people to start to see, it's not a single process. It's skill after skill after skill, like you said, even just interviewing people, there's an outcome of right off top of my head 15 different skills that you need to learn just to sit in front of this mic and ask questions. And it seems like such a simple thing, but those skills, you need daily actions, those daily actions, like I said, the smaller or the newer you are to the scale, the smaller his actions need to be. Yep. So just real quick, if you don't mind just sharing maybe a quick example of when the skills that you developed and like what were some of the actions you took to kind of build that up over time, is some people heard idea here,

Alan Lazaros: 56:15
I want to share, I want to share this. So I did this thing early on. I used to carry around this notebook, I actually still have a notebook with me, for those of you on camera, it's right here. But I used to carry around this notebook. And I started tracking everything I did. And I remember I didn't tell anyone about it, I just I just started tracking my behavior. And it gave me unbelievable self awareness. And here we are seven years later. And it's now become something it's become what we refer to as the peak performance tracker. And we actually have an app, like, it's a whole thing. So my entire 13 person global team uses it. All of our group coaching clients, that's 40 plus people use it. And then all my one on one clients, which is nearly 20, people all use it. And then we have a bunch of my past clients still using it. And so what I wants just was me tracking my habits in a notebook has become a thing everybody calls it PPT anyone who's in the next level community. And so I actually sent someone brand new it today their own spreadsheet, now we have it in a Google Doc, and it's set up with what we call the Daily Dozen. And there's four habits for health, for habits for wealth, four habits for love. And there's one KPI key performance indicator. That's like the one thing that matters most. So your rest of your life proliferates, and that's what my coaching is based around 1% improvement every day, the daily doesn't and one KPI and it's all customized by your vision. Right, you know? And so, to answer your question, that's what I would tell you is like, tracking my habits was a skill that I have stuck with for so many years. And it has paid off in ways I could never have imagined. Because now I have literally, I'm not even gonna sugarcoat this, we have one of the most performing virtual teams on the planet. I'm telling you, it's unreasonable how good this team is. But it's the system. The system is so good. I used to think it was Amy. And it was Kevin and it was me. And it was, you know, Crystal, and it was our Cassandra. No, no, it's the system. It's the system. And it's the leadership. And yes, it's the culture of excellence, but it's mostly the system. And you know how I know because we've deployed it with tons of other people, and it works for everybody. So this daily doesn't, I don't know why it sounds cool. And it's the sweet spot. Any more than a dozen people start to fall off any less than a dozen. It's kind of like our why bother. That's what I've seen Anyways, after years and years and years of doing this. And then one KPI like what's the, for us, it's listens, when listens are growing, everything else in our business grows, right? So at the beginning of this journey, that's what I'll end with is I didn't know what these things would turn into. I started out wanting to get better and focusing on my own personal development. And I had a vision and I work toward it. And whether it was conversations change lives or our Lazarus LLC, I used to have a slogan called what you'll never learn in school, but desperately needed to know. And I was trying to get speeches at schools huge, no, no, because it's like, why would we have you come and speak against the education system? So that was a whole thing, right? But it just evolved and evolved and evolved. But the through line was work ethic, self discipline, 1%, improvement every day, consistency over everything, character over everything, and just just going all in on that. And here we are, you know, it's wild, what can happen? It's nothing short of wild what can happen because at one point, I was, you know, doing a little tracker in my notebook outside my alma mater, you know, as a fitness coach. I didn't even think about business consulting, you know, it's like, it's wild. What can happen you know, business consulting was a dream of mine back in when Steve Jobs was my hero, but I went all in on fitness for a time. You know, I did fitness modeling and fitness coaching and fitness goals. petitions and I did Instagram and I did Facebook and I did LinkedIn and I did all this stuff. And I tried Snapchat and I, it's been a lot of exploring but the through line was always just getting better every single day and trying to serve it my greatest level. And that's what I would end with is just be consistent, figure out what's unique to you use that gift to serve the world and and try to try to do it better every day. You know, it really is the fundamentals. And that's why like unshakable habits, you know, if you make a habit of that you will be successful one way or another. It's just a matter of time.

Stephen Box: 1:00:32
Yeah. And I tell you, and the thing I love so much about what would you kind of wrapped up with there is it does really come back to understanding your individual values. Understanding what that thing is that aligns for you. And then pushing toward that every day. It just makes every decision you do, it makes everything you even attempt come so clearly into focus quickly, right? You start doing something and it doesn't feel in alignment with you. Just like this isn't right. I'm just gonna stop. But when you find that thing that does feel like an alignment, you're like, I'm going to do more of this. Even though it's hard. Yeah, even though it's hard, and that's what allows you to stick with it. You know, it's like, people are always like, Well, how do you? How do you go from unsustainable to unshakable? Well, part of it is you stop doing things that you don't want to do. Because you think that's what you're supposed to do. Start living the life that you want to live. And that's the thing that I love so much about your story is, you know, starts with that realization, right? It starts with that car accident and realizing, am I living the life I want to live? You talked about people saying, oh, you know, you only live once. Okay, cool. You only live once. Let's say that you do die tomorrow. Are you happy with the legacy that you're leaving behind? Right? Would you be proud of what people say about you? And if you are, if you're going out and you're partying all the time, you're having fun. And that's a legacy you want to leave by a homies party on man party on. But if you want more than that, if that's not what you want, get in alignment and start moving, moving towards that direction. Take the actions that put you in alignment, right.

Alan Lazaros: 1:02:26
Amen. And back at 26 I would not have been able to say that I was proud of that man. But now for certain. I am very proud of the man. And that's the thing. It doesn't even matter if if you know, I'll end on this. I asked my sister one time, she was six when my father died. And I asked her I said I said do you think Dad is proud of us? You know, and she said, I know he is have you. And in one note that was really sweet of her. But on the other note, it was also very sad because it's like, Well, why not? Have you and that's all another thing but yeah, I know that he's proud of me. Why? Because he would just want me to be proud of myself. And not like the ego pride not like the I'm pretending I'm awesome. When in reality I'm letting myself down every day. In the absence of sincere effort. I mean, the actual pride of like the I feel self esteem, we'll call it self esteem rather than pride. Self esteem of like, yeah, hell yeah. Like I my girlfriend asked me What are you most proud of? My ability to put in massive conscious effort to help other people I unlock people's potential man. I do. I do and I do a great and whatever. I love it. You know, it's like God forbid I say it right. So if you're out there listening like figure out what that is for you. What what fulfills you? And what's what's your unique gift that you can serve the world with? And if you can live more percentage more percentage more percentage and alignment with that you're gonna be you're gonna be unshakable.

Stephen Box: 1:03:58
Love it man. I will tell you man, I usually like to keep these pretty conversational, but I think I may have done even a little bit more talking today than normal. Just because you got to be so fired up man. Just cuz you got to be so fired up.

Alan Lazaros: 1:04:12
Hell yeah, brother. I appreciate it. I'm going to the gym after this for sure. Just so you know. Like, seriously, I can't wait I'm gonna get a good lift and I'm back to pull a pull

Stephen Box: 1:04:21
well before it before you head off to the gym man. If film if someone wants to get ahold of you, they want to check out the podcast they want to get coached. How do they reach you?

Alan Lazaros: 1:04:32
Next level universe.com And I said universe not university so next level University is the podcast and you can find next level University spelled just like it sounds on any podcast platform including YouTube or next level universe.com If you want to reach out to me personally between my assistant and I we get back to literally everyone. Just say Hey, I heard you on unshakeable habits. I'd love to connect awesome. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. In Allen, Lazarus a l a n. Last Name Lazarus la ZARO. S. And if you Google that all my Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn will all come up. I look forward to hearing from you. If you enjoyed what I had to say, you know, I'd love to connect.

Stephen Box: 1:05:19
So awesome man, love it. Definitely appreciate you coming today, being willing to share. First of all your story opening up especially know sharing some details that you haven't shared in the past. Always appreciate when people give exclusive content here on the podcast. But also, I appreciate the fact that you're willing to open up about your process, showing people kind of the messy middle of getting to the point that you are now and giving them some word of that roadmap of how they can go from wherever they're at right now to where they want to be in their life. So definitely appreciate you bringing that, that wisdom and those insights today, man,

Alan Lazaros: 1:06:00
I appreciate this. This was one of my favorite interviews of all time, genuinely, I hope that means something to you because I've done several of these. And yeah, the polished product is what people see now, but it was not always that way. So just keep grinding.

Stephen Box: 1:06:14
Absolutely. Well game and thank you for coming today. And if you are listening if you have not already, make sure you hit the subscribe button if you're watching us over on YouTube, or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And until next time, I just want to remind you that none of us are meant to be average. So go out and be unshakable.

Outro: 1:06:43
Thanks for listening to the unshakable habits podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. do catch all the latest please subscribe that unshakeable habits.com/youtube or on your favorite podcast app. You can learn more about unshakable habits at unshakable habits.com Until next week, be unshakable Bye friends











































































































































































Intro: 0:01
The right habits put you in control of your health, relationships, mindset, and more. But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits long enough to see results that is about to change. Welcome to the unshakable habits podcast with your host, habit change specialist and speaker Stephen box. Join us each week as experts share their stories, experiences and insights and give you the tools to build unshakable habits so you can live life on your turn. It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Stephen Box: 0:47
A everybody welcome to another episode of the unshakable habits podcast. I am your host, Stephen box. And I am joined today by Alan Lazarus from next level University. Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Lazaros: 1:03
Thank you so much for having me. That intro was awesome. And I think I think about habits every single day. And so this is going to be fire.

Stephen Box: 1:13
Yeah, man, I'm looking forward to we, we had a chance to talk before we get the pre interview get to know each other a little bit. And you have a great story. But we also have a really good match in terms of our philosophies and the way that we view habits. So I know this is going to be a fantastic episode. And one of the things we're going to actually discuss with you today is for your own podcast, you've done 780 consecutive episodes, as of the time of this recording, by the time this episode comes out, you'll probably be like, up in the 1000s the way you're pumping things out right now. But you've not missed a single episode. So we're going to talk today a little bit about how you get to that point of consistency. And the way we're going to do that is very simple. We're going to talk about the unshakable habits framework, because that's how we're going to frame this. The first part of that is a vision. And we'll get into your story here in just a second. But part of your vision started when you were 26 years old, and you had a near fatal car crash. So we'll dive into that. And then over time you started building up all these skills, building skills is a second part of the framework. Because if we don't build skills, then we can't really achieve a vision. And it's important that people realize visions are not goals. Goals are all about outcomes. Goals can be a part of a vision. But visions are really about who you are as a person, your behaviors, your choices, the things that you do. So once you get the vision, once we get the scales, well, how are we going to build them, we're going to take actions, that's gonna be the third part. And we're going to dive into a lot of the specific actions you've taken to change your life and to build that kind of consistently consistency to do all of those episodes. So that is our framework. Are you ready to do it? I'm ready to rock. Cool. So take us back to 26 years old Allen. And okay, talk to us about this accident and how it changed your life.

Alan Lazaros: 3:17
Alright, so first, I'll tell you, I'm currently on November 17. I'm going to be actually 33 years old. So I'll take you back to when I was 26. Alright, so I'm 26 years old. And up to this point. I'm in corporate America, and I'm working for an industrial automation company. And it's called Cognex. And I'm actually not working at the time I'm up in New Hampshire with my little cousin. And we're playing Call of Duty. We decided we want to go to TGI Fridays. And I'm not familiar with the area very well. I'm looking down at the GPS, it's 2016 at the time 2015 rather. And it was one of those really, really bad winters. And so I thought the road stayed right. It actually stayed left but the snow was actually up above the signs. And so I couldn't see the yield sign. And so I ended up on the wrong side of the road entirely my fault. I look up in front of me. And there's what I thought was a Mack truck truck like 10 feet in front of me. It actually ended up fortunately being a lift kidded truck. There's a lot of pickup trucks with lift kits up in New Hampshire. I'm driving a 2004 Volkswagen Passat unfortunately, I used to call this car the tank. He used to call it a steel trap. It was German engineered car both airbags did deploy. My cousin was okay and I was okay physically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I was very, very shaken. Because I had that life or death moment where the lights are 10 feet in front of me and I actually thought to myself like this is the end. This is it. There was no part of me no part of me that thought I would survive it because again, I thought it was a Mack truck And I also didn't anticipate in that moment that the steel trap the Volkswagen Passat would be so so safe. So physically, my little cousin hurt his knee on the airbag I hurt my face on the airbag, both airbags did deploy, we're okay. But mentally, emotionally and spiritually I am nothing short of rattled. The part of my story I haven't told anyone listening right now yet is that when I was two years old, my father was 28 years old and my father died in a car accident when he was 28 years old. And normally when I give my speeches, and I tell the story, I usually show you know my car, because my car was looking very similar. I've seen pictures of my dad's car. And they look very similar. And so I'm 26 at the time remembering and I grew up my entire life hearing about John hearing about my dad. And so for me, it wasn't like, oh, that could have been it. Like, intellectually, it was like, Oh, my God, that could have been it. Because I grew up my whole life hearing stories about John my, my dad didn't have a second chance. But I did. So I'm sitting in an armchair drinking whiskey, contemplating my life and questioning absolutely everything. Am I proud of the man I became quite questioning, I had so much regret, remorse, guilt, shame, regret. I wasn't a bad person. I wasn't a bad guy. But I wasn't really living life on my own terms. And from a very young age, when I was seven years old, my mom gave me the best lesson I've ever got. And it's an aim high, and you'll have choices. And she basically told me that if you aim high, she said, Alan, you can be a CEO, or you can be a farmer, she always had a way of explaining to me as a kid, and you can be a CEO or you can be a farmer. But if you aim high and decide to be a CEO, you can wake up one day and just decide to be a farmer. But it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. So make sure you aim high, and you'll have choices. And so I did, I was an achiever, the achiever in me was born. Lots of self belief, lots of achievement, straight A's in high school president's award went to one of the top tech schools in the planet. It's like a mini MIT, it's called Worcester Polytechnic Institute, got my computer engineering degree, also got my MBA, and there I am in corporate America as as this really really successful multi six figure job. You know, corporate, corporate, corporate, all that beautiful girlfriend, tons of friends, corporate friends, college friends, high school friends, and I thought that I had it made. And I had achieved most of my dreams, the only dream remaining was I wanted to be a fortune 50 CEO, like Steve Jobs. My hero at the time was Steve Jobs, and still a hero of mine. So I'm 26. And I get in this car accident, and I realized Holy crap, like I thought life was about achievement. And what I didn't realize is that life is actually about living in alignment with your highest self based on your core aspirations, core values and core beliefs. And so I live by the saying, Now, you can't see the stars during the day. They're always there. But sometimes it takes the darkness to see clearly that what you simply could not within the light. So if you're out there listening right now you have adversity in your future. It's a guarantee health challenges, financial challenges, family challenges, you name it, Adversity is in your future, that's a guarantee for me and for you. What's not guaranteed is when you're in mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical pain, anguish, suffering, what are you going to do? What are you going to decide what are the choices you're going to make when you're there? So I saw two stars. When it was dark, I saw two stars I'd never seen before. The first one is Tony Robbins, TED Talk. Regardless of what you think of Tony, his TED talk is unbelievable, best TED talk of all time, in my opinion. Second, and more importantly, a woman by the name of Ronnie where she's an Australian woman. I've since interviewed her on the podcast. This was four years later. She wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. And so for those of you out there that's listening to this and interpersonal development you've heard start with the end in mind. To me, there's nothing more important than learning from the terminally ill. She worked in hospice, she worked with the terminally ill for eight years. And she noticed over and over and over again, the same regrets, I wish, I wish, I wish she was there to listen and hear them reflect on their lives. And just like me at 26, I was reflecting on my life with all this regret. The number one regret of the dying according to Bronnie Ware, according to her book, is I wish I lived a life true to myself, and not what others expected of me. Hindsight is 2020 the first 26 years of my life while I was a good intentioned man. I was living a life trying to appease others without realizing it. I was achieving goals that weren't as fulfilling as I'd hoped once I got there. And I didn't really realize that fulfillment was really what I needed. And that fulfillment is a byproduct of aligning with virtuous positive choices in alignment with your highest unique self. And now I realized that and so after 26 Now I'm 33. So that's eight years ago, seven years ago, rather bad math seven years ago. And basically now what I understand is that I have to make choices in alignment with my inner calling, I was always so focused on external results, and external achievement. And now I'm much more focused on alignment. And that's really, you know, sort of what I'm here to talk about is habits align you with your highest self. And this is a podcast called unshakable habits. I absolutely love the title. And I went all in on my own personal development and my own mission. And to say, I went all in on you know, self improvement is an understatement, this point, but that's when the hyper conscious podcast, I met someone named Kevin, I had a podcast called Conversations change lives. He was my first guest. And then he had me on his podcast called The Hyper conscious podcast, hyper conscious means to be acutely aware. And then we teamed up. And we did a podcast called The Hyper conscious podcast meets conversations change lives, eventually, it was like, Okay, we're doing this, we're like 20 weeks in, like, let's just merge. We stayed with the hyper conscious podcast for 400 episodes, and then we rebranded to next level University. And here we are today, 790, episodes, top 100 self improvement show clients all over the world, huge business, 13 person, global team. But that's not where we started, I started from Ground Zero, just like anyone else. And after 26, I made massive positive change. And here I am today, luckily, talking to all of you about

Stephen Box: 11:45
that. So couple of things that you talked about there man that I really liked. So first of all, let's let's go back and maybe just normalize a little bit for anybody listening, right? If you're in your mid 20s, a lot of this may have sounded familiar to you, even if you had not had the experience of being in a near fatal car crash, because I think that's kind of the age where a lot of us do start to question where we're going in our life, right? It's like, okay, I've gone to school, maybe I've gotten into degree, do I really want to use it? Do I want to be in that field? Like, where am I going with my life? Right? It's kind of that point where you start to make ask those questions anyways, you had on top of that, this extra thing, with not just having the car crash, but you know, having your father die at a very similar age, from the exact same thing. And so I can only imagine how hard that must have been to kind of hit that wall. Can you share maybe a little bit there in terms of it because you covered a little bit about, like, how you started looking to better yourself and kind of questioning about life or whatever. But um, I'm sure and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm just kind of making a little bit of an assumption that you didn't like, literally wake up the next morning and go in the seat for wisdom, right, like, so what what did that process look like? How did you like, was it kind of a funky we're in? And if so, how did you pull yourself out of that funk? And start looking for improvement?

Alan Lazaros: 13:20
You know, great question. And the truth of the matter is, is yeah, it's it's so interesting, because I can intellectually Say it seven years later, like, you know, I got on track, but for a long time, it was an absolute struggle. Um, part of the story that I haven't talked about yet that I'll bring up now is, I used to drink a lot. So in the tail end of high school, my house was hosted some of the so my older sister was three years older than me. And she basically introduced me to drinking when I was 14 years old, because she hung out with older kids, so 21 year old plus kids, you know, I think she was, you know, 18 or so at the time. And so I was like, introduced to the whole party scene very, very young. I remember I had a shot of wild turkey when I was 14 years old. And that was sort of the first time I had started drinking, but after that drinking was a pretty consistent theme in my life. And I also grew up in an environment that did have you know, a lot of alcohol in it. And so you know, part of a little bit talented high school part in college and then I went into corporate and parted in corporate a bit, too. And by party, I think I think what I mean is go out, have fun. I had what I now refer to as a pleasure centered paradigm, not a mission centered paradigm. It was achievement and life. The subconscious belief was life is about fun. And I grew up and adopted that paradigm. Some people have a work centered paradigm. Some people have a pleasure centered paradigm. Some people have a church Centered Care Some people have, you know, a family centered paradigm families first work is first churches first, I have now a fulfillment centered paradigm, a mission centered paradigm, a principle centered paradigm. And that's the core that I live from now. But it wasn't always the chord that I live from now is how do I maximize my own unique potential and help others do the same, but I didn't after that car accident, I didn't know all that to your point. What I did know, however, is that the pleasure centered paradigm was not the answer. And so like you said, a lot of people in their 20s really start to question and contemplate life. And that's very important. Very, very important. I've always been insatiably curious. And I've always been a an achiever with a lot of self belief. And I think that will be come clear to anyone listening. And I think that's a critical component. Because when you are in the dark, if you don't have self belief, you probably won't climb out. Because we all have a choice, when we're in the dark after that car accident was in the dark, you have a choice between virtue advice. And if you don't believe in your own ability to create a brighter future, on your own terms, you are going to choose device, drugs, alcohol escapes Netflix, whatever. And I've been there too, right. But to answer your original question, I definitely had PTSD. I was definitely lost for quite some time. Crowds bothered me, I struggled with claustrophobia. I still was drinking. But although I was questioning that now, and I remember I kept getting pulled over. Because I was too far on the right side of the road. Because double yellow lines scared me because I was on the wrong side of the road. In the car accident, I had like serious trauma about double yellow lines. So I kept getting pulled over. I think I got pulled over like six times. And I just told the cops I'm sorry, I'm I just got a bad car accident, I'm having trouble staying close to the yellow lines. And they were very kind. Because I was I remember I parked my tire multiple times, because, you know, there's debris on the right side of the road. So yeah, it was it was definitely a soul searching time. And that's when I found personal development, though, and and what a coincidence, it's not a coincidence. Coincidence. In other words, I almost get in a nearly fatal car accident, and I pick up a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, I get in a car accident. I'm filled with regret. And then I notice a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. That's the thing, right? When you're in the dark, you're gonna see the star you never could have seen before. It was always there. But it's just like when you buy a new car, and then you notice everyone else has that same car. Now it has significance to us. So you notice it, right? So I think the answers are always all around us. We just don't always see them, we can always access them. And it's when we shift the inner world, that's when we can notice. And so that massive shift of deep regret, pain, remorse, guilt, shame, like of like, well, I drank and partied. And you know, I wasn't proud of all that. So yes, I had a lot of PTSD. But I also had a lot of PTSD, which is post traumatic growth. You know, we talk about PTSD, and I used to have to literally puff my chest up and walk in and out of doorways just to get over claustrophobia. Remember doorways would like bother me for a time after that car accident. So PTSD is a real thing for sure. When trauma happens, it's definitely real. But post traumatic growth is a thing too. And that's really the journey I embarked on is like, Okay, I'm, when you get to hell no. It's it's a lot easier to swing the pendulum to hell yes. You know, I have a mentor, and he says, you know, Alan, everyone has their price. And I said, No, I don't, you know, he said, Alan, if I gave you a million dollars, today, what could you turn it into in five years. And I remember saying to him, like, I'm not interested, you know, he has a bunch of billionaire friends. And he said, there's no shortage of capital, there's just a shortage of projects, like we believe in you, like, come, come meet my friends. And I just, I would rather stay in alignment now. And so that's kind of the cheat code is when you know, who you are and who you aspire to be. And you've lived a life outside of alignment with that, and then you've gotten the near death experience. People call it mortality, motivation. You know, if you're blessed enough to live to 100 years on this planet, that's still only 36,500 days. And I use this analogy and I'll you know, I'll end here in terms of this question. If you only had $36,500 and you could never spend another dollar how carefully would you spend that money you know, but yet we're fuddling away our days all the time and not living from that that core that calling and so now I do that every single day and to answer your question I'm more percentage more percentage more percentage living in alignment with my calling every single day. At least that's the goal. I slip up I fall off the horse it took me five years to quit. Taking a drink at a wedding couple times, like now I'm three years ago and coming up on three years. But like, it took me so long. I'm seven years later, I tried to quit drinking for seven years. And I'm three years sober. So you can see how many times I slipped up in between. And so the narrative bias, it's hard to explain how much I went through. But it was definitely a challenge and an uphill battle. And, you know, I remember waking up a couple years later being like, holy crap, I have all new habits. And I know this podcasts about habits, but I mean that I remember I used to write down three columns, current habits, bad habits, current positive habits, current bad habits, wishful habits. And I remember like a year later, I looked at one of my old lists, and it was like, all the bad habits were replaced, and all the wishful habits were like, a part of my life. And it's like, wild, I don't even drink anymore. And at one point, that was such a big part of my life. So that's possible for any of us. And yeah, it was an absolute uphill battle. It was nothing short of brutal, but the best kind of brutal.

Stephen Box: 21:02
Yeah, so I'm going to hit on a couple things there. So first of all, I don't want to give people the impression that anything that we're about to talk about is to suggest that you should not seek out professional counseling, because you absolutely should, if you are struggling to get over something. But that doesn't mean there's not steps you can take on your own. And one of the things that I've noticed, in interviewing a lot of the guests that I've interviewed is, regardless of what your belief system is, so whether that's you know, a religion or whether it's just the universe, or whatever the case may be for you. What I've noticed is, when people get that bigger sense of something, when they feel like there's something out there bigger than them, that they're connecting to something that's mission that they can kind of focus their energy on. That's when things start to happen. That's when opportunity start to present themselves. And you kind of hit on that, you know, yourself or it's like, here, you were in this really dark place. And it wasn't until you started that process of thinking that okay, what what do I need to change what needs to be different in my life, then all sudden, you saw that star as you put it, you saw that book there. And it's like, it's almost as if the universe or God or whoever put that right in front of you, instead of callin, you're ready for this? Now's the time now now's when you're actually ready to take this information and do something with it. I think it's really powerful man. Because I think sometimes people are so afraid to take that step. They're so afraid to step out. But time and time again, I've seen it and you testify to it. When you take that first step, everything will conspire to make you successful. I mean, would you would you agree with that, what would you say that's an accurate description of what your situation was,

Alan Lazaros: 23:06
as long as you do your part. And by your part, what I mean is we have a formula at NLU next level you that that we talk about the it's a we call it the manifestation formula, and it's in our team dashboard. And basically, it's how you take something that you're imagining and make it real. But there's steps in that process. And when I say do your part, what I mean is like, it's not just gonna happen by default. And I know, I know that people know that. But if you have a vision, Kevin actually has a great quote that explains this. He basically says, Your future is the parts of your imagination that you hold on to the longest. And so if you've imagined that brighter future for yourself, and you have that vision, like you talked about, and you hold on to it long enough and work toward it long enough, and you know, virtues, the key, right work ethic, compassion, sweat, equity, due diligence, self discipline, like a virtue is the answer. And by the way, virtue is a universal language. Compassion is always going to be a virtue. whether people like it or not, alcohol is always going to be a vise. It's literally a toxin. Okay? So as long as you do your part and live a virtuous life in alignment with your calling, and chase fulfilment, not pleasure, then yes, you will achieve your dreams. But if you don't, you certainly will not. And that's, that's my belief.

Stephen Box: 24:37
Yeah. Now, you mentioned the the TED talk, what was the subject on that one?

Alan Lazaros: 24:43
It was the six human needs. Tony Robbins has the six human needs. Yeah. So I can I can give you them if you're interested. So, the first four is what he refers to as the needs of the human certainty is number one, number two is variety. Number three is significance. Most men are chasing significance. Most masculine energies, I should say, I don't want to do men or women, but masculine energies tend to want significance, especially at young ages. And then love and connection is the fourth need. Most feminine energies are craving love at the deepest level. And we all have both masculine and feminine within us. And then the last two are the ones that I think people miss. And he agrees, growth and contribution. Yeah. And so I have this, I'm reading a book right now called optimizing for fulfillment, and fulfillment, the formula, it's unique to each of us, but it's a formula. And it's based on fulfillment is is a byproduct of virtuous choices in alignment with your highest growth and contribution. And if you can, if you can understand it, it's a pyramid. So there's five levels of the pyramid, it's kind of like my, my 21st version, my 21st century version of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but a far more evolved, I think, a more practical, better version. And of course, I'm biased. I think that but whatever. It starts with, like sleep, like I would you say, that's a no bias at all right? No bias at all. Right? Exactly. It's my pyramid. So whatever, pyramid of fulfillment, so I was on the phone with a client. And she was talking about all these challenges she was having with family, and, you know, her health and all that stuff. And we go through the pyramid, and it's a diagnostic. And I asked from zero to 10, on each of these categories, right, there's level one through five, and, you know, the bottom is physical needs, then the next is like, you know, mind, it's mostly body, then mind, then emotional, then the third level is like mostly emotional needs. And then the fourth level is growth, maximizing your potential. And then the fifth level is basically your own unique contribution, your mission, calling whatever you want to label it. And the thing about the pyramid is that you can't get to level two until you have a rock solid level one, and the higher the pyramid, the true north, I have this some this TrueNorth around my, my neck. For those on video. It's it's like a North Star. And it's my guide. And again, it represents the like, you can't see the stars during the day type of thing, but they're always there. But sometimes it takes the darkness, emotional pain to see what you couldn't. And so the higher the pyramid goes, the stronger the foundation needs to be. A lot of times what happens is people let that foundation erode, you know, and and I was talking to this client, and she gave me a three out of 10 for sleep. And I was like, Well, how much sleep are you getting? And she's like, oh, like, probably three, four hours, maybe? Like I'm like, really like REM sleep like, you're she's like, Yeah, I'm interrupted all night. Like I said, with all due respect, like until you fix that. None of that other stuff is gonna go away. But it's always gonna feel like the sky is falling if you're getting three hours of sleep. Yeah, right. That's just neuroscience. That's just biology. And so the diagnostic and the period fulfillment is a formula. You know, I remember when I was a kid, I was like, 20. And my mom asked me, she's like, Why do you care so much about intelligence? Like, why is that so important to you? I said, I just, I don't know. I feel like it's important. I said, Mom, I'm trying to figure out the formula to not end up old and miserable like everybody else. And I know that sounds hardcore. That was my ego. 20 year old version of it. But basically, I looked around man, and I got scared. I looked around, people were telling me, like, Alan, these are the best years of your life in high school. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I hope not, you know, like, this is my high school was not, you know, it was brutal, right? And I can relate. Yeah, I'm 33. It's only gotten better. But that's because I've gotten better. And so I looked around, and I saw a lot of unhappy marriages. I'm just gonna be honest, small town, small minded town. Okay, in Massachusetts called Oxbridge. And I saw a lot of unhappy people, I saw a lot of unfulfilled marriages, I saw a lot of unfulfilled people, lots of alcohol, lots of you know, whatever. And not a lot of dreams and goals. And the truth of the matter is, is I knew it, I knew there was another way, you know, and I've been to my 10 year high school reunion and life doesn't get better unless you get better. And that is a fact. I mean, you know, sometimes good things happen to bad people, sometimes bad things happen to good people. But overall, you have a choice and you can get better every single day and and if you get better, your life will get better. And that's that's what I know for sure.

Stephen Box: 29:21
Yeah. And I think to the point that you made there were about it's really about you putting in the work, right? It's very much in alignment with what I preach to people as well. Because if you go back and you look at the framework, so you get the vision. And what people a lot of times they do is they seek out information. Information, if it's good information, like like the TED talk in the book for you were good information. They helped to create a vision. Visions are great, they're mandatory. You need to have them they really create what you referred to as that Northstar, right. But here's the thing, or that TrueNorth, excuse me, but here's the thing. If you don't take the next two steps, if you don't develop the skills, if you don't take the actions, it doesn't matter what vision you have, it doesn't matter how much you get inspired, doesn't matter how motivated you were on Monday, if Wednesday, you're not doing anything with it. So I love the fact that you, as you pointed out, man, because like you hit it on the head there, it's really about what steps are you actually taking to make this happen. And one of the things that I loved when I was coming up with the this idea of the framework and kind of putting it together and and using it as the format for the show, was, I wanted a way to explain to people, the messiness of this whole process, right? Because Because here's the reality, people have this impression, like people will like when you accomplish this, what did it look like? Well, it looked a lot sloppier that it's going to look for you, because I'm going to coach you through it. With the advantage of hindsight. Yeah, but going through it a real time, I didn't have the advantage of hindsight, unless you got lucky enough to have a coach or somebody yourself, who gave you that information. But most of us, this is not a formula that we followed. It's from what we could have followed. But it's really something we intuitively found. And know. And what I found is that just plays over and over again in people's lives. So for you, you got the vision from the book and from the TED Talk. So talk to me about the skills like where did you start to look at and say, I need to develop some certain skills to be able to get things done. And you might not have said it obviously, in that way. But like, where did you start to get better?

Alan Lazaros: 32:02
You know, I'm really grateful that you talk about skills, because I think that's really overlooked. I remember one time I was talking to Kevin and I said Kev, you know, this is not fluffy, feel good. You. This is next level you. Okay, and, you know, on our podcast, we we pride ourselves on being heart driven, but no BS. And so I'm grateful. You're like that, too. And this is awesome. Okay, information is everywhere. I googled last month that there's 4.6 6 billion people online right now. Okay, awesome. What are you gonna do with that information? Right, 4.6 6 billion people online, maybe you could start an online business? Do you think one of those 4.6 6 billion may or may not need your services or your coaching? Of course they do. Right? And so but here's the thing, if you don't develop skills, it's not going to matter. Right. And we have a 13 person team, and everyone champions sort of their own lane. And it's, it's, we have a big, you know, business model, and everybody champions their own part of the business model. And I'm, I'm in charge of making sure everyone's sort of rowing in the same direction, and it's awesome. But I'm always looking at skills. And I think what's important, specifically in the marketplace, and I'll bring this value to your show as well. I, for me, whenever it came to me manifesting my own vision, I always felt very capable of it, whether it was getting straight A's in high school, or, you know, a certain you know, LSAT score, or graduating with high distinction in college, even though Computer Engineering was the hardest frickin thing I've ever done. Pardon my French if I'm not supposed to swear. But basically, I always felt very competent and confident in my own ability to achieve. And I always have been trying to figure out why what makes me so different in that, but what I wasn't good at was identifying that and other people. And now I've become much better at it. And one of the things I overlooked was skills. There's four types of value. And I was only looking at one of them. That was my problem. And I recently stopped this. The first type of value is intrinsic value. Okay, intrinsic value is equal. We all are born naked, scared and ignorant. And we are all you know, sons and daughters of source, the universe, nature, God, whatever you want to call it. We are all humans who have a spirit. Okay? So intrinsically, we're all equal. There's three other types of value that I forgot about. Okay. Now I break them down into passive value, primary value, active value. I'll start with primary value. primary value is why you do what you do. And what are your skills physical, mental, emotional, spiritual development, so oratory, my ability to speak and coach and consult and play Podcast is a skill. I've got hundreds of reps and and hundreds of speeches and coming up on 1000 coaching calls. If I'm even remotely good at this, it's not natural talent. It's reps it's habits. It's unshakable habits. Okay, so the primary value is my actual tangible down to earth value skills. Okay? Passive value is my body of work. You better pay Leonardo DiCaprio more to act than someone who's brand new. Why? Because he's got a body of work. Steven Spielberg, JAWS, Jurassic Park. Lincoln. You know, et like, of course, you're gonna pay Steven Spielberg more you should. You should he has a body of work passive value. If Matthew McConaughey walks into a bar and says, Hey, who wants to party at my house? Half the bar is gonna be like, hell yeah, let's do it. Matthew. If Allen Lazarus walks into a bar and says, Who wants to party at my house, everybody's gonna laugh and say who the hell are you, man? What a creep. Why? Because I haven't added value to their lives yet. Right? Okay. We all know Matthew McConaughey. Nobody knows on Lazarus. Yet. Not nobody, but very few people compared to Matthew, right? Okay, so that's passive value. What is your body of work? Where are you adding value to the world? So Interstellar, great movie. I love that movie. Matthew McConaughey is in it. He's adding value to the world even when he's sleeping. Okay, your podcast adding value to the world, even when you're sleeping passive value. Now, active value active values what I'm doing right now. I'm live. And I'm actually adding value hopefully to your life. That's active value active values, what you're doing in the actual moment. Okay. And so to answer your original question, you can have a vision, right? But if you don't develop the skills to increase your value, passive value, primary value active value, then you should not be paid more. And this is a weird belief that a lot of people don't like, I got paid $7.25 an hour when I was a cart kid and a busboy at a golf course. And I do believe that I was overpaid. Believe it or not. Why? Because I was 16 years old. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't have any skills. Yeah, you get paid in proportion to the following three things. How needed is what you do I have a client who's an Android developer gets paid a lot of money. Why? Because there's very few people who can do what he does. And there's a huge demand for Android developers globally. Okay, how how in demand is what you do your skill. Okay, Android development is a skill. Number two, how good? Are you at doing it in comparison to the statistics of the other people? The Bell Curve? Right? Number three, how difficult would it be to replace you? Okay, my assistant is unbelievable. Okay, she's so good. I've been training her for three years, we worked so well together, she's incredibly valuable to me, okay, to this business to this mission, okay. And I'm very valuable to her as well. But my point is, are you thinking that way? intrinsic value is wonderful, we all have the same intrinsic value, I understand that. But when it comes to the persons, places, things and ideas that you surround yourself with, to be at your best, you're going to have to be discerning, and you're gonna have to look at unfortunately, more than just intrinsic value.

Stephen Box: 38:24
So something that that you kind of worn out there that really like to is you didn't give people specific list of skills, right? You didn't say like, here's skill, a your skill be your skill seat, right. And that's what a lot of times we want people to do. So you talked about how you had to develop the skill of understanding these different values, and really understanding how to best help people in those different areas. You mentioned the intrinsic value. And the reality is that yes, we are all technically born equal. But you know, because of where we're born, because of the family we're born into, because of the way we look when we're born, because of our physical status. There's different things that may have an impact on us, it may affect the quality of education we get, it might affect the financial flexibility that we have growing up. There's so many different things that can be impacted that we have zero control over. But the key and I'm sure you will agree with this, but please let me know if you do not agree is that all of us have the ability to develop skills and bring ourselves up to that point. The difference is, one person may just have to go a little further on the climb that somebody else. So for example, if you grew up in a household where every person in your house was in sales or management or was a public speaker or whatever you probably naturally develop the skill to stand in front of people and talk and communicate and be persuasive, you probably naturally have those tendencies based on what you grew up around. If, on the other hand, if you grew up in a household full of workers, where there was no leaders, there were no speakers, there were no people who are in those positions, you're probably completely unfamiliar with those skills. Doesn't mean you can't develop them. It just means that if you're going to get to those positions, you have to develop those skills. And so that's why I actually liked the fact that you didn't just say like, oh, yeah, step one, step two, step three, let's go, right, because this is gonna be different for everybody.

Alan Lazaros: 40:40
Right? I think everyone needs to reverse engineer the vision. Like, um, I asked my clients this all the time, like, you know, what is your decade look like? And I usually go beyond that too, right? You know, let's say you live to the average life expectancy on this planet is 72. For males, 73 for females, at least according to Google, right? And I think, you know, when we get towards that age, it'll, it'll be higher, obviously, with technology and healthcare and all that. But a lot of people say like, YOLO. And it's like, well, you only live once, like, what if I died tomorrow? It's like, well, what if you don't? Yeah, statistically speaking, you're not going to die tomorrow, most likely. Right? It's irrational to think you are, and based on the statistics. And so I think what's important is to play the long game and to have a vision and to reverse engineer the finish line. And one of the things you have to reverse engineer is, like you said, not just the actions, but the skills. I've reverse engineered the skills that I will need to achieve my vision. Yeah. And oratory is one of them. oratory is speaking. Finance is one of them. Business is one of them. I'm a business consultant, right, I better master business. Another one of them is delegation, team leadership, right? Podcasting, speaking, coaching, coaching is my main one, that's my nucleus, I have a target in the corner of my room right here. It's called Alan's genius zone. It's my nucleus. And there's three, three is a target with like three layers. The first layer is coaching slash consulting. Second layer is speaking slash training. third layer is podcasting. I only do those three things as much as possible. And I try to eliminate automate, delegate the rest of those things. And that doesn't mean I don't do other things. I wait train, bla, bla, bla, I have a relationship. I have a family, all that stuff, but but I'm trying to do more percentage more percentage more percentage of my own unique gift. And that's my calling, I believe. And maybe at 3435, I'll have even more awareness, most likely on what my calling is. And maybe I'll do even more coaching and consulting and maybe even less of the other things I don't know. But what I do know is that you got to figure out, what's your vision, and you got to reverse engineer the skills you need. And then work on those because information is everywhere, skills are actually rare, and skills monetize forever. That's the cool part.

Stephen Box: 43:05
You know, one of the things that I also like to point out here is the idea that people always think about goals, right? Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna set some goals and achieve this goal. And like I mentioned earlier, we don't really have for outcome over goals. But the thing that I find actually helps people stick with stuff long term, is when we stop worrying about the outcome, and we start focusing on the mastery. And that's what you just hit on right there. It's really about mastering something. Because you know what, when you're 2530 years old, you're not sure what you want to do with your life, you didn't maybe have the advantage that Alan got of getting that realization in his mid 20s. Maybe it's taking you a little longer to come around. That's okay. It took me to my mid 30s to get things start to figure out so and I'm 43 now and I've just in the last two years feel like I really figured out the absolute direction I want to go and that's perfectly okay. The thing that I want people to hear and realize is that all of this stuff, when we start talking about mastery and develop new skills and realizing your special, you know, talent, everything else. It doesn't come from just saying, Oh, this is my thing. It comes from a lot of introspective, it comes from doing a lot of things in finding out that it's not the right thing for you.

Alan Lazaros: 44:27
Right. It comes from an exploration. I believe that life is a dance between exploration and refocus. Yeah. We don't show up in the world and go I know exactly who I am. No, you go explore and you're like, Oh, hot stove. Ah, cold stove, right and you try to figure out what's your center? What's your calling, and I think we all have to hit some guardrails along the way, you know, and sort of pinball our way up to our calling. But a lot of times it's like, Oh, I know who I am not. Right. It's like for me I tried the alcohol thing I eventually was like, nope, not for me. So you just got to figure out that for you. And I agree, it's not an overnight thing. It's an infinite game. I'm more aware at 33 than I was at 32. I'll be more aware at 35 than I am at 33. The key is, Are you are you getting better every day? Are you are you? If you don't know, your calling, the only wrong answer is to stop searching. Yep. And you know, to your point there, it changes, right? For your, your priorities are different when you're single. They change when you meet your spouse.

Stephen Box: 45:37
If you add kids on to that, that's a whole nother level of engagement. And there's not even a universal thing there. Because for some people, they have kids, it's like, hey, my kids, my family are my most important thing. Nothing else is more important than that. Other people are like, hey, you know what, I believe in hard work, I believe and my, my business and providing for my family. And I want to set the example for my kids that hard work is how you get places, right? So even within the context of you talk to people who are similar situations, they might have completely different ways that they're viewing it in different priorities. 100% That's what we call them unique abilities. Right? Exactly. Imagine that. So let's, let's kind of go back to your to your podcast here for a second. Because I think this is a good place to maybe kind of finish up by zeroing in and showing people what skill and action development actually looks like. So you get the vision, if you want to share it in like maybe 30 seconds here, your vision for the podcast, like why did you first start it? What was your motivation behind that?

Alan Lazaros: 46:47
I know, I knew after that car accident that self improvement was not something that I grew up around. And I knew that self improvement was the answer. For me, I think there's two causes of all human suffering ignorance and apathy. And ignorance is not knowing any better. Apathy is not caring enough to do anything about it. And so I wanted to solve that problem. I wanted to, you know, if you, you know, be the change you wish to see in the world, Mahatma Gandhi, that kind of thing. And so our mission is to nothing short of bring personal development bring holistic self improvement to the masses to as many people as we possibly can through the podcast. And the podcast is the vehicle to do that. But so is speaking, so is coaching. And, you know, coming up on 800 episodes, now, you know, we do an episode every single day, you brush your teeth every day you can you can listen to self improvement every day. And you know, health, wealth and love health as physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Wealth is how you make your money. In other words, do you love what you do? And is it in your calling? You know, how much do you make? Is that increasing or decreasing over time? And then where do you invest your money, your capital, and then love which is your intimate relationship, immediate family, business partners, colleagues, clients, mentors, mentees, friends, that whole thing. And so relationships, health, wealth, and love, those are the majors. And that's what we focus on in our show. Yeah, and we want to bring personal development and self improvement from a holistic perspective and be the male role models we never had. Because Kevin and I never had fathers growing up. I had a stepdad from age two to 14, and my stepdad left at 14. And I had to figure it out how to be a man. And he did too. And so that was sort of the common wound that brought us together, which brought us to this common mission. Now we have a charity that actually, every single Father's Day, we're gonna rent out a rec center. And starting in 2022, actually, because we've been spending the last three or four fathers days together ever since we got together on the business. And we're going to rent out a rec center and kids without fathers, we're going to invite and we're going to bring like a celebrity, a character driven celebrity that kids know and look up to to like, teach them. So we can, you know, a day that's typically very sad, will actually be a beautiful, wonderful day for them, so they can just get the chills so they can, you know, aspire and grow.

Stephen Box: 49:07
Now, that's, that's awesome, man. You know, I My father actually passed away when I was like 11 years old. So I can definitely relate to what you're saying there. And just knowing how tough that is to grow without that influence. So I think that what you're doing there fantastic. Kind of going back to the podcast, obviously, you that that's like the very polished like 800 episodes later, you know what it's about? I'm sure when you started it was just like, Yo, I had this epiphany and I want other people to know about it. Podcast. That sounds like a great idea. Right?

Alan Lazaros: 49:43
Yeah. You already go into that. Good.

Stephen Box: 49:48
Well, what I was gonna ask is when you first started with the podcast, just like five or 10 Quick skills that you had to personally develop that you didn't already have

Alan Lazaros: 50:01
The first one is vulnerability. Which I still work on vulnerability, the ability to I mean, I remember I never used to talk about my father, I never used to talk about my stepdad, I never used to talk about my alcohol problem, right? So vulnerability, the ability to be truthful with yourself and others, to open yourself up to the idea that you're not perfect. And be okay with that. That's huge, huge. I think a lot a lot of us and I struggle with this, too, is like, there's this cognitive dissonance between what we wish we were and what we actually are. And until we hit that, what we actually are that humility, that humble place of rock bottom, so to speak, can we really build from the truth so that truth will definitely set you free? So vulnerability is number one. Number two is his interview skills. You know, you know, it's all thing to interview people. speaking skills is next. So speaking, you know, there's tonality, there's word choice, there's inflection, there's, there's volume, there's pauses, I noticed you have really good pauses as a matter of fact, so good that I actually interrupt you on it unintentionally a couple times. Sorry about that. But pauses are powerful. You know, you can always tell an amateur when they're just like rambling, right? Um, and I'm still working on this stuff all the time, I had to stop saying, um, we had an M jar, I had to put dollars in an M jar. You know, I probably I've started a few times in the SU. So speaking is another one. Also. I just said, for the podcast, I also had to develop unreasonable consistency. Yeah. And, and the skill of long term consistency, which is a skill. And it's, it's, in my opinion, the most important thing, and I'll borrow a quote from a friend of mine, his name's Steven Kotler. Friend of mine, we're not like buddies. He, we interviewed him once. He wrote a book called The Art of impossible. And we interviewed him about his book. But yeah, so so he said this in his book, and I love it. He said, you know, very little is actually impossible, given a decade. But I like to flip things. I'm like a math guy. I like to invert things. Very little is actually possible. If you can't be consistent. Yeah. So very little is impossible, if you can be consistent for the long run. But almost nothing is even possible if you can't be consistent. And there's no more important lesson than that. Because it's the hardest thing in the world, humans. Humans are naturally inconsistent. I mean, we love variety, you know, and there's 1000 Different games on my phone, I could be playing right now. Right? So the skill of consistency is, I think, the most important skill you can develop.

Stephen Box: 52:49
Yeah, so let's, let's actually dive in with that one for a second. So this is, to me a very interesting one. Because when I look at consistency, and thinking of it in terms of it being a skill, the way I like to explain it to my clients is, you're gonna start off really bad, like, you're gonna suck. Terrible. When you are at that stage, take the smallest possible action, that you can win a workout, but you hate working out, start putting your shoes in front of you, okay, you're not working out yet, you're not gonna get results from putting your shoes in front of you every day. But it starts to develop that mindset, right? If you want to do a podcast every day, start by actually just interviewing somebody, like when you started your podcast, you started at once a week, and then twice a week, and then three times a week, and then four times a week, and then five times a week. And that didn't just happen over the course of a month. That happened over a very long period of time. So people need to understand, you start small, as you're consistent. Consistency starts to build as you start to develop that practice. And again, it goes back to need to be in alignment with who you are, as a person, your values, your priority, your belief need to be in alignment. Because if you're doing it for the listeners, if you're doing it for the likes, if you're doing it for the money, then you're going to be disappointed if those things aren't flowing in. But if you're doing it from a standpoint that you're it aligns with what you believe the message you want to deliver to the world is getting delivered, super easy to stick with, because now the passion is there. Right? As long as you don't overburden yourself, right. And this is the point that I wanted to get to here was with you. I'm going to make an assumption that when you started before you met your partner, you were probably doing everything on your own. Maybe if you were lucky and you had a little extra money, you're paying someone to do some editing or something like that for you. But more than likely you're like every other entrepreneur starting off and you were doing it Everything you were wearing every single hat. And had you continue to do that you would have burnt yourself out

Alan Lazaros: 55:07
100%. And that was another way to do that at the beginning. Yeah, exactly.

Stephen Box: 55:13
Because because now in order to delegate, right, so now you had to learn to work with somebody else, you had to learn what tasks to delegate out, you had to learn how to explain things clearly. So they get done the way you want them done by other people, right? These are all skills. And this is what I this is why I wanted to dive into this idea. Because I want people to start to see, it's not a single process. It's skill after skill after skill, like you said, even just interviewing people, there's an outcome of right off top of my head 15 different skills that you need to learn just to sit in front of this mic and ask questions. And it seems like such a simple thing, but those skills, you need daily actions, those daily actions, like I said, the smaller or the newer you are to the scale, the smaller his actions need to be. Yep. So just real quick, if you don't mind just sharing maybe a quick example of when the skills that you developed and like what were some of the actions you took to kind of build that up over time, is some people heard idea here,

Alan Lazaros: 56:15
I want to share, I want to share this. So I did this thing early on. I used to carry around this notebook, I actually still have a notebook with me, for those of you on camera, it's right here. But I used to carry around this notebook. And I started tracking everything I did. And I remember I didn't tell anyone about it, I just I just started tracking my behavior. And it gave me unbelievable self awareness. And here we are seven years later. And it's now become something it's become what we refer to as the peak performance tracker. And we actually have an app, like, it's a whole thing. So my entire 13 person global team uses it. All of our group coaching clients, that's 40 plus people use it. And then all my one on one clients, which is nearly 20, people all use it. And then we have a bunch of my past clients still using it. And so what I wants just was me tracking my habits in a notebook has become a thing everybody calls it PPT anyone who's in the next level community. And so I actually sent someone brand new it today their own spreadsheet, now we have it in a Google Doc, and it's set up with what we call the Daily Dozen. And there's four habits for health, for habits for wealth, four habits for love. And there's one KPI key performance indicator. That's like the one thing that matters most. So your rest of your life proliferates, and that's what my coaching is based around 1% improvement every day, the daily doesn't and one KPI and it's all customized by your vision. Right, you know? And so, to answer your question, that's what I would tell you is like, tracking my habits was a skill that I have stuck with for so many years. And it has paid off in ways I could never have imagined. Because now I have literally, I'm not even gonna sugarcoat this, we have one of the most performing virtual teams on the planet. I'm telling you, it's unreasonable how good this team is. But it's the system. The system is so good. I used to think it was Amy. And it was Kevin and it was me. And it was, you know, Crystal, and it was our Cassandra. No, no, it's the system. It's the system. And it's the leadership. And yes, it's the culture of excellence, but it's mostly the system. And you know how I know because we've deployed it with tons of other people, and it works for everybody. So this daily doesn't, I don't know why it sounds cool. And it's the sweet spot. Any more than a dozen people start to fall off any less than a dozen. It's kind of like our why bother. That's what I've seen Anyways, after years and years and years of doing this. And then one KPI like what's the, for us, it's listens, when listens are growing, everything else in our business grows, right? So at the beginning of this journey, that's what I'll end with is I didn't know what these things would turn into. I started out wanting to get better and focusing on my own personal development. And I had a vision and I work toward it. And whether it was conversations change lives or our Lazarus LLC, I used to have a slogan called what you'll never learn in school, but desperately needed to know. And I was trying to get speeches at schools huge, no, no, because it's like, why would we have you come and speak against the education system? So that was a whole thing, right? But it just evolved and evolved and evolved. But the through line was work ethic, self discipline, 1%, improvement every day, consistency over everything, character over everything, and just just going all in on that. And here we are, you know, it's wild, what can happen? It's nothing short of wild what can happen because at one point, I was, you know, doing a little tracker in my notebook outside my alma mater, you know, as a fitness coach. I didn't even think about business consulting, you know, it's like, it's wild. What can happen you know, business consulting was a dream of mine back in when Steve Jobs was my hero, but I went all in on fitness for a time. You know, I did fitness modeling and fitness coaching and fitness goals. petitions and I did Instagram and I did Facebook and I did LinkedIn and I did all this stuff. And I tried Snapchat and I, it's been a lot of exploring but the through line was always just getting better every single day and trying to serve it my greatest level. And that's what I would end with is just be consistent, figure out what's unique to you use that gift to serve the world and and try to try to do it better every day. You know, it really is the fundamentals. And that's why like unshakable habits, you know, if you make a habit of that you will be successful one way or another. It's just a matter of time.

Stephen Box: 1:00:32
Yeah. And I tell you, and the thing I love so much about what would you kind of wrapped up with there is it does really come back to understanding your individual values. Understanding what that thing is that aligns for you. And then pushing toward that every day. It just makes every decision you do, it makes everything you even attempt come so clearly into focus quickly, right? You start doing something and it doesn't feel in alignment with you. Just like this isn't right. I'm just gonna stop. But when you find that thing that does feel like an alignment, you're like, I'm going to do more of this. Even though it's hard. Yeah, even though it's hard, and that's what allows you to stick with it. You know, it's like, people are always like, Well, how do you? How do you go from unsustainable to unshakable? Well, part of it is you stop doing things that you don't want to do. Because you think that's what you're supposed to do. Start living the life that you want to live. And that's the thing that I love so much about your story is, you know, starts with that realization, right? It starts with that car accident and realizing, am I living the life I want to live? You talked about people saying, oh, you know, you only live once. Okay, cool. You only live once. Let's say that you do die tomorrow. Are you happy with the legacy that you're leaving behind? Right? Would you be proud of what people say about you? And if you are, if you're going out and you're partying all the time, you're having fun. And that's a legacy you want to leave by a homies party on man party on. But if you want more than that, if that's not what you want, get in alignment and start moving, moving towards that direction. Take the actions that put you in alignment, right.

Alan Lazaros: 1:02:26
Amen. And back at 26 I would not have been able to say that I was proud of that man. But now for certain. I am very proud of the man. And that's the thing. It doesn't even matter if if you know, I'll end on this. I asked my sister one time, she was six when my father died. And I asked her I said I said do you think Dad is proud of us? You know, and she said, I know he is have you. And in one note that was really sweet of her. But on the other note, it was also very sad because it's like, Well, why not? Have you and that's all another thing but yeah, I know that he's proud of me. Why? Because he would just want me to be proud of myself. And not like the ego pride not like the I'm pretending I'm awesome. When in reality I'm letting myself down every day. In the absence of sincere effort. I mean, the actual pride of like the I feel self esteem, we'll call it self esteem rather than pride. Self esteem of like, yeah, hell yeah. Like I my girlfriend asked me What are you most proud of? My ability to put in massive conscious effort to help other people I unlock people's potential man. I do. I do and I do a great and whatever. I love it. You know, it's like God forbid I say it right. So if you're out there listening like figure out what that is for you. What what fulfills you? And what's what's your unique gift that you can serve the world with? And if you can live more percentage more percentage more percentage and alignment with that you're gonna be you're gonna be unshakable.

Stephen Box: 1:03:58
Love it man. I will tell you man, I usually like to keep these pretty conversational, but I think I may have done even a little bit more talking today than normal. Just because you got to be so fired up man. Just cuz you got to be so fired up.

Alan Lazaros: 1:04:12
Hell yeah, brother. I appreciate it. I'm going to the gym after this for sure. Just so you know. Like, seriously, I can't wait I'm gonna get a good lift and I'm back to pull a pull

Stephen Box: 1:04:21
well before it before you head off to the gym man. If film if someone wants to get ahold of you, they want to check out the podcast they want to get coached. How do they reach you?

Alan Lazaros: 1:04:32
Next level universe.com And I said universe not university so next level University is the podcast and you can find next level University spelled just like it sounds on any podcast platform including YouTube or next level universe.com If you want to reach out to me personally between my assistant and I we get back to literally everyone. Just say Hey, I heard you on unshakeable habits. I'd love to connect awesome. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. In Allen, Lazarus a l a n. Last Name Lazarus la ZARO. S. And if you Google that all my Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn will all come up. I look forward to hearing from you. If you enjoyed what I had to say, you know, I'd love to connect.

Stephen Box: 1:05:19
So awesome man, love it. Definitely appreciate you coming today, being willing to share. First of all your story opening up especially know sharing some details that you haven't shared in the past. Always appreciate when people give exclusive content here on the podcast. But also, I appreciate the fact that you're willing to open up about your process, showing people kind of the messy middle of getting to the point that you are now and giving them some word of that roadmap of how they can go from wherever they're at right now to where they want to be in their life. So definitely appreciate you bringing that, that wisdom and those insights today, man,

Alan Lazaros: 1:06:00
I appreciate this. This was one of my favorite interviews of all time, genuinely, I hope that means something to you because I've done several of these. And yeah, the polished product is what people see now, but it was not always that way. So just keep grinding.

Stephen Box: 1:06:14
Absolutely. Well game and thank you for coming today. And if you are listening if you have not already, make sure you hit the subscribe button if you're watching us over on YouTube, or the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And until next time, I just want to remind you that none of us are meant to be average. So go out and be unshakable.

Outro: 1:06:43
Thanks for listening to the unshakable habits podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review. do catch all the latest please subscribe that unshakeable habits.com/youtube or on your favorite podcast app. You can learn more about unshakable habits at unshakable habits.com Until next week, be unshakable Bye friends