Patience, Perseverance and Purpose with Kevin Palmieri

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host, Jen Ginty, and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones, when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins. Each episode will explore stories of resilience,

moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change. From personal experiences to expert insights, we'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach. Because sometimes,

The hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

Jen (01:09)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today's guest is Kevin Palmieri. He is a speaker, coach, and self-improvement mentor who went from rock bottom and even found the basement to building a life of purpose and impact. In his mid-20s, he had it all on paper, the job, the car, the body, but behind the scenes, he was battling depression and contemplating suicide.

That breaking point sparked a complete transformation. He committed to holistic self-improvement and years later, he's helped thousands around the world shift their mindsets, habits, and beliefs. He's recorded over 1,600 episodes, spoken to audiences across the globe, and now helps others reach their next level. Welcome, Kevin.

Kevin Palmieri (01:57)
Thank you so much for having me, Jen. I appreciate it. You and I did a pre-call a while back and I have been looking forward to this ever since.

Jen (02:03)
Me too. Yes, absolutely. Well, let's get into it. What is your origin story?

Kevin Palmieri (02:10)
My origin story, how long do you want? You want the seven minute version? Okay, all right. Okay, okay. So I was raised by my mom and my grandmother. Didn't know my dad. I didn't meet my dad with the understanding that he was my father until I was 27. So obviously that plays a role in a young man's life. It still plays a role in my life today. We grew up lower middle class. So I remember hearing often that we didn't know how we were gonna pay rent.

Jen (02:14)
sure, whichever one you feel most comfortable with.

Kevin Palmieri (02:37)
So that became another thing that I thought I needed to focus on in life. And you'll hear more about that later. Outside of that though, I would say my childhood is quote unquote normal, whatever that means to you, whatever normal means. When things started to shift for me was in high school, because I knew pretty early on that I didn't want to go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And it didn't make sense to pay however many thousands of dollars a year for somebody to help me figure it out. So I got a job at the local gas station.

That was my first job, senior year of high school. I got a job at the gas station. I worked there and then I left there and I worked at a hospital cleaning bathrooms and floors overnight. Personal trainer, truck driver, forklift operator, construction, tiling, on-call firefighter, just HVAC, many things. And as I jumped from job to job to job to job, I got less and less hopeful that I was going to be any level of successful and any level of certain.

and safe. Eventually, I think I was like 22 or 23 when this happened, I went to this job fair. And the thought was you go to this fair, you learn a skill and you get paired up with a company. Okay, I'll give this a shot. I like working with my hands. Let me see what I can do. So I went to this job fair and I learned a new skill called weatherization. For anybody out there who doesn't know what weatherization is, essentially somebody comes into your home and they go up in your attic.

and they spray insulation or they spray insulation in your walls or they look at your windows. They're trying to make your house more energy efficient. So that's a skill I happened to learn. And upon the exit interview, they said, you have a great personality. You have really good work ethic. We're going to connect you with the best company here. And I was like, well, of course you say that. You probably say that's everybody. So I'm not thinking too much of it. They said there is a lot of travel and it's a really good job. And I said, I'm not interested in travel. So it's probably not for me.

They said, well, talk to the boss. You start anywhere from 50 to $120 an hour. And I said, this isn't real. This is, no way this is real. This is not a real thing. So I call my potential boss and he says, yeah, come in for an interview. And I go meet him. And he said, yep, it's no, what they said is true. We work on government contracts. So you get what's called prevailing wage. So essentially the state dictates what we have to pay. Everybody gets paid the same. It's anywhere from 60 to $120 an hour.

There's no way. So he said, again, you have a great personality and it seems like you have really good work ethic. We're gonna bump you to the front of the line. We have a job starting in two months. Like, okay, I still don't believe any of this is real. So eventually I get a call from this boss of mine who I've met one time and he says, hey, we're good to go. The job's starting. It is in Wilmington, Delaware. I lived in just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. So the second time I met my boss, I got in a car with him, drove,

12 hours I think it took us to get there, moved into a house with five other coworkers I'd never met and then proceeded to do a job that I had technically never done before. Got my first paycheck at the end of the first week and since I was on probation quote unquote at my job, I got paid $50 an hour as opposed to the $60 an hour. And I remember after I got that first check, I was like, oh my goodness, I did it. Now I'm gonna be successful and now I'm gonna be wealthy and everything's gonna be fine. Fast forward a few years.

and I still had this job and I was doing really well there. My girlfriend at the time was a model. I was getting ready to compete in a bodybuilding show. So I was quite literally in the best shape I will ever be. Sports car, new apartment, great friends, all this stuff. And my girlfriend sat me down one day after I won my bodybuilding show and she said, hey, I'm leaving. And I was like, what's going on? don't understand.

And she said, you're just a shell of yourself. You're not the man I fell in love with. And I don't feel like you can be the person who helps me and supports me and my aspirations. And she was correct, unfortunately. And the thing she said after that was really what opened the door to a lot of things that would happen. She said, I was going to leave you last month, but I was afraid if I did, you might kill yourself. And it wasn't she wasn't poking fun. It was more I'm worried. I'm kind of worried about you.

So that was the first time I went and tried therapy, because it was very clear that something was going on. But I fell back into the trap of, I need to make as much money as possible. If I really want to be successful, this mental health thing can wait. This financial thing needs to be first. So that was my initial rock bottom when my girlfriend left me. Unfortunately, we often get pains that seem like whispers and they stick around until they become screams.

So the next year starts, get a promotion at my job. making the most money I've ever made. I was traveling all over the place for work. By the end of that year, I had spent 10 months living on the road every single week in a different state, in a different town, in a different building, doing a different job. Got to the end of the year, opened my final pay stub. I made $100,000 at 26 with no college degree, and I just felt empty. My bank account was different, but nothing internally was different.

So Jen, did what any 26 year old would do. I started a podcast. For most of my life, I lived unconsciously. The opposite of unconscious is hyperconscious. I'm gonna have a podcast called the Hyperconscious Podcast. That's what we're gonna do. So I started that in 2017. As you know, in the beginning, there isn't exactly a line out the door of people saying, this is a great idea. How much money do you need to quit your job and do this full time?

So I had to keep going to this job that I now hated because I knew it was not the thing that was gonna bring me quote unquote success anymore. I was homesick before I left. I just lived out of my suitcase because I was always on the road. I was struggling to hold down a serious relationship because I was never home. I was getting more depressed. I was getting more anxious. I was calling out of work. I was leaving the job sites early. I was showing up late. I just did not care. And eventually after a few months of that,

I woke up in a hotel room in New Jersey. It was, I think, 5 15. I sat up, I slid to the edge of the bed. I was lacing up my work boots. And the best way to explain it is that morning there was 10 televisions on in my head and every single one was on a different station. For context, it's very important to understand that I felt like this was luck that got me this job and I was never going to get another opportunity like this. So leaving this job behind quite literally meant leaving success behind.

One of the televisions was saying, you're stuck here forever. You got lucky. If you ever did leave this job, what would your friends think? You make more money than any of your friends. What would your family think? I have so much significance because my family thinks I'm successful. And then the loudest one for me was, what are you gonna do? The podcast thing is not realistic, Kev. I mean, it would be reckless to leave this job and go all in on a podcast. And it was in that moment where I found out that Rock Bottom has a basement, I...

remember thinking to myself, well, if I was just to take my life, I would take all of my problems with me and I wouldn't have to worry about any of this. Luckily, I had a really good friend who is now my business partner, who I reached out to and I confided in and I was vulnerable with. And he gave me some really good advice. And I ended up making a different decision that day and it created a light at the end of the tunnel. I realized I don't have to stay at this job forever. So I ended up leaving that job two or three months later.

And then as of 2018, we decided to try to do this full time. So I left my job in 2018 and I've been a full time podcast ever since. But the first several years got worse before they got better. And now we're quote unquote successful and we look successful, but it was just brutal getting to where we are today. So I would say that is the story of how we've arrived here.

Jen (10:45)
Yeah, so much to unpack. Question for you. Do you think that the way that you grew up molded that outlook you had on finances?

Kevin Palmieri (10:59)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I always say logically, make sense from a logical perspective. I was short, I felt insignificant, I didn't want to be broke. So if I could just get in really good shape, have a really attractive partner, and just have a boatload of money that should dissolve all the trauma of the past, that was my thought. So yeah, that was a really big piece of it. And

The other thing too was my mom, although we did not have money, my mother was reckless with money. I remember one time she said, if you make my bed, I'll give you $100. It's like easiest $100 I'll ever make. I'm in. I think that skewed to me the importance of money. And it also made me want to be very, very, very charitable. I'm somebody who

I want to, if I get a $50 meal, I want to leave a $50 tip. I aspire to leave a $50 tip. When you don't have money, that is reckless. That is not a good behavior. But I, that is one of the things that I modeled because I saw it. I saw how money makes people feel. And I, I've always wanted to give back. I just didn't understand that I had to give, I had to create for myself before I could give back to others. So yeah, that molded me in many ways.

Jen (12:19)
Yeah, it did the same thing for me as well. And my mother was pretty good with money. My abuser left when I was 14. And so my mother was single from that point on and I had two older brothers. And we had a very different outlook on what we're supposed to do as teenagers. We need to work. We need to work to get out of the place that we need to survive from.

You know, we needed all those kinds of things and family really does play a key role in that feeling because I worked when my abuser still lived in the home and it really felt like it was an escape. You know, I felt like I needed to escape from there so I did whatever I could and learned that survival was being out at a job. And...

Kevin Palmieri (12:48)
Yes, I do.

Mm.

Jen (13:13)
I think it's really interesting how our early family lives really do make a difference on what we hold as important in our lives.

Kevin Palmieri (13:23)
Yeah. And especially how you compare your normal family life to the normal quote unquote family life of others. I always felt like I was different because I didn't have a dad. And almost all of my friends' families seemingly had money. Whether they did or not, I don't know. But I remember one of my best friends, his parents bought him like a classic car for

one of his first cars ever. It was like, had to buy my own car. And I had other friends where they were gonna be fine whether they were successful or not. It was abundantly clear that they had a family that was gonna take care of them. My family did the best to take care of me, but they were never gonna be able to take care of me financially. So I think I felt the pressure relatively young. I didn't wanna get a job. I didn't wanna work at the gas station, but I had to find a way to provide for myself, right? And that was...

That was the lowest barrier to entry and that was my skill set at the time.

Jen (14:23)
Yeah, that fear of financial insecurity is so strong and can cause a lot of problems in our lives. As you said, you started making a great living. You were what my mother calls, is better to look good than to feel good. And that is where we really trap ourselves.

Kevin Palmieri (14:46)
Golden handcuffs, golden handcuffs. One of the reasons I was so afraid to quote unquote start over is because so much of my reputation was money and it was abundance and it was, I just cared so much about what people thought. That was all, that was a big piece and is anybody gonna wanna date me if I'm a broke entrepreneur who's chasing his dreams? I know it seems wild. I'm gonna start a podcast and I be a, I understand how wild that seems. So that,

That was a fear too. it's almost like when you have a very scarce relationship with money, it affects every decision you make. And you almost just live from a scarce place forever, which never really allows you to build an abundant relationship with money. Because even when you do have money, you still have it scarcely. There's a big difference between running from something and running towards something. And I think for most of my life, I was running from being broke.

not running toward being abundant. So even today, I'm still working through, I'm still working through money stuff today, even though we're doing very well, it's still, the result doesn't fix the root cause, unfortunately. If it was that easy, then we wouldn't need as many podcasts as we do for sure, right? Because you wouldn't have to talk about the deep stuff that matters. Yeah.

Jen (16:06)
Right, right, you know,

and I'm interested in what your friend told you in that moment. What was his advice?

Kevin Palmieri (16:16)
I don't remember all of it because he's very long winded, which I have since adopted since he's the co-host. But I remember him saying, Kev, over the last couple of years, your awareness has changed a ton, but your environments have remained the same. That's the thing I remember the most. It was that, along with the permission to make a different decision that he gave, and it was also a sense of belief of...

If we do this together, if we do this podcast thing together, I have a much higher likelihood of succeeding than if I was just to do this alone. So it was all of those things put together. And I think it was, there was no judgment. There was no looking down on me. It was just very much like, I, I'm sorry, you're struggling. Here are some potential options and or new perspectives. And I'm here for you if you need me. And it was really those, those three things that.

that helped me. here, this is the other important thing. He, so my business partner, Alan, his name is Alan. He had had a very good job. He had left that very good job. And he was already pursuing entrepreneurship. So it wasn't like he was just giving me advice. He was giving me advice that he had lived, which made it seem much more real to me and much more weighted. It seemed like there was some weight behind it. So that was a really big piece of it too.

Jen (17:43)
It's interesting when, and I've done this before, I seek permission from others, right? That, okay, they said that that's okay, that I can make it, so I'm gonna do it. And we hold back on ourselves until we finally get someone to give us permission.

Kevin Palmieri (17:49)
Mm.

Yes, unfortunately, unfortunately, because a lot of us never actually get that permission that we're searching for. And if you don't get to a place where you can give it to yourself, I think it's probably it's a mixture maybe of self-worth and self-belief. I didn't believe I could do this. That was a big piece of it. And I didn't think I was worth investing in. I didn't think anybody was going to invest in me. And I didn't think my dreams were worth investing in either. And that's one of the reasons I think I got I felt stuck.

I don't know if I actually got stuck, but I felt really stuck. That's one of the things that we really connected on early on is my business partner has 10 out of 10 self-belief. So nothing is impossible from his eyes. So automatically that creates more opportunities for him to be successful because he'll just go take chances. But we both had very low self-worth. We were not good at setting boundaries. We always put ourselves in places where we were not valued.

We didn't understand when people were poking fun at us or having fun at our expense. We just didn't, we didn't get that. So as my self belief has increased over time and my self worth has increased over time, it's become drastically obvious that those were really, really holding me back. But you don't really know that the whole, what is normal thing is just blows my mind because there is no such thing as normal. We all have a different set point. We all have different experiences. you know.

Jen (19:32)
Yeah, and we chase different ways of making ourselves feel worthy, right? You chased so many different ways and got to the pinnacle of those things, and yet it didn't help you.

Kevin Palmieri (19:49)
Yeah. Well, think it's Tony Robbins has a Ted talk where he talks about the six basic human needs. It's one of the best, best Ted talks in my opinion. It's a great Ted talk. And one of the basic human needs is significance, the need to feel important essentially. And I think a lot of us are looking for significance. What's going to create significance for me. Right. So as a bodybuilder, when I was doing my bodybuilding prep, you better believe every single picture I took, there was no shirt ever.

Cause I'm in really good shape, that gives me significance. And another common one is certainty. What brings you certainty? Well, for me, money is certainty. The problem is you can use that as a crutch for a long, long, long time. So we all try and we all do a fairly okay job of getting our needs met. It's just not always in the most constructive way. And now with self-awareness and personal development, at least I know, okay.

Is this like a shallow goal? Is this actually something that's going to fill a void in some way, shape or form? At least now I have the awareness to ask myself, what is this actually for? I bought a new car recently. That's not gonna, that's nothing. That's nothing here. That's not for this. That's more a celebration of momentum and progress. And it gives me momentary bouts of happiness. But it's not gonna fulfill me. This is what fulfills me.

This is what fulfills me. And then I think the opportunities and circumstances that the fulfillment brings can create momentary bouts of happiness.

Jen (21:25)
And know that age old adage of money can't buy happiness is true, right?

Kevin Palmieri (21:31)
Money can't buy happiness, it can buy opportunity and it can buy circumstances. But I do those will not fix internal voids. If you have a money problem and I give you money, you can you can work on that problem. If you don't feel good enough about yourself, money I do not believe will help. I think it actually might make it worse. Because you say, well, I have all this and I still feel it's like, that's a, that's a really dangerous place. So yeah, money does not buy happiness.

But I think it buys circumstances and it buys opportunities and options, which definitely are important, but they're not the whole game for sure.

Jen (22:07)
Absolutely. So tell me about the early stages of the podcast. Going into this, you've just left a job that gives you that financial stability and then some, and now you're choosing yourself and you're going into this new venture with your partner.

Kevin Palmieri (22:12)
You

Mm. Yeah.

I was very naive, Jen, very, very naive to what this was gonna take. I would say the first, so I left my job in, I think the beginning-ish of 2018. The first year was kind of just, it was like the honeymoon phase. Like, whoa, I don't have to go to a job anymore? I think I had $10,000 saved up, so I thought that was gonna be plenty. I thought we were gonna be, that was gonna be fine, we'll be good. So the first year was very much just,

getting my footing as somebody who has never really not had some level of regimented, you must be here by this time. That was year one. And I also burned through all of my money in year one. Then 2019, it was like, okay, we have to really take this seriously. And I think we went from one episode to two episodes a week. But it was, I'm at this point broke. So I haven't had a job in almost a year and a half.

I'm $30,000 in credit card debt. My new car that was new in 2013 is starting to have its own issues here, which is gonna be a problem shortly. So it became a very, very scarce time. At that point, I had very bad anxiety and I was having panic attacks on the floor irregularly. I didn't know what it was. I thought I was having asthma attacks. It was terrible. I couldn't pay rent.

In 2019, I couldn't buy my now wife Christmas presents. I mean, it got it got bad. My car was breaking down at red lights and it would just shut off. It was just terrible. It was terrible. And not a lot of people believed in what we were doing. It didn't make sense to people. So the first two, three years were really just do not look at all at the results and or lack of results that we have and just work really hard on our characters.

Really just be a good man, be a better man, be a more healthy man, more healthy masculine man. Continue that, continue that, continue that. And then really work on the unsexy fundamental habits behind the scenes that nobody will ever see and hope slash trust that eventually they will pay off. So I would say the first few years were just fundamental grinding, not feeling any level of result, but feeling very fulfilled.

That would be the first, the first season of this was grind, be naive, feel fulfilled and question why it wasn't working yet. I would say that was the first season.

Jen (25:04)
And you said that there was the anxiety, there was the panic attacks, that kind of thing. Did you do anything specific for your mental health at that time?

Kevin Palmieri (25:13)
So I don't wanna say funnily enough, because I don't mean in a funny way. What's the word? I don't know, it'll make sense. We'll say funnily enough, when I left my job, my depression went away. Just gone, done, I feel great, cool. Anxiety, not the case, got drastically worse. What did I do? One, it was recognizing that it was actually anxiety. So I didn't realize, we had a mentor who lived in Florida and we spent,

and the entire month of December in 2018 living in Florida. And while we were in Florida, we had met some people that wanted to do podcast episodes. We were driving all over Florida. We were getting ready to drive from Jacksonville to like Miami. And I remember we were getting ready to leave and I remember my chest and my throat were super tight. And I remember telling my business partner, I remember saying, I don't know if it's allergies or if it's asthma or whatever.

And I said, you know what? I think this is anxiety because I'm so triggered because I used to drive six hours from home to a job site and I was so anxious all the time. my goodness, interesting. That's what this is. So when I first found out it was anxiety, yeah, I started meditation, I started breath work. I went and got an inhaler from the doctor so I could prove to myself that I could breathe. That was all really big.

from me in the beginning. it was mostly, it was mostly meditation, breath work and that type of stuff. Cause I didn't have health insurance. So I couldn't afford to go to the doctors cause everything was out of pocket. So it was mostly self focused stuff. Meditation and breath work is what I did the most. Yeah. And it helped.

Jen (26:58)
What in,

what in particular helped.

Kevin Palmieri (27:01)
There was this Deepak Chopra meditation that I used to do every morning. I'd wake up, I'd go sit on the floor in the living room and I would just do this meditation every morning. And that helped me, that helped me a ton. I realized at that point I was smoking a lot of weed. I realized that wasn't great for my anxiety. That didn't help either. That was a big piece. And then this is always the hard thing to explain.

In a weird way, I feel like the more I worked on myself...

the more I could handle internally without things getting in. So I always say, and this isn't my saying, but it's somebody else's saying, when you work really, really hard on the ship, the waves don't affect the ship as much. You're not really worried about water getting in. I feel like that's the best representation of how I still get bouts of anxiety, but not like I used to. And I think one of the reasons is I've just been able to develop myself more where things just don't.

I don't wanna say bother me, because that makes it sound like I'm lessening it. It just doesn't affect me as much as it used to. Yeah, I would say that. think personal development saved my life in so many ways, but that's one way is it has allowed me to understand and feel more certain even in uncertain times, which I think was one of the root causes of my anxiety in the first place. Yeah.

Jen (28:26)
So tell me about the evolution of the podcast.

Kevin Palmieri (28:29)
Man, in the beginning, we were just having cool conversations with cool people. That was it. Just wanted to have cool conversations with cool people. Right? It was awesome. It's the best. It was the best. We're doing that right now. We're having a cool conversation. I feel like we're cool people, so I feel aligned in that. Then it became, if we don't find a way to make money with this, this whole thing is going to die. This whole thing is going to die. Neither of us had jobs. This was our startup, and we had to figure it.

Jen (28:38)
I love that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri (28:58)
So I started coaching for free. That was the next evolution is I became a coach in the personal development space. My business partner became a coach in the personal development space. And that kind of became proof of concept that this could be a thing. People listen to a personal development podcast. We're adding value. There's got to be a subset of people who want us to add value at a deeper level in exchange for money. Okay. We'll try that. So that became the next kind of phase. And again,

All of it is rude in naivete, all of it. But it was like, my goodness, we're making money now. This is incredible. So we went from zero dollars to, I think the first year we said we made a dollar because in order to track the numbers, there has to be something there. And then I think the second year we made $47,000. Like, whoa. So we're almost kind of living. But at this point, everything is on credit cards. We were riding the struggle bus financially.

Jen (29:29)
Yeah.

Kevin Palmieri (29:56)
My business partner lived at home with his mom at this point. He moved back in to help and save money. So that was, it was still like a really, really challenging time. It got to the point eventually, probably 300, 400 episodes in where people started asking me for podcast help. So I went from, I'm gonna be a mindset coach. That's what I wanna do. I wanna be a mindset coach to everybody is asking me about podcasting. Interesting. So I started coaching podcasters. That became a whole new,

That's a thing? I didn't even know that was a thing. Okay. I actually like that more than the mindset thing. Interesting. That became the next evolution. And then as that happened, I mean, we were 400, 500 episodes in. So at that point we were able to get much bigger guests. The podcast was kind of succeeding. We were building a team behind the scenes. We had moved into a studio. We had our own studio. And again, it was like 500 bucks a month. wasn't, we were not balling, but it was a nice studio. So we were, we were doing okay.

But even at that point, you know, we were so focused on growing the business that I was still broke. I wasn't taking almost any money out of the business. Alan wasn't taking almost any, any money out of the business. At that time, it was whatever money you make either goes back into the business or you use for your living expenses. Right. So that became kind of the next phase. We got some really good guests on, realized that a lot of people behind the scenes aren't as good as they are in front of the scenes.

stopped having guests completely. Went from six episodes, well, one to two to three to four to five to six, up to seven episodes a week. So we do an episode every day. And then it really became, okay, we are going to be the most consistent podcast humanly possible. And our audience will be made up of people who just wanna get a little bit better every day. And that's gonna be the jam. And that has been really the last three years, I would say, of this journey from 2022 to 2025.

five when we're talking now. It's just been the unsexy fundamentals as the hosts and the creators of this, we have to get better every single day, no matter what, if we want to add value into people's lives. And we've just gotten to the point where we're very focused on just a few things. I'm not, if you come over for dinner, Jen, you are going to be just disappointed in what I make you. That's just, that's not my gym, but hopefully I can add a shred of value in this episode. That's the goal, right? So for me, it's really podcasting.

Jen (32:21)
Absolutely.

Kevin Palmieri (32:23)
coaching on podcasting and speaking on podcasting. Those are really the three things that I do now more than anything, but it takes time before you can really go all in on one or two or three things. yeah, it went from very unfocused and naive to slightly less, slightly less, slightly less. And again, even today, I'm way more focused and less naive than I've ever been, but I'm also naive and not nearly as focused as I need to be. that'll kind of, I think that'll be that way forever.

Jen (32:50)
Yeah, I don't know if that naivety goes away at any point in our lives. I mean, I'm 51 years old and I still believe that I'm very naive in things that I move forward with. Even this podcast, I created this podcast because I'd been going on other podcasts and talking about my healing journey and then realizing there are so many other healing journeys out there that deserve to be told. And that's how I jumped into

podcasting and it's just it's been a wild experience. It's been a beautiful experience meeting people who have similar ideas and values and similar histories even and creating that community. I feel like I say it a lot. Community really is so important.

Kevin Palmieri (33:40)
it is. You know the interesting question? If you weren't naive, would you have started in the first place? I wouldn't have. If I knew how bad this was going to be in the beginning, I honestly, don't know. I know it was bad at my job. I know. I don't know if, I don't know. I don't know what I would have done if I knew it was going to take as much of me as it has. So would you have started without naivete?

Jen (34:07)
No, honestly, Kevin, I'm not sure because I kind of created this podcast because I created my Moody Monster doll to help kids to better cope with their feelings. And it kind of just morphed from that, finding content, doing the things that I love doing to help others learn about their emotions and all that kind of stuff. It just kind of morphed as, okay, and this is the next step, the next level.

Kevin Palmieri (34:08)
No.

Jen (34:36)
of my business, my life.

Kevin Palmieri (34:41)
I think we think of naive as bad. And I think sometimes it's like, yeah, that rock was a little higher than I thought it was going to be, you know, or that pizza was a little bit bigger than I thought it was going be. I was naive. I was naive to what I thought it was going to be. yeah, similar, similar. don't, you can only go off the information you have and you can only go off the emotions you have. And from there, you got to figure out whether or not you made the right decision. But I think that comes with time.

Jen (35:06)
Yeah, absolutely. And when people get in tune with your podcast, what should they expect from an episode?

Kevin Palmieri (35:16)
You

Heart driven, but no BS personal development. I don't like the trends. I don't like the fads. I don't like the stuff that goes viral. Most of that just doesn't work. Just doesn't. It might make you feel good, but it's not necessarily going to facilitate the change that you want to see in yourself. So for us, we are very big on the fundamentals. We don't talk about stuff that's flashy. It's not the most exciting content in the world, but I do believe I do in my heart of hearts believe

If you listen to our podcast every day, you will change because we're changing and we're talking about what we're going through and what clients are going through. And will you recognize the change day to day? Most likely not. No. But if you listen long enough, I'm convinced that you will, you will feel that change. And I think you use the very important word community. We're all looking for the place that we fit in. And we built this in many ways.

didn't understand this at the time, but because we didn't feel like we fit in. Well, one of the best things you can do if you don't feel like you fit in is build a place where you fit in, right? So that's another thing is you're gonna be surrounded by people who value getting to the next level and they value chasing their dreams and doing it in healthy way. And I think that's really important to add.

Jen (36:38)
have a question for you. What kind of advice would you think that you would be giving to someone who went through that right now moment that you went through when you decided, I'm jumping ship and I'm going in a new direction?

Kevin Palmieri (36:39)
Please.

I would say one, it's most likely gonna, and I don't mean this as a negative, it's most likely gonna take longer than you think. I would rather you be delusional in you thinking it's gonna take too long than delusional in thinking it's not gonna take very long. That would have served me for sure, that's one. Two, figure out what you're already really, really, really good at. Because you can get a pretty good head start if you have a unique skill set or you're really good at something.

you could probably put that skill to work pretty quickly and make meaningful progress. I don't think that's something that we really did as well as we could have probably. In fairness, I don't think I was that good at much to be very honest. My business partner was good at a of things, but that would be the second thing. And then the third thing would be just like anything else, I would sign a contract with yourself that you're going to commit for X amount of time.

I am going to try this for two years. And if it doesn't work at the end of the two years and I can look myself in the mirror and say, I really gave it my best shot, then I can be okay with moving on. I just think we quit too soon. We just, we quit too soon. I'm convinced it's one of three things. It's misaligned time perspective. So you think it's gonna happen faster than it's going to. Misaligned expectations. You just don't know.

really what to expect from the journey or misaligned approach. The way you're approaching quote unquote success is just not going to work for you. Just that's not the right approach. If you stay in it long enough, you kind of figure out what doesn't work and what does. So I think if you were to sign a contract with yourself, say I'm going to give this a shot for two years and see what happens, at least you know how much time you have to figure it out.

Jen (38:45)
And I think purpose is so valuable. Knowing your purpose, knowing what you want to do in this world, how you want to make a difference in this world. Did you realize it was your purpose straight away or was it ⁓ a little while into it when you realized, hey, this is what I want to do. This is the purpose I have in life.

Kevin Palmieri (39:08)
I think I found it pretty early on. So I didn't really, I never intended on starting a podcast. That was never a thing. I never planned on it. Alan, my business partner, interviewed me on his YouTube channel before I ever had one. We talked for like an hour and a half about fitness and mindset and discipline. And I, at the end, I said, imagine if you could do that for a living. And my buddy who was with us said, well, there's people out there that do. And then I was off to the rate, I had the equipment that week. I was

I was ready to roll. This is so this is my thought. My purpose is not to be a podcaster. My purpose is to use my voice in whatever form that is to help raise people's awareness so they can avoid some of the mistakes that I could. The podcast is the vehicle. I've always loved helping people. I've always wanted to support people. I've always loved coaching people. I've always loved being there for people. I just never knew how to do it sustainably.

So I think it was a connection of, want to inspire people and I want to motivate people and I want to help people transform. How am I, how would one do such a thing? podcasting, interesting. How would one do such a thing sustainably? Well, I'm going to leave my job and try to figure that out. And then cool, we're, off to the races. I do know that when I started, I felt fulfillment. And that to me was a sign of, okay,

this is something I don't know if I've ever felt this before and it's bigger than me and it's not about me and that's there's something to this so I do think fulfillment is a really good suggestion of direction towards purpose I don't I just don't know if I understood until I really started it that this is like this is the thing for

Jen (40:57)
I like that she said purpose and vehicle because it's true. We can have this purpose in our life and have no idea how to go about that. And that's where we get caught up and feel very unfulfilled.

Kevin Palmieri (41:11)
Yeah, I would argue that that's where most of us end up getting stuck. If we sit down and we really think, I would like to help this type of person avoid this type of pain in this type of way, that's probably an outline of some level of your purpose. And then when it gets scary is when we say, but I could never, I mean, how would I do that? I could never leave my job and do that, or I could never make a living doing that, or I could never impact people like I want doing that. I don't think it's a purpose problem. I think it's a vehicle problem.

And that's why when a vehicle becomes notable, everybody jumps to that vehicle. That's one of the reasons podcasts have grown as fast as they have is because everybody's like, that's the vehicle. That is the vehicle. No, not necessarily. It's the new vehicle. It doesn't mean it's the right vehicle. But it's a good suggestion that there's people out there that have their idea of their purpose. They're just waiting for the vehicle to present itself. And sometimes it doesn't.

Jen (42:00)
Very true.

Kevin Palmieri (42:09)
it doesn't ⁓ present itself. In my case, it kind of did. Maybe I got lucky in that, but yeah, I do. think it's, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. What is my purpose? What is my purpose? Who do you want to help? How do you want to help them? Why do you want to help them? What do you want them to avoid by helping them? And where does that come from for you? Answer those questions. You'll be closer to your purpose probably than you think. The question is, well, how do you deliver that to the world in a sustainable manner?

Jen (42:39)
And I think getting that equation in line and looking at the end product, you said earlier that you have to give it time. think a lot of people are like, this is my purpose. This is the way I'm going to do it. Damn it. It hasn't happened in this month.

Kevin Palmieri (42:59)
Yeah, and understandable, right? When our desires turn into our expectations, we are in trouble. The desire is it's gonna happen quick, so that becomes the expectation. If there was no internet, again, it's hard to imagine, because you can listen to this because of the internet, but our expectations would be drastically different. You would assume it's gonna be the worst. Like, I'm gonna have to go door to door to sell this, and people are gonna say no to me all day.

I think with opportunity comes an adjustment in expectations, right or wrong. I think it's sexy to say that it happened quickly, but it's just rare statistically. It just doesn't really work that way. But those are the stories we love to highlight. It's like, you don't wanna model me. You don't wanna model the person that took me thousand episodes before I was quote unquote successful. That's not necessarily who you wanna model.

you want to model the person who did their third episode and it just popped off. Like that's, that's what I want. But I do, have appreciation and I have respect for the people that grind it out because it's not even about what happens as fortune cookies. This sounds it's about who you must become in the process of trying to make it happen. That's a

That's a really big thing that I never knew and I thought it was stupid and I thought it sounded dumb. But I tell podcasters this all the time. I could give you the keys to the kingdom. You can have my seat. can have, you can do it all. It's yours. Most of you would not want it because you're not ready yet. I just, you're just not ready yet. Just like I'm not ready for you to give me a five year old. I didn't have from the time they were born until they were five. I don't know what I'm doing here. This is, this is beyond my pay grade.

I just think there's something to be said for what the journey creates that is unsexy and oftentimes invisible, but it's a requirement. is a requirement. There's a reason, I don't know the percentage, but there's a percentage of people who win the lottery who end up broker than they were before they won. You can be given a million dollars, but if you don't understand the fundamentals of how to create a million dollars, it's not a guarantee that you keep it.

Jen (45:18)
Yeah. And I also like to tell people if it's your purpose, if it's your true purpose, you won't give up. Right?

Kevin Palmieri (45:26)
fair.

Yeah. Well, you can't imagine life without it. Right?

Jen (45:30)
Yeah, I

honestly can't imagine life without Moody. And it's getting, as I'm getting closer and closer to 50 episodes, you everyone's like, 50's the mark. I'm like, I can't imagine not doing this, not interviewing people with amazing stories and stories that they want to share to help others feel less alone.

Kevin Palmieri (45:54)
your purpose eventually becomes a part of your identity. That's that's why it's so powerful. And I'll get the question all the time. Well, imagine a world where I took away the podcast. Then what would you do? I'd start another podcast. Well, if podcasts didn't exist, I don't know, I'd be a poet or something. I'd find a way I'd find a way to do this. I don't know what I would do, but I can't imagine doing it. I don't want to do anything else. I don't. You could give me 100 million dollars right now, and I don't think anything would change. Would I buy some stuff? Yes.

But I wouldn't stop this. I love this. Life would be much more empty without this. And I think there's something to that. And to your point, it has to be more than about the money. I didn't start this to make money. I would have just stayed at my job. There's a lot better ways to make money than being a podcaster. I assure you. I assure you. Look at the stats. But I don't know if there's anything that would be nearly as fulfilling.

than to be on this journey. it's a weird thing. The whole thing is weird.

Jen (46:58)
Yes, I agree.

So Kevin, tell us where can we find you?

Kevin Palmieri (47:05)
The podcast is called Next Level University. It's on all the podcast platforms. It's on YouTube. it's easy to find. My handle on Instagram where I am the most active is at Never Quit Kid. And if you're old school and you like emails, my email is kevin at nextleveluniverse.com. Happy to answer any questions you got. Anything I could do to be of value, I am more than happy. I do my own emails. So you'll be hearing from me if you reach out.

Jen (47:31)
and that will all be in the show notes. Thank you so much, Kevin, for coming on the show and sharing your light and sharing your purpose.

Kevin Palmieri (47:33)
Thank you so much, my friend.

Thank

you for having me. appreciate you facilitating the conversation and making me feel safe to go deep. You're welcome.

Jen (47:45)
Thank you.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (47:50)
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. This show is produced by Phoenix Freed LLC and I'm your producer, Jen Ginty. We hope you found today's conversation inspiring. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. This show is produced by Phoenix Freed LLC and I'm your producer, Jen Ginty. We hope you found today's conversation insightful and inspiring. If you have a story of your own about when a not yet moment became right now,

We encourage you to reach out and share it. You can find more information about being a guest on our show at whennotyetbecomesrightnow.com. Remember, you are not alone on your journey, whether it's a journey of healing, growth, or transformation. Every story matters. Thank you for listening, and we'll catch you next time with another inspiring episode.