What happens when you try to grow faster than your foundation can support?
In this episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros break down why so many people get stuck trying to jump ahead in self-improvement. Based on their own journey, years of coaching, and thousands of episodes, they explore what happens when you chase advanced strategies before mastering the basics. The result is usually frustration, inconsistency, and slower progress than expected.
This conversation will shift how you think about growth, goals, and what it actually takes to build momentum that lasts. If you want real progress, you need a foundation strong enough to hold it. Hit play and check the level you’re really building from.
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For more information, check out our website and socials using the links below. 👇
Show notes: (1:57) The Pareto principle and leverage (6:40) Why goals determine what matters (8:32) You cannot learn above your level (10:46) Why do people hide what they do not know (15:02) Know your level to keep growing (17:10) Courage and honesty in coaching (18:06) Outro
Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.
Self-improvement, personal development, it's all amazing. I love it. It has changed my life,
but I think a lot of people unfortunately over-complicated and they try to learn things that is just beyond their current scope, and I think it holds them back, unfortunately.
If you try to skip levels, you're probably going to end up shooting yourself in the foot.
Welcome to Next Level University. I'm your host, Kevin Paul Mary, and I'm your co-host, Alan Lazarus.
At NLU, we believe in a heart-driven, but no BS approach to holistic self-improvement for dream chasers.
Our goal with every episode is to help you level up your life, love, health, and wealth.
We bring you a new episode every single day on topics like confidence, self-belief, self-worth, self-awareness, relationships, boundaries, consistency, habits, and defining your own unique version of success.
Self-improvement in your pocket every day from anywhere completely free. Welcome to Next Level University.
Next level nation today for episode number 2,375. You can't skip levels.
I was talking Alan the other day and I'm going to start going on podcasts again. I'm super excited.
And I said, dude, you know who I think I am? I am like the regular man's self-improvement, personal development, not coach.
But like, I'm, I said, Alan, I said, I have a client and he's a very successful client. You know him. You work with this client as well.
And I asked him recently, I said, hey, have you ever heard of the Pareto principle? And he said, no, I've never heard of it. What is it?
And I said, well, it's blah, blah, blah. You can explain it if you want. But Alan has this thing where he, well, you should explain it. Explain it. And then I'll go deeper.
Do you want to give it a shot? Yes. There was a gentleman back in the olden days. His name was Vilfredo Pareto.
Early 20th century, early 1915 or so back in the day. I could hear. He planted a bunch of pea plants. And he found in time that 20% of the plants produced 80% of the crop.
Yeah. And then I haven't researched this. So I'm trusting you. I know you have researched it. But essentially 20% of the people in the United States make 80% of the money, 20% of the people drink 80% of the beer or alcohol.
It works on the macro to 20% of countries. There's 195 countries, 20% of countries control 80% of the wealth. This is 20% of sports teams have 80% of the wins.
Okay. 20% of roads are traveled 80% of the time. So you wear 80% of your clothing. No, you wear 20% of your clothing, 80% of the time.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wear the same, I wear the same stuff. I probably wear 5% of my clothing, 95% of the time. There you go. Probably. Okay. So the goal and the understanding when it comes to success is you want to find the 20% of things that bring 80% of the results.
For us, this podcast is in that 20%. If we stop this, everything would die overnight, essentially. Not overnight, but yeah. I mean, it would definitely be a huge momentum hit. So everything we've built.
That is level level one is understanding. Prado principle. No. Sorry. Good. Good. Level one is understanding that not every task you do is of equal value. That's okay. It's part one. Perfect. Okay.
What level is leverage, which is 20% of your time and effort is producing 80% of the results. Okay.
You have something where you say parade owing, parade o. Explain that. And real quick, as an exercise, whether you're watching or listening, let me know or let yourself know when you opt out of what is being said.
Because that's a really good test. Good. All right. So if 20% of effort produces 80% of results.
That is a one to four ratio, meaning if I put $1 in, I get $4 back. Metaphorically, it's not. Okay. Fair. There. $1 in $4 back. Good. There. Leverage. Awesome. Okay. If you take 20% of 20%, you get 4%.
Okay. If you take 20% of 4%, you get 0.8%. Okay. If you take 20% of 0.8%, you get 0.16%. And if you take 20% of 0.16%, you get 0.032%. I'm rounding. Okay.
The idea there, if you crunch the numbers, is the one to four ratio becomes $1 in for $1,024 back. Because it's one fourth times one fourth, which is 1.16. And then it's 1.16 times four, which is 1.64. And it keeps going.
Okay. Now, the idea here, and people say this all the time in the personal development space, they say if you could go to Vegas and put $1 in a slot machine and make $1,024 back, how often would you play? And the answer is I would play forever. But what they don't tell you is you put $1 in, get punched in the face for 10 years, and then you get your $1,024. And you have to find the machine that actually gives that. That's the other thing to get really good at slots.
Like, right, which is a metaphor that's dumb because you can't get good at slots. But how many people do you think need to know that everyone?
Everyone.
All of it, yeah, you don't need to know anything, but benefit from, okay, so that no one needs to know anything, right, right, right. But everyone would benefit from learning and understanding that principle and then putting it to work.
So you put that in principle to work naturally, you just don't say it. Like, you hate the quote of how you do one thing is how you do everything.
Hate it. And the reason why is because you're good at Pareto, you're really good at doing the really important shit and neglecting everything else. And sometimes you neglect important shit too.
Rarely, hopefully, is the goal less less often and less often is always the goal. But the reason I wanted to do the episode in the way that we're doing it, you can't skip levels is because you can't learn how to Pareto Pareto until you first understand to your point that there is a best use of time.
There is a way to create more leverage and then you have to understand what that is to start.
Well, this is the most important piece. There is a best use of time if you have a goal.
Okay, if my goal is to, this is the best metaphor, 10 pound and 10 week challenge, 25 days out, baby.
If your goal, so my client, Cole, shout out to your brother, is trying to gain weight.
So eating 3000 calories a day is a leverage. He parade, that's Pareto.
But if my goal is to lose weight, which it is, 3000 calories a day is a negative habit for me.
Every habit, everything you do and don't do, everything you say and don't say everything that you say, think, do, feel and believe is either constructive towards your goal or destructive towards your goal.
If my goal is to be liked, a lot of what I say is very destructive.
If my goal is to be successful and actually help other people be successful and to be respected, then a lot of what I say is constructive.
And so it all depends on the goal. That's why I had to get rid of the being liked thing because it was destroying my ability to achieve my goals.
I think my goal is to be the every man's personal development guy.
That's great. Every person. Every man's, you know what I mean?
Yeah, just because I know, like if I heard Pareto Pareto, Pareto, I would be like, yo, you need to fucking take it easy when yesterday.
No, just kidding.
When you first, that's fair. That's true. No, no, it's not.
I was hoping to get a little bit of a laugh. Tough crowd tonight.
The crowd is fucking stiff tonight. My goodness.
I know. I know. I know.
If you, if you started with that, when you first taught me Pareto principle, if you're like, have I know 20% gets you 80% but here, listen, listen, listen, listen.
Divide this, I can move the integer over, move the decimal.
There you go. 0.16. I would have been like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about because I don't know what my 20% is yet.
Yeah. So I often love you have to figure out what your goal is under each.
It is. I do understand now. It's fascinating. You and I are crossing paths. I get why success is so challenging.
I think one of the reasons it's so challenging is because nobody teaches the fundamentals.
No, no, sorry. That's wrong because Pareto principle is a fundamental.
Where did we teach that though? I don't know if we ever really taught that. I didn't learn that in school.
We didn't even do productivity course in school. It bothers me to my core.
I would say, where did you learn it? Because I learned it from it.
I learned it from there's a book called 80 20 personal development, personal development books.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
There is no time. Oh, I don't want to say none.
But time management courses, productivity courses, they tend to talk about Pareto.
Now, they don't talk about Pareto in Pareto. That is very rare. Most people don't.
Steve Jobs was big on this. Like him, love him, hate him. That's not what I'm talking about.
He was like the best in the world at Pareto. That's why Apple only sells certain shit.
Yeah. Yeah.
They like they are very discerning with what they do less so now, you know, Apple TV and all this shit.
But back in the day when Apple was about to go bankrupt, Steve was like we're canning everything.
All the skews gone. We're just going to do these four things.
What is skew stand for?
Oh, dude. No.
Oh, cereal.
It's a product number for an internal for a company.
It'll be like something unit I'm guessing.
Yeah. Yeah.
Serial something unit.
I've always wondered.
Serial Kevin unit.
Nice.
I just think that most people start at a level.
Like I think they start teaching stuff beyond certain levels.
Yeah, because because I think this is what I think is happening.
And you did this to several of my clients that I've been coaching for many, many years.
It's been very clear now.
The person who is the student is afraid to look dumb.
The person who's the teacher is probably
bad at building a bridge.
Fair.
So if you, we'll use you and I because the listeners know us.
Nine years ago, you acted like you knew more than you did.
Definitely.
So how the fuck was I supposed to know that you didn't know Pareto?
I'm not, I think you did a great job.
No, no, back, I think you did a great job.
I just think today, if I was learning it, you would overwhelm the shit out of me with Pareto and Pareto.
Maybe.
Well, there was many times where I feel like I talked way over your head
because you acted smarter than you were.
For sure.
And I didn't understand how far behind you were in your knowledge.
And, and God, that's not so mean.
At the end of the day, like, I actually do this with my clients now.
I say, stop me when you don't understand.
And I go through, because I need to know where they're at with mathematics.