Evolving Business Minds

The Art of Inspiring Leadership with Alan Lazaros | #124

• Andy Silvius • Episode 124

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When life throws you curveballs, some falter, while others like Alan Lazaros, co-founder of Next Level University, catch them and toss them right back. On our latest podcast episode, Alan shares his compelling tale of overcoming personal loss, financial struggles, and a life-threatening car accident to emerge as a beacon of resilience and inspiration. His ascent from a challenging childhood to the pinnacles of corporate success and onto becoming a revered business coach and speaker encapsulates the essence of true grit and perseverance.

Our conversation with Alan takes an intimate turn as he opens up about the transformative silence that followed his accident, leading to an inner reflection that many of us might shy away from. It's here where he discovered the misalignment with his calling and embarked on a journey that reshaped his destiny. The discussion is seasoned with surprising insights into the demographics of his podcast listenership and the profound realization that achieving one's goals isn't everyone's cup of tea. For those who have ever questioned their path, Alan's story serves as a powerful reminder that our callings are often found in life's most tumultuous moments.

Leadership is more than just a title; it's the art of inspiring others to execute their vision, a test that Alan has mastered through his experiences leading teams and running a business. He candidly opens up about the pitfalls of overconfidence, the challenges in aligning team members' actions with their goals, and the high-stakes world of transformational leadership. This episode isn't just a collection of anecdotes but a treasure trove of wisdom for aspiring leaders and individuals seeking to elevate their personal and professional lives. Join us for a masterclass in perseverance, self-discovery, and leadership with Alan Lazaros, where every minute promises to leave you with invaluable lessons for life.

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Andy Silvius:

All right. Welcome to episode 124 of the Evolving Business Minds podcast. Today's guest is a speaker, business coach, and he's a co-founder of Next Level University. I want to welcome Alan Lazarus to the show.

Alan Lazaros:

Thank you for having me. The first thing I always want to share is I do not take it lightly to speak into lives of others. I started listening to podcasts nine years ago and for inspiration, motivation, education. I think it's an awesome medium, so I do not take it lightly that you have me here. 124 episodes in, that's awesome. Yeah. So I'm lucky number 124. So you're rocking and rolling, we're on the train, you got momentum, so I'm grateful to be here, thank you.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, absolutely. And the funny thing, yes, I'm on episode 124, but I took a pretty long break from the show. It actually used to be called resourceful agent radio show and, uh, did over a hundred episodes and then took a break as I transitioned career wise a little bit and made some moves, started another podcast for a while and had about 40 episodes and then decided, you know, I want to go back to this, to this show, and it just rebranded it a little so nice. Yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

So how many episodes total then with all of?

Andy Silvius:

them. Uh well, this show in total is 124, so I just took the same rss feed. So back to resourceful agent radio show. Till now it's 124. I just recently rebranded at episode 114, so this is kind of back on again okay, let's rock and roll, yep. Well, uh, let's get back to the early days of alan lazarus. What was your back? What is your background, what were you doing career-wise prior to next level university? And, uh, what was the motivation behind starting next level university?

Alan Lazaros:

so I can go all the way back I'll give you the I talked on the pre recall with you about. I have a short version, a mid version and a long version I'm. I'll give you the I talked on the pre recall with you about. I have a short version of mid version and a long version. I'm probably going to give you the mid version. So I'll go fairly quick with this.

Alan Lazaros:

And the first thing I always want to share is I did not understand this at the beginning. I think it's important to understand the messenger, not just the message. So I'm grateful that I can provide some context. But it wasn't until my 30s I really started to rewatch the movie of my own life and kind of understand this. So I'll give you the quick version. So when I was two years old definitely born into adversity I had so my father passed away in a car accident when he was 28. I had an older sister. She was six. I had a mom who was 31, single mother, stay-at-home mom, and I had a stepdad from age three to 14. So my real last name is actually McCorkle.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay with my birth father's side because we were trying to be the Lazaruses. My stepfather left at 14, took 90% of the income with him and I haven't seen him or that side of the family since. So the shortest possible version to unpack this is I didn't realize this until my 30s when I started doing some therapy. But essentially I lost three families by the time I'm 14 because my mom at that same time got in a fight with her sister, my aunt Sandy, and then she sort of ostracized us from that side of the family. So the Higgins family I haven't seen any of them since, except for one of my cousins, jeff the Lazaruses. I haven't seen any of them, including my stepdad, since I was 14 years old and we didn't really talk to the McCorkles for those first 14 years. So 14 years was a tough year for me. Fortunately I now understand this. I didn't back then. My trauma response has always been aim higher, work harder, get smarter. And so I did.

Alan Lazaros:

I bootstrapped through high school, got straight A's all through high school, got something called the President's Award signed by George W Bush. It's behind me and, like I said, my stepdad. When he left he got the yacht and the apartment building. We got the house and the dog, but I went from him doing well in the economy to essentially broke. How am I going to go to school?

Alan Lazaros:

My dream was to go to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, wpi. It's like a mini MIT in Massachusetts and it was 50 grand a year and we didn't have any money. So I knew I needed to just bootstrap my way, and so I got financial aid, scholarships, went to WPI, became a computer engineer and got my master's in business Again, making a very long narrative, very short here. And then I went off to corporate and so my corporate career was I worked for a bunch of different tech companies. One was iRobot, one was Sensata Technologies, which used to be Texas Instruments, a little company called Oz Development, sensata Technologies. I did global product management, I did engineering, I did product engineer. All these different companies I eventually landed a company called Cognex.

Alan Lazaros:

Cognex is an industrial automation equipment company. They sell machine vision. So machine vision is essentially the eyes of a robot, is the best way to put it. So I'm managing a territory. So first I did an inside sales engineering team there and then I got promoted to outside sales and so I was traveling all around Connecticut. My territory was Connecticut, western Mass and Vermont and I sell industrial student to essentially a 1% global earner. I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125 to 180, all within a fairly short period of time, which was really weird for me because, like I said, when my stepdad left we had to scrap. Yeah.

Andy Silvius:

Like I said when my stepdad left, we had to scrap. Yeah, Big shift in having that kind of money after coming out of growing up in your teen years of not having any. Hey, everyone, I have a quick interruption from the show, but I'll make it brief. I've got something that I think is vital for every entrepreneur out there and it can be a game changer for your business.

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Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it was a huge shift, and the part of the story I haven't shared yet is I had Cognex's motto was work hard, play hard. I used to say work hard, play harder. And I had my stepdad and my mom didn't get along well but they liked to party and so I kind of adapted that. So I had high school friends and college friends and corporate friends and I was a sales engineer and I partied, and so fast forward, I'm 26 years old. So fast forward, I'm 26 years old.

Alan Lazaros:

At this point, I paid off $84,000 worth of college debt in a single year. That was my goal. I bought a 2004 Volkswagen Passat for five grand. That car ended up saving my life. I'm getting to that point. Thank you, volkswagen. I used to call this car the tank. It's a German engineered steel trap of a car and I have $150,000 in an investment account in Vanguard. I have S and P 500. I bought a bunch of tech stocks. I bought a bunch of Cognix as well, and so I'm off to the races. I'm I my. My dream since I was a kid was going to be one of two roads, which now I realize is really weird, but I was going to be lawyer, politician, president, genuinely that was my honest self-talk. Or I was going to be engineer, mba, fortune 500 CEO of a tech company like my hero, steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is not my hero anymore, but as a kid he was. It was always Bill Gates, steve Jobs, that stuff. Yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

So I did the engineer, mba, corporate, rising the ladder. I'm 26. I'm in New Hampshire with my little cousin. We're playing Call of Duty. We're going to TGI Fridays, dark winter night, back in 2015. The snow banks are covering the yield sign. I was supposed to yield and I didn't. Dark winter night.

Alan Lazaros:

I look up from the GPS and I see what I thought was a Mack truck in front of me. So my computer engineering brain goes this is it, it's the end. No chance that we live through this. Fortunately, not only was I driving that Volkswagen Passat, which was a tank of a car, very heavy German engineered car Thank you, volkswagen. But it was not a Mack truck, it was a lift-kitted pickup truck A lot of those up in New Hampshire and so physically we were okay. So my cousin hurt his knee on the airbag, I hurt my face on the airbag, so physically we were good. He was still sort of high schooler, 17, invincible, tweeting about it that same night and I was just messed up because my dad died in a car crash when he was 28.

Alan Lazaros:

I'm 26 at the time and I now have the second chance. My dad never got so for me. This is when I flipped the script. So before 26,. Again, the short version. I didn't understand any of this until later on, but now in hindsight it's very obvious to me Hindsight's 20-20. I was successful and professionally developed and improvement-oriented and achievement-oriented, but I wasn't self-improvement-oriented, I wasn't personally developed. I was professionally developed but not personally developed. I was improvement-oriented but not self-improvement-oriented.

Alan Lazaros:

I was into achievement but not into personal growth, and so, after that car accident, I was filled with regret. What does it all mean? Existential crisis, quarter life crisis. What's the point? Did I really choose this? Did it choose me? Who am I? What's the purpose? I achieved everything I thought I wanted. I have the American dream. I was a 1% earner, not net worth earner, and I have more money than I need. I don't have any kids, I don't have a mortgage, I don't have high bills, I've got a beautiful, extremely attractive girlfriend, and I have corporate friends and college friends and high school friends, and I had so much but so little at the same time, and so the best way I can describe it is I was successful from the outside in, but I wasn't successful from the inside out, and so I flipped the script hard. That was 26. I'm 35 now. I often joke I'm hoping to hit puberty at 36. But that was nine years ago.

Alan Lazaros:

And then I went all in. You, you asked me about Next Level University. I went all in on a podcast called Conversations Change Lives, and my buddy, my business partner now, kevin, had a podcast called the Hyperconscious Podcast. I was his first guest, he was my first guest. And then we had the worst podcast title of all time, which is Conversations Change Lives meets Hyperconscious Podcast, and we just teamed up and just did them every week and then eventually we went all in on Hyperconscious and then, 400, 500 episodes in, we rebranded to what's now known as Next Level University Level up your life, love, health and wealth.

Alan Lazaros:

And the idea underneath it is no matter where you've been, no matter how hard your past has been, you have a bigger, better, brighter future. There's always the next level and holistic self-improvement in your pocket, from anywhere on the planet, every day, completely free. And so now that's what we do is we just help people reinvent themselves and reinvent their careers and reinvent their businesses? And so he's a podcast coach, I'm a business coach, but that's where it all started. It all started from just this existential quarter life crisis of who am I, what's the point of all this and how do I improve myself? And now I'm grateful to say I'm not just so. The playful last part of this is I've been successful and unfulfilled. But I've also been fulfilled and unsuccessful Because after that I went all the way past, broke as an entrepreneur.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, overcorrected.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, exactly, it's a two, two, seven rule Two years to go into debt, two years to get out of debt, seven years to be successful in business. And when I first heard that I was like, not me, yeah, it happened. So we just crossed the million dollar million listens mark two weeks ago.

Andy Silvius:

That's awesome.

Alan Lazaros:

And yeah it's wild. So 21 person team, 21 departments that's actually not a coincidence. And it's this whole thing now. But at the end of the day, it all started with that transition from corporate Fortune 500 CEO of a tech company to I'm going to go all in on self-improvement and help others do the same.

Andy Silvius:

I'm curious were you unhappy prior to this accident or did you ever question any of these things before that?

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, so I did. I was always an existentialist, I just didn't listen. So I think we all have these whispers, whether you call it intuition or a calling, or just your unconscious or subconscious mind saying hey, Alan, cut the S right. We all have these whispers and eventually they become a scream. Yep.

Alan Lazaros:

And after the car accident they were just louder, because after the car accident I was filled with regret. I had trauma from my past. I was filled with regret. I had trauma from my past I hadn't faced. I definitely had abandonment issues I didn't know about when, when I was 14, kind of losing three families. Fortunately, my birth father's family kind of took us back, so I've I've since reconnected with all of them, but for them it was kind of like seeing a ghost, cause I looked just like my dad.

Alan Lazaros:

So my whole life's been a little whacked, to be honest, but I somehow made something out of it, and the only reason why is I was very blessed with a big brain. I'm very grateful for that, and I live in a country that believes in equal opportunity, and so without the financial aid and the scholarships that I got, I wouldn't have been able to become the man that I am, and so now I try. Next level university is kind of my way of giving back, of no matter where you started from, we can help you, guide you. Even being on this podcast now, no matter who's listening, right, if you have an internet connection, even if you don't have money for tuition, you can listen to this and learn and we can be male role models for some young men out there, and that's really what's not just young men, but young women as well.

Alan Lazaros:

Most of our listeners are women. I didn't expect that, but I thought we were a couple of bodybuilder bros, you know. But at the end of the day, that's really what it comes down to. So so the whisper was there, it just didn't start yelling at me until I got quiet. Okay.

Alan Lazaros:

And I didn't get quiet until after that car accident. I was just noisy life, college friends, corporate friends, high school friends. It was just nonsense. So much stuff. I filled my life with so much stuff. I was everything for everyone and nothing for myself type of thing. So, as cliche as that all sounds, I just never got quiet and silent. And I think that I always knew that I was outside of alignment with my calling, particularly the drinking but I just didn't stop to listen long enough to actually act on it.

Andy Silvius:

Did you so? As you're questioning these things and you have this whisper that's getting louder, did you ever had you always wanted to be in a position of helping others achieve their goals, or was this something? Was that a shift that happened after all of this?

Alan Lazaros:

You know it's interesting. I always ask because now I've been coaching for seven years and I'm coming up on my 10,000 hours of podcasting, coaching, speaking and training, and I have 23 clients right now. The youngest is 18. The oldest is 63. And that's 23 people on my roster. But a lot have come and gone and so I've coached hundreds of people at this stage.

Alan Lazaros:

And so all different backgrounds, all different countries, all different cultures, all different sexes, ethnicities, you name it and so at this stage you kind of understand that. Do you uncover your calling or do you choose it, or is it both? And so for me, I don't. I think it was. I uncovered it. So I was always a coach. I just didn't get paid for it.

Alan Lazaros:

So if you and I were friends growing up and we were buddies, I would always talk to you about your goals and dreams. I just didn't know what I was doing. I just thought that's what you do. It's so interesting. Everyone mirrors you. So you don't know that you have a gift that other people don't.

Alan Lazaros:

I always thought everyone believed in themselves. I always thought everyone talked goals and dreams. No, everyone around you is mirroring your belief and toxic goals and dreams, because as you get older and this is actually really hard for me and fairly sad, to be completely honest, in my thirties you start looking around going why, why didn't more people achieve what they said they would achieve? Now I realize in my mature age oh, they were saying that stuff. They didn't really mean it and most of the reason they were saying it is because they were around you and they were trying to mirror and match you. And so goals and dreams is my jam. I mean, there's not a lot I talk about other than that, and so goals, dream achievement and self-improvement is pretty much all I ever talk about. So I thought the whole world just talks about those things when in reality, most people are mirroring me.

Alan Lazaros:

To answer your original question, I was always in my calling to some extent. I just didn't know that I was doing it. And it wasn't until 26 when I saw Tony Robbins' TED Talk. It's called why we Do what we Do and, regardless of what you think of Tony, that TED Talk's world class. But that's when I discovered coaching in general and I remember thinking that is 100% what I'm supposed to be doing.

Alan Lazaros:

I've been helping people achieve their goals and dreams my whole life. I've done my girlfriend's resumes back in my twenties and stuff. I've always been that way. I got one of my buddies from home, a job that he's still at today and I remember thinking why are you still there? You could have kept going, but again, he might not have ever even gotten there had I not thrown him in last minute. And so the old me never would have shared any of that because I would have been too cowardly, quite frankly, to well give him the credit. As I got older and older and older people would come up to me and say, oh my God, you did it and I would go. Well, I said I would. So obviously you didn't believe me before. So obviously you didn't believe me before. Right, when someone's so shocked that you did it, it's not like I said I'm gonna start a podcast and then go to the beach right so, but a lot of people do a lot of people do a lot of people talk and they don't execute.

Alan Lazaros:

I I don't think that's me man. I don't think I've ever been like that. I used to probably talk more than I walk now, but I never said things that I didn't intend on at the time.

Alan Lazaros:

I've always changed my mind, but that's one. The lesson underneath that rather than just talking about myself here is you have something that other people don't and you take it for granted, and I've found this with all my clients too. You take it for granted because it's always come easy. So for me, reverse engineering finish lines has always come very easy. I, I, you tell me your goal and I say this is how we do it, and let's rock and roll, and that's literally what I do for a living now. So it turns out that's actually really hard for people to reverse engineer that, and that just happens to be a skill that came very naturally.

Andy Silvius:

It's funny. I resonate with a lot of what you say because it's I've gone from being in a career that I wasn't happy and I didn't really choose it. It was, I mean, I guess everything's a choice, right but it wasn't something I set out to do. I actually came out of I don't I've talked about it here a few times so I'm not going to get into it too deep but I came out of actually being addicted to drugs as a teenager and having a kid very early to becoming a mechanic and working for my father-in-law and, um, you know, obviously getting clean before I had a kid and started getting my life on track. But it was like I went into working in in a field for hydraulic mechanic, so for heavy equipment, and from there went to work for a cat dealership, and so it just.

Andy Silvius:

There's the progression, though, of like all these things. I remember being super unhappy there, right. So I would always question myself like hey, can I see myself doing this five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road, and every answer was always no. And it was just and I just had this conversation with a guy earlier today on another recording that eventually it got to the point where I became so discontent that it was like I had to make a switch. And I made a switch and did very well, went into real estate. I'm still technically in real estate, but as I progressed in there I found that I saw that EXP Realty right.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, but as I started doing that, I found that.

Alan Lazaros:

I saw that EXP Realty right yeah, but as I started doing that, I actually coached one of my clients in that.

Andy Silvius:

In the brokerage, yeah, but as I've done that for quite a few years and been very successful with it, I found, probably within the last year or so, that I've just been not happy with it, not happy with the direction I chose. So there's a couple of things you said was like you're able to change your mind. You made it, you changed what you want to do. I think people need to have more permission to change it. There's also a difference between talking a lot and not executing, versus executing and then saying you know what? I made the wrong choice, I'm going to switch again. That make sense. So I don't really have a question around that. I just I don't know. It just struck me a little bit because I don't have a lot of people talk about progressing in that way.

Alan Lazaros:

There's layers of it, right. So there's someone who talks but doesn't walk, then there's someone who walks and doesn't talk, and then there's someone who talks, then't walk, then there's someone who walks and doesn't talk, and then there's someone who talks, then walks, then talks, then walks, then talks, then walks, and levels. There's levels to everything. And and some people are professionally developed and other people are personally developed, and some people are personally developed and not professionally developed. And that's been a trip for me too, because I'll I'll meet these business owners that are really, really successful and, like I said, my youngest, 18, oldest, 63,. One of them just started a brand new business, brand new YouTube channel, very beginning of his journey. The other one's been in business for 12 years and they're multimillionaire. The business isn't aligned with who they are anymore.

Alan Lazaros:

So they come to me wanting to grow their business, and particularly online, because the 21st century is very different, right? Internet, e-commerce, all that, and my whole team is virtual. So that's my thing. So it's not just how do I help you build a brick and mortar business, it's how do you lead a team that's entirely virtual and how do you have a global company that's entirely virtual. So that's a whole new 21st century thing that me, as a millennial, I'm old enough to where I have credibility, but young enough to have grown up with the internet, where some of my best friends were on Xbox when, when I was a teenager right so I've. I've been building relationships online since I was a kid. What a huge advantage.

Alan Lazaros:

Surprise, win all those semi-pro gaming days of halo, halo one and halo two right you know, what I'm talking about.

Alan Lazaros:

all right, so. So the the point, though, is that some business owners come to me and their business is no longer aligned with who they are. And then I have another client comes to me and I say well, what do you want to achieve? And she says I just want an amplified version of what already is Boom. Her business is already aligned with who she is. She just wants to scale it, grow it, monetize it more, that kind of thing, but she doesn't want to work a ton more, so it's okay. Well, the only way to do that is to work more first, then do a 3d plan, which is delete, delegate, double down, and so we can get into that if you want, but you're either on a path and you're not aligned with it, or the path you're on isn't aligned with who you are. It's one or the other, or both, some combination of both.

Andy Silvius:

I'm curious how you help other people discover what direction they're struggling with.

Alan Lazaros:

So I used to and I always use this. It's like a little dragonite rock thing. So I used to say you can achieve this and become this. And I now understand that was like early coaching, it was. People come to me, they say I want to achieve this and here's where I am and here's how I'm going to get there. And I'd say, well, what you really want to achieve is this, and where you really are is over here, and the way that you get there is different than what you thought. But I don't do anymore. Now I start with the self-awareness piece I start now with. Instead of you can achieve this and become this, I start with let's uncover who you actually are, what I've found and this has been really fascinating is we're all afraid to be too much or too little.

Alan Lazaros:

Some people are afraid of success, Other people are afraid of failure the people who are afraid they're not smart enough, not good enough, not capable enough. They struggle with competence courage is what I call it. They struggle to apply to the job, they struggle to start the business, they struggle to take the test, they struggle to apply to that school. The fear is outside of them and they're afraid it's a fence that keeps blocking them. That isn't what I have. That always came easy to me Apply to the school, apply to the test, do whatever, fail forward, fail forward, fail forward, fail forward, fail forward. So that is one, and the deepest fear there that you have to face is I'm afraid I'm not smart enough.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, well then go get a coach. I'm afraid I'm not hardworking enough. Okay, well, we're humble. You can build work, ethic and humility, but you won't if you keep pretending you're smart and hardworking. So you have to face the truth of not enoughness. That's the fear. And then there's the other side, and this has been fascinating there's some people who are not afraid to be too little.

Alan Lazaros:

They're actually deeply fearful of being too much, and this requires social courage. So social courage is I'm going to give a speech and be who I really am. So for me, I'm a computer engineer, a mathematical thinker. I was the obnoxious guy in college that didn't go to any of the classes, partied all night and still got straight A's on the calc exams. But I would drink on purpose to dumb myself down because it made me more relatable and whenever I drank I was more present, I was more fun.

Alan Lazaros:

The moment I am back in my calling, I'm very future oriented. I'm very like. I'm just constantly learning, growing, learning, growing. How to you know, achieve, achieve, achieve. So behind the scenes I'm, I'm very disciplined.

Alan Lazaros:

I I do my work, but in public, dial it down, fit in, fit in, fit in. Dial it down, yeah, fit in, fit in down. Fit in, fit in, fit in. Dial it down, yeah, fit in, fit in, fit in, while everyone else is dialing it up. It's a mirror and match. We're all one of a long.

Alan Lazaros:

So I'm dialing my belief down. I'm dialing my discipline down. I'm dialing my intelligence down. Other people dialing it up. They're pretending to be smarter. They're pretending to be smarter. They're pretending to be harder working. They're pretending to, but when they're alone they're actually lazier.

Alan Lazaros:

Oh, five, 10, 15, 20 years go by and it's like oh, all the people that were talking up here, they didn't walk. Okay, got it, I'm walking behind the scenes. So these two deep fears are you're afraid you're either too much or you're afraid. You need competence, courage, you need to fail forward, and these people are afraid of failure, or you're afraid of success. The people who are afraid of success are constantly ostracized by their peers. They're basically we all are in this little box of well, I want to be successful, but not so successful that my peers ostracize me from the group, but I don't want to be a failure either. So we're all in this little box between failure and success that our peers are okay with. It's like I won't be the bottom of the list, but I can't be the top of the list either, because both are scary.

Andy Silvius:

And you think the people who are afraid and I don't mean to interrupt you, but you think the people who are afraid of being at the top of the list are afraid of losing the connections they've built, because they'll outgrow them yes, 100, and the truth is they will yeah they will if you lean into and this is the hard part, too about coaching.

Alan Lazaros:

But I I really have to call a spade a spade here. Not. Not everyone has the same potential. I'm not going to beat LeBron James at basketball, no matter how hard I practice, and you just need to understand that. And we're all given certain gifts. I have one client who is drop dead gorgeous. She has a gift, but she wasn't naturally intelligent, so she can make up for that by working hard, reading and studying harder.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah for that by working hard, reading and studying harder. And there's other people that aren't naturally good looking, but they are really, really smart. And then some of us are very gifted in many areas. At the end of the day, you need to know your gifting or your lack thereof. My business partner, kev, wasn't a prodigy genius, but he has made up for that in humility and work ethic. And I'll tell you what. I know some people from our past that are way smarter than Kev was, and he's running circles around them now. Yeah, and that's the growth mindset. And so, whoever you are, whatever you are, whatever you're afraid of, here's what I'll tell you If you're out there and you're gifted, you're afraid of it. That's how you know you're gifted If you're not gifted.

Andy Silvius:

You're afraid you're not. That's good. I'm trying to think of a follow-up for that, but that's. It's just interesting to get that deep had you. Is this a lot like the stuff we're talking about? Is a lot of it been discovered as you have coached people and as things have progressed for you? Definitely. Or do you think you? Understood a lot of this early on.

Alan Lazaros:

I think on a soul level, I think I always kind of knew a lot of this, but I didn't understand it cognitively. So, for example, when I was a kid, I knew I was gifted at what I call STEMBIF science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business and finance. I'm a numbers thinker. So we have four modalities of thinking. One of them is math, and that's the rarest. Next is energy that's rare. And then the common one is words Most people think in words. And then another fairly common one is images. So imagination. And those are the four. Maybe there's more, but those are the four that I know of. And the math one is rare. And for the engineers out there, you think in math and rationality and you think everyone else is irrational. I've spent my whole life thinking everyone's irrational. No, no, no. What if I'm hyper-rational? I spent my whole life thinking everyone's irrational. No, no, no.

Alan Lazaros:

What if I'm hyper rational? Yeah, I spent my whole life thinking everyone else is lazy. No, no, no, you're really hardworking. See, we have these blind spots. Every gift comes with a massive blind spot. Mm-hmm, if you have high self-belief, it comes with a weakness. It's called overconfidence. Yeah, and you don't know, other people don't have it because they're pretending to have it when they're around you, because they're mirroring you. Right. But then you look at their actions and go I don't get it. And why, would someone.

Alan Lazaros:

Why would someone? I call them puffer fish. Why would someone with level 10 self-confidence you know those people who just portray so much certainty? Why would someone with level 10 self-confidence have level two goals so much certainty? Why would someone?

Andy Silvius:

with level 10 self-confidence, have level two goals. Well, they're overcompensating. It's to fit in, it's to be the loud one in the room and it really does come down to it. It's interesting because I I've run teams before. We had, uh, you know, I've been in leadership positions as an employee and as a, you know, owner of multiple businesses, um, businesses that have failed as well, um, and one of those being a real estate team. We had started a real estate team. We had, I want say we had seven, six or seven agents on our team and I did everything wrong. Okay, like did everything wrong.

Alan Lazaros:

I heard a clip of you saying that that was my tuition fees.

Andy Silvius:

Yes, yeah, I talked about it on a recent podcast. It was, like you know, I could have gone to school and gotten the business degree and done those things, but nothing will prepare you for those times other than making a mistake, learning the lesson the hard way and that's been my life like making bad decisions or decisions that just weren't good right, had a bad outcome and, um, that's my learning lesson. So, yes, those are my tuition fees, but something I recognized when we had a team was I want to help everyone, I want to see other people succeed. And then there were so many moments where I felt like I was helping people try to succeed and I wanted them to succeed more than they wanted to succeed, and I would have people we would goal plan. Because, again, I think this is where I resonate with you because I naturally I don't know if I naturally goal plan. I think I've built that skill over time.

Andy Silvius:

Um, I don't know if it was something that I just never unlocked before until I got into business, but but I definitely want to have a plan. I want to have a course of action, something that we can, we know when we come into work every day, like what are the things we have to do, and there's times, even now, I have to reassess that on a daily basis and make sure I'm aligning what I'm doing with my end goal um but team members would goal plan with me and they give me these big goals and these things they want to achieve and we would dig through their why, like it wasn't like, oh cool, you want to make 300 grand this year?

Andy Silvius:

perfect. I'd be like, well, why is 300 grand important to you? What's that going to do? For you know, if it was down to their, why was their family like, why is it important that your family has that kind of money? And like we would just I would dig into it and it felt to me like it was very genuinely deep. And then they wouldn't execute and I would go back, we'd check back in every week or two weeks, whatever the plan was, and you start asking these questions about like, okay, well, how do we? Why are we not hitting these things? Why are you not on track? And it's just eventually those things would, these goals would just trail off for people and eventually they would just leave the business altogether. Yeah, of course.

Andy Silvius:

One thing I struggle with, though, is never understanding why, if you're going to put yeah, of course. One thing I struggle with, though, is never understanding why, if you're going to put these plans in action, why not continue executing on them? And I've never been able to help people get past that. When people start really going backwards, it's like, man, how do I help you get back on gear? Because I can't put the willpower in you. Right, because I can't put the willpower in you. I can remind you of the things you told me you wanted, but I can't make you take the actions needed to achieve those goals, if that makes sense.

Alan Lazaros:

It makes perfect sense. You're talking about the hardest skill on the entire planet, which is leadership Hands down hardest skill of all time. So I have a 21-person team. I coach at least half of them. I have a coaching session right after this, actually in 18 minutes, with one of them.

Andy Silvius:

His name's brandon a way to put the pressure on me to wrap this up soon too.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, sorry, brother, I'm just kidding I actually I'm trying to get better with time, so I always have a timer set no, you're good otherwise I'll be late to everything.

Alan Lazaros:

I still am anyways. I think I was on time to this, so that's good. But I have back-to-back-to-backs. But the point is is, with Brandon, one of the things that I've had to learn the hard way and I'm just going to give you these because I've been bludgeoned for lack of better phrasing with the school of hard knocks in leadership over the last couple of years, no-transcript. Number one is unstable. Number two is delusional. Number three is naive. It's a big one. Some people oh, I want to make 300 grand. No, you don't. You want to go to the beach.

Andy Silvius:

Yes.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, oh, I want to be a billionaire. You ever hear that, yeah. Well, how many billionaires are there on the planet? I don't know 3,200. Well, how many of them are self-made? Well, I have no idea About 10% Of those. By the way, how many of them didn't have any investment dollars and started from scratch? None, okay, so you want to do something that's never been done and you're going to go to the beach Right Again. I'm hardcore right now, but that's the version of me that I'm scared to share, by the way, fyi.

Andy Silvius:

Okay, no, don't be afraid of it. I like this.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, I appreciate it. Well, that means you have high self-belief and have been hiding it. Okay, number one is unstable. Number two is delusional. Number three is naive. Number four is entitled. If you want something for nothing, you are so screwed. I went to a Subway recently and I have a team that's 21 person. Half of them are in the Philippines. Minimum wage in the Philippines is 90 cents. I'm at Subway and this dude at Subway is the most entitled employee ever of all time. The dude doesn't say hi to his customers. He's slow as it gets. He won't answer the phone. He's literally joking that the phone is ringing. He's like I don't want to get that. Who cares about this job? And I'm sitting there going. You're done. This is the end for you. You better eat some humble pie and you better eat it quick, because I've got people who I pay less than what you're making right now as minimum wage in Massachusetts. That can outwork you 10X and, by the way, that's going to keep happening, sir.

Andy Silvius:

So you better watch out. He'll be the first one to ask for a pay raise.

Alan Lazaros:

Damn right, he will Exactly. Thank you, that's entitled, and again, I get fired up about this, yeah. And then the fifth one is significance driven. Now, this one's tough to spot because, remember, there's a lot of people that are good at hiding it. Am I here to serve and to practice my craft, or am I here to talk to me? The interesting thing is, people who are significance driven actually think I am too, and the ironic thing is is pre 26, I was more significance driven and now I'm here to have an impact. I'm here to serve and I'm here to, yes, practice my craft and to get exposure to as well.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, and that's the truth. Yeah.

Alan Lazaros:

And significance is fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth. It's far down the list and you know that because you're doing this for the right reasons too. But if you were telling yourself a story that you're doing this for impact and you weren't, I would be a huge mirror, because someone who really is doing it for impact is going to not only be better than you at it, but you're going to know energetically that you're full of it. So those are the five Unstable, delusional, naive, entitled and significance-driven.

Alan Lazaros:

I did an event called Next Level Live. We do it every year. It's in March and Brandon shout out to Brandon, one of my favorite team members. It's unbelievable. The dude's humble work ethic. He's run a mile a day, every day for a year and a half. The dude's a sicko. I love it in the best way, in the best way. He said you know what my favorite thing about Next Level Live is this year? He's been with us for five years. He said it was about the mission first, fun second. That is what I'm talking about People who are significance driven, particularly those who are significance driven and pretending they're not. The people who pretend it's not about them but make it all about them. You know who I'm talking about Yep.

Alan Lazaros:

Right, it's my birthday. This is my birthday week. What do you mean? Your birthday week? Who gives you a week? Yeah, I don't even care. I literally need to take my birthday off of Facebook. Please don't message me, I just want to be left alone. Again, I know a little hardcore. Here's my truth. If you are significance driven, you can't put the mission first. Everything's about you. Now. You're competitive with your peers, now someone else shining is your detriment.

Speaker 3:

Tell me, I'm not giving you some leadership gold right now.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, it's almost a borderline narcissistic personality as well.

Alan Lazaros:

And the irony is that the people people say actions speak louder than words, and they do, but actions lie too. This is what I've come to figure out as a leader, and I figured this out the hard way. When people are around me, their actions are aligned and then behind the scenes, nothing's getting done ever. And then you've got other people who don't put on a show at all and they are so good. My COO, her name's Christina. You would never, ever suspect this is the hardest working, most humble person you've ever met in your life, and she's not a blowhard, she's not a puffer fish. She slinks into the background and just does her work. She was like I don't know if I should be coo. I'm like that's exactly why you should be versus my previous coo was like I think I should be coo. There's my mistake. Where's your humility, sir?

Andy Silvius:

right, so let me add something or just ask you this question because I think the significance part I think can be slightly bit of a struggle if you try to get your message out. So something that, because we've transitioned a little bit in career wise, we run a bookkeeping firm, my wife's the bookkeeper but I do the marketing and then helping with like the consulting part of it on the back end, so my messaging on my marketing is different. But it's like how do how do you ensure that you're putting out marketing Like for me? I'm putting out marketing I think is valuable to other business owners because I want to see them be able to succeed and make build better businesses. But how do you stop yourself from being the puffer fish unintentionally?

Alan Lazaros:

I I honestly if, if you're asking that question, you're not a puffer fish, okay. I remember one time I asked my team I always want 360 degree feedback and I think that's a kind of a buzz term. It's more than 360 degrees. I'm a math guy, so I'm a sphere and I want every angle. So if I want to see this water bottle, I need to see it from all angles, I need to see the bottom.

Alan Lazaros:

I so you and I right now you can see this differently than I do right so if you're on my team, I need to see what you're seeing and and then you say, oh, okay, interesting. And then I turn it and you see differently than I do. So I have a whole. I have four people that people have to get through before I bring them on the nou team and I and I used to have come on in Trojan horse, come right into the castle, stab me in the heart and then leave. I don't do that anymore. So they have to talk to Amy, they have to talk to Lizzie, they have to talk to Christina and they have to talk to Kevin, and all four of them need to intuitively say green light. I've had too many people pass through the filter and I would ask the team all the time am I being arrogant? You think I'm being overconfident? And one time they said, alan, if you were, you wouldn't be asking.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Alan Lazaros:

It's so interesting because people call me arrogant my whole life, I now realize they have self-doubt and they struggle with self-doubt and they struggle with self-belief and I probably do sound arrogant.

Andy Silvius:

But they're projecting their fears on, or their insecurities on. Do you yes?

Alan Lazaros:

And I always say this. I say listen, I might sound arrogant here on this podcast, but I'm the one reading the books, I'm the one journaling every single day, I'm the one tracking my finances. I canceled the subscription for $3.28 two days ago as the CFO of the company and we are coming up on a half million dollars this year in podcasting, which most people don't make money in podcasting. So I'm very grateful. But the point is is my actions are humble. So here's what I do as a leader. I say can this person stay on the Stairmaster for a half an hour on their own accord in a dark gym by themselves on the weekend, when no one's watching and not posted on Instagram or Facebook? If my intuition says yep, let's go, let's rock and roll.

Alan Lazaros:

Humility is the most important character trait in humanity, and humility is not modesty, humility is. I know that I'm great at what I do and I'm still humble about it. I'm still reading the books, I'm still practicing my craft, I'm still putting in the extra hours, I'm still showing up every single day. Versus, the entitled is the opposite, entitled is well, I deserve more, I deserve more, I deserve more, and so that's my. I've been trying to figure out this leadership thing for a long time, and it sounds like a long time. I'm still a young leader, I'm only 35, but no, but I get it though. Yeah, it's been the hardest thing in the world, and I think it's the most important skill and it's also the most devastatingly challenging.

Andy Silvius:

Which makes sense right the most profitable skill happens to be the rarest and the hardest. Yeah, I would see this a lot in real estate, but you see it with business owners in general across any industry. You can pick them and I'm guaranteed you'll find them. But there's people who are business owners and have been business owners for a very long time and still don't dive into educating themselves around being a better leader and just kind of let the day-to-day just be the same all the time, just go through the motions.

Alan Lazaros:

I do have a quick Go ahead. I was just going to say that that is a business that is most likely going to stagnate just because I do have a problem. There's transformational leader. There's dictatively leader, which is like the pop down, do as I say, because I'm your boss crap. There's the delegate, delegate leader. There's transactional leader, which is just do it for money. And then there's one more, which is servant leader. Did I say servant leader? Yet?

Andy Silvius:

You might have said at the beginning I got to close my eyes for this.

Alan Lazaros:

Hold on, you've got transformational leader, servant leader, delegative leader, dictator leader.

Andy Silvius:

Transactional.

Alan Lazaros:

Transactional leader. And then there's one more.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, I forget the sixth one. What I try to be is transformational, and the biggest thing for transformational leader is courage. You have to have the courage to share the uncomfortable truths, and I think we're all on one end. You have to have the courage to share the uncomfortable truths, and I think we're all on one end. You're either good at tough love or you're good at praise. I was good at praise, praise, praise, praise, praise, praise, praise, praise, praise, praise. And then you create delusion and then you never tell them the negative feedback because you want to be liked or loved.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, yeah, that's my own, my own challenge, so I got to work on the other one, but anyway. So for the person out there who is not educating themselves about 21st century leadership, your business will stagnate because you can't attract people of a higher or of a of a high personal development set point leaders. I have one of one of my team members. Her name's Jerry and she's a mother of four. She's amazing. She's wildly competent to an to an extent that's just blowing my mind. I could never attract her to my company if I was binge drinking on the weekends and she's admitted that, like I would never work for you if you weren't super mature and right you know.

Alan Lazaros:

So that's really important. You have to, you have to lead by example, and that's ironically the easiest uh, not the easiest, the simplest, but hardest one to do and the most by far the least done. I, I that's. One thing that's always bothered me is people who don't lead by example, and I think that goes back to what we said at top, which is walking your talk.

Andy Silvius:

Yes, and I've seen plenty of coaches, leader people in leadership positions that you know not to pick on people who are overweight, but it's like you got the guy who's up there who is obesely overweight and they're telling you how to run your business and live your life. If you can't be disciplined about what you eat and your exercise and your, your own discipline, how can you tell me or coach me properly on how to do it for myself?

Alan Lazaros:

A hundred percent. Thank you for having the courage to call a spade a spade, seriously. Thank you Because I have thought that my entire life, particularly in the last nine years years, it's getting harder and harder to bring that up because I think we we get so afraid of offending people, but it's.

Andy Silvius:

It's like you can't just play into this game forever, like we can't just be so afraid of hurting people's feelings that we don't talk about what's real yeah because that person needs that tough love a little yeah, yeah, you don't need to, you don't need to beat them down, but it's like yeah, of course not.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, there's a big difference between being a dick and being honest. Yeah, right, you're just being honest. I really appreciate that I have some heroes that have very much fallen from the pedestal.

Andy Silvius:

So I know you've got a time limit. We're almost wrapping up, so I have one last question for you.

Alan Lazaros:

But if you could leave listeners with one actionable item that would have a positive impact on them today, what would it be? And why? Habit tracking? It's the meta habit. It's a habit about habits. So I've been habit tracking for nine years now. I had these little black notebooks I used to carry along with me and I had a mechanical pencil. I would erase the check marks and then re-check mark them, and now we use Google Sheets and we have an app now. But at the end of the day, I've been habit tracking for nine years.

Alan Lazaros:

You want to talk about a game changer, even if you're not perfect at it. You start with five things. I have this thing called my big five to thrive that I've been doing every single day for 2024, which is writing 20 minutes a day. Whatsapp 20 minutes a day that's where I lead the team. We use WhatsApp. Mobility 10 minutes. Exercise 30 minutes. And the last one I just changed from sales to finance. So same idea, but I'm CFO, so I'm in the finances every single day for 20 minutes now, and it was sales before that. But the big five to thrive are like the five things that are keystone habits that make everything else go round.

Andy Silvius:

Yeah, You've got to make them. You achieve all those in one day. You've had a successful day.

Alan Lazaros:

A hundred percent, yeah, and every day. And eventually you get a streak going and you just don't want to break the streak. Just don't break the streak. And if you want to start with one, then move to two and then three and then four. But if you want to start with one, then move to two and then three and then four. But if you can pick five little ones, the key is make them small enough where you can actually do them daily. If it was three hour workouts, there's no chance. There's no chance I could sustain that. Anyone can work out three hours for a week, like every day for a week, but you cannot sustain that long term.

Alan Lazaros:

And so keep them small enough. Big enough to where your brain goes, Yep. Small enough to where you can sustain it.

Andy Silvius:

There's some studies that to build habits it takes about an average of 66 days of doing it consistently to build James Clear, james Clear stuff.

Andy Silvius:

So we used to have calendars and this was kind of pushed through. I used to be at Keller Williams and so it was a big thing like use your calendar. And so you take one thing, you want to change a new habit, and you track that for 66 days and if you mess up you start over and you do it until you're consistently there and some are longer than others, that's just an average.

Alan Lazaros:

One thing I like about real estate I know we get a jump is the personal development and professional development. I've coached a lot of Keller Williams people and EXP one of my clients. Her name's Gabby. As a matter of Keller Williams people and EXP one of my clients, her name's Gabby, as a matter of fact, she's moving to Arizona, so maybe you've heard of her.

Alan Lazaros:

I don't know we can talk offline. I don't want to air any of her stuff out publicly, but she's got five properties she's crushing. But the one thing I do love about the real estate space is it's very personal development-esque.

Andy Silvius:

Yes, and I think it's because you get kicked in If you are truly working it like a business and not like a hobby. You're getting kicked in the teeth every single day and you have to remember to get up the next day and do it again and you're self-employed every single day or you're unemployed every single day that you wake up until you find a new client and it's just. It pushes you really hard. But I think real estate agents get a bad rap because there are a lot of people that just treat it like a hobby.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, of course.

Andy Silvius:

So, man, I appreciate you coming on today. It was a great conversation. Oh, I know we're uh, we're wrapping up and you're about to be late to your next meeting, so I, uh, I'll link all of your stuff in our show notes for everyone listening. They can go contact you, but thank you again.

Alan Lazaros:

Oh, thank you so much for having me, andy. This was a breath of fresh air, it was an honor, and keep doing what you're doing, my friend, seriously.

Andy Silvius:

Thanks, I appreciate it. I just want to thank all of you guys for listening today. If you enjoyed the show and felt like it provided you value, I'd love to hear what stuck out the most to you in the comments. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks for watching, guys.