Leadership Needs Empathy and a Backbone

Here we go. Hello everyone! Welcome to the first episode of 2026. Happy New Year to you! This is the first episode of Holding It Both Ways, a podcast for leaders looking at various leaders' leadership journeys. And today is no different. We have a fabulous guest. We had an amazing pre-call to talk about. Alan, welcome to the show.

First of all, thank you for having me. I consider it an honor and a responsibility to speak into anyone's life because we all know what we pay attention to, what we let into our ears and our eyes is kind of what dictates the direction of our future. So I do not hold that lightly. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, that's so beautiful. Could you tell the folks a little bit about you? We are going to get into your early journey, mid-journey, You know, your transformation. But I guess, how— what's your elevator pitch? How do you introduce yourself and let folks know who you are, what you're about?

Love it. So, I am the CEO and founder of a company called Next Level University. 11 years ago, I started a company where the tagline was, what you'll never learn in school but desperately need to know. I got in a tough car accident that we'll probably get into, and my birth father also died in a car when I was very young. So, for me, this was sort of the second chance my dad never got. I reevaluated my life. I was in corporate at that time, like you had a large corporate career as well.

Yeah.

And I started a little company called Alan Lazarus LLC, and I, I found personal development, self-improvement, and personal growth. And I couldn't understand as a straight-A student academic how we didn't learn any of that. So habits and goal setting and humility, courage, and vulnerability and character and leadership, like Where was that in our curriculum? And so I decided to try to fill that gap and bring personal development to the masses. And I often joke with my business partner, Kevin, we're trying to sell kale outside of a candy store. So it's not easy, but that's the short version right there.

Okay, that's brilliant. I love that. And I also love the fact that in our pre-call, obviously the audience wouldn't know it, but I mean, you were probably the most researched guest to come on. You knew so much about my business and background. It was very easy for us to quickly connect. And I love the fact that we both shared the same point of view as far as you need to have boots-on-the-ground experience to really understand when we talk about— when we're outside this idea of algorithms and quick wins.

Yeah.

In order to actually figure out how you get the change done to move it forward? In my case, specifically focusing on the skill of leadership. You, on developing leaders.

Yeah. So, I tend to be a little bit old school. And I think that— so, I'm 37 now. I look very young. So, I think that's challenging in my career. So, I got to make sure I dress professional, right? But ultimately, I'm very old school in my mentality like I was a techie. I built my first computer at 12. I grew up with technology. I went to one of the best tech schools in the world. It's called Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It's like a mini MIT in Massachusetts. So we were mining for Bitcoin in my dorm room in 2008. So tech is my world. I love it, right? I can, I understand a computer, how it works, but it's a supplement. It's not, it's not going to solve— there is no 4-hour work week. I, I think that A lot of the mentality that has kind of come up in the 21st century, I think is very detrimental. And I actually think the fundamentals of hard work and self-improvement and humility and tracking your numbers, like I don't, I'm not, so I run a 24-person team now, so I'm not just talking. I lead a global team. And I think that I learned the hard way how to lead and how not to lead, and through massive pain and failure. And I think that that's how you earn your stripes. And maybe that's a little old school because I see a lot of YouTube channels nowadays that are doing very well, and I think a lot of it is just garbage.

Yeah, I love that. Let's not delve into it too deep because I know there's a few areas that we'll touch over. Because they're not really the main point of your story. But your early days, right? As you talked about growing up in Massachusetts, they were pretty formative for you when we talked about it. Do you want to share what you're comfortable with in terms of how that began to kind of shape your understanding of authenticity, resilience, and self-leadership?

Yeah, 100%. So, I'm totally comfortable sharing this stuff now. Although, I didn't talk about it at all until basically my late 20s. So early days, the 3 things that shaped me most— obviously a lot of things shape us, but the 3 things that shaped me most were— was in 1991. I was born in 1988, so in 1991, my birth father, John Corkle, tragically died suddenly in a car. I had an older sister who was 6. I had a mom who was 31 at the time. She was a stay-at-home mom, and it was Very sudden, very tragic. I never got to know my dad. I had a stepfather named Steve Lazarus. So I changed my name from McCorkle to Lazarus around, I think, age 7.

Mm-hmm.

And so from 1992, basically to the early 2000s-ish, mid-2000s, uh, I had a stepfather and he left my family when, when I was 14. And so freshman year in high school was the hardest year of my life. I didn't realize this at the time. And it's often in hindsight that we realize.

Yeah.

But I dealt with a lot of emotional turmoil. So he left my family, took his entire extended family with him. Never seen or spoken to a single one of them since. I have spoken to him a little bit on Facebook Messenger in my late 20s, and then again in my early 30s, but I've never seen the man. At least not in person. My mom that same year gets in a fight with my Aunt Sandy. her sister, and we get kind of ostracized from her side of the family. And we don't really associate much with the McCorkles anymore because we were trying to be the Lazaruses. And my sister moved out that year with her older boyfriend. So it was just me and my mom in that house alone and sort of man of the house by 14. No generational wealth, no trust fund, no— things are looking grim. And my stepdad, when he left, he got the— so we did very well financially before that. He worked for a company called AGFA. They did hospital computers during the dot-com bubble in Massachusetts. So it was It was very lucrative. And when he left, he took 95% of the income with him. So I went from boats and ski trips to I get free lunch at school now because our income is so low, shopping at Salvation Army. Mom trades in her BMW for a little Honda Civic. We don't have cable. We're not going to starve, but how do we keep the house in the family? How am I going to go to college?

Yeah.

My dream was to go to WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 50 grand a year back then. So it was like, how am I gonna— even if I get in, I can't go, right? So I bootstrapped. 2 trauma responses I had. One was I became this sort of social coward chameleon guy who just fit in, fit in, fit in. Don't lose any more friends and family. Don't lose any more friends and family. Don't lose any more friends and family. None of that was conscious.

Okay.

But behind the scenes, it was fight. It was just drive. Aim higher, work harder, get smarter. Aim higher, work harder, get smarter. Straight A's through all of high school, graduated top of my class, not the very top, but near the top.

Mm-hmm.

And got into WPI, got all the scholarships and financial aid that I could. I was able to go computer engineer, bachelor's and then master's in business. And then it was off to the races in tech companies and corporate. And I peaked my corporate career around $200 grand in my mid-20s.

Wow.

And I didn't have— I wasn't married. I didn't have a house. I was used to being broke. So I just invested it all. I paid off $84,000 worth of debt in a single year, $150,000 in a Vanguard account. I just picked tech companies that I knew would win. And I say know in quotes because no one really knows, but I understood tech.

Yeah.

And tech was booming at that time in '20 after '08, like on. And then I got in my car accident. That's the third thing. 26, my fault. Head-on collision, 30 miles an hour, which is 60 combined.

Yeah.

The lift-kitted pickup truck went up and over my car. So everyone was okay because I was driving a 2004 Volkswagen Passat because I refused to buy a depreciating asset. So I was like, I'm just gonna buy $5,000 cash. And that car totally saved my life. I used to call it the tank. German-engineered steel trap of a car, super safe, totally saved my life. And no one was killed because it would have been my fault, which is great. So physically, we were okay. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, though, this is the second chance my dad never got.

Yeah.

Because he died in a car when he was 28. I'm 26 at the time, just questioning my existence. That's when I— that was 11 years ago. And that's when I found personal growth, personal development, self-improvement. And that's when I started Alan Lazarus LLC, which then became the Hyperconscious Podcast, which then became Next Level University. So Over the last 11 years, I've been trying really hard to kind of bridge the gap.

Yeah.

And I see the gap real quick here as you have professional development, which I think high school, college, the traditional path does well at, pretty well. Then you have personal development. I think they skip that completely. And then you have social development, which you kind of have to learn on your own. And I think in the 21st century, you have to be good at all 3 of those if you want to be successful both inside and out.

Right. Right now, I mean, your experience, we jumped a little bit over the engineer into entrepreneur. But I mean, I think you've really covered it. And then, of course, as you talk this very pivotal accident. So, I'm wondering, you've talked about this experience leading. But you've also grown virtual teams while you're doing it. So, it's not like everybody's under the roof. And I don't know about your experience. But I came from a background that if people weren't sitting in the desk in front of or outside the office of said manager or leader, they had no idea how to interact with this person. And yet, with my experience as a CIO, I mean, I am creating digital presence for workers. And that included my staff. And so, I didn't need them under thumb to know that they were working and productive and the whole bit. Have you found lessons that have come from that? I mean, you know, trust is one that must, must have been in there somewhere. And, you know, how about kind of maintaining, you know, the communication with everybody and building a culture in a virtual company is not an easy thing these days. Is that something that kind of relates to your experience that you could share with us?

Yeah, deeply. Absolutely.

Okay, great. Great.

So there's a lot there. Yeah. But I appreciate the question. And I also realized COVID— and when COVID happened, I knew this was going to happen regardless. Like, I've always been very future-oriented. So it's 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. Like, I always said my career wouldn't even start till I was 50.

Yeah.

Um, no one even knew who Steve Jobs was really, at least not the masses, until he was in his 50s. So at the end of the day, I just knew that I was playing the long game. And I do realize how weird that is now, by the way. Um, that said, skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is now, or not.

Absolutely right. Gretzky lived and died by that phrase.

You know it exactly. And, and so I always saw the future I was big into sci-fi, like AI. Everyone's like, oh my God. And it's like, listen, I— self-driving cars is a good example. I've been waiting for this for so long.

Yeah.

Right? This is, this is not new at all, actually. You know, it seems new, but, um, there's the whole law of diffusion of innovation, which the early adopters and then that whole thing. So you know what I'm talking about. At the end of the day, how do you create a culture of peak performance when you're not— I, I have a 24-person team. I think it's 25 as of yesterday. We're, we're, we're We're right on the cusp of hiring someone named Dale.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. Very excited. And you learn over time that core values are everything. They can't just be words. They have to be things you actually live by. This is the best lesson I've ever gotten.

Got it.

People say words can lie, but actions don't. That's not true. Actions in front of you can lie too.

Okay.

I realized that people will appear very hardworking when they're on Zoom with me. And then when they're not on Zoom with me, they're not that hardworking.

Yeah.

And that has been really alarming. And one of the things that saved my life, I think the CEO needs to be good at 3 things. The first one is leading, leading people. You have to understand what motivates them. You have to understand where their challenge-skill sweet spot is. You have to understand how to get the person to do meaningful work that the company needs, that also is revenue generating. So, that's number one, lead people.

Okay.

That's a week-long seminar in itself, but that's number one. Number 2 is designing systems. I have systems on systems on systems on systems that whether you call it SOPs or systems or a checklist, I have so many of them. And based on Pareto, like, what are the things that really matter? What are the things that don't? Yeah, constantly. Like, so I bought 3 dress shirts this week. I'm gonna make sure I get rid of 4. Donate. I'm gonna donate.

Okay.

You always try to get rid of more than you let in. Otherwise, your whole life becomes a twisted mess.

I know, I do the one for one.

My closet's too full. So I'm gonna have to move that.

I'm still, I'm still living out of barely more than a 50-pound suitcase worth clothing, so it's not a lot.

Okay, nice.

Yeah.

So you can't do my approach yet? Yeah, I definitely can. I think in 3 years I'll have an empty closet. I'm kidding. So that's number— so number 1 is lead people. Number 2 is design systems. And number 3, the most important.

Yeah.

The one that people miss alarmingly so. But I'm a math guy. Track metrics.

Yeah.

I can't even with this squishy stuff.

Yeah.

I, I remember when I was a kid, I was, you know, a Halo 2 player. I was 20th in the world and I was at bungie.net. I you need numbers. You need them.

Yeah.

You cannot run a successful company without metrics, and I always use the metaphor of what if Michael Phelps's coach was like, "Yeah, just jump in the pool, swim around." Like they were down to the millisecond, right? And and I feel like if companies did that, they would be so much better off. So those are the three gaps I see.

Yeah.

In the leaders that I coach, right? And usually. It's the third one. I mean, I have been so surprised at how good some of these people are at making money, but they have no idea where it's going. They don't know, like, I have a payroll spreadsheet where I see, make sure revenue increases more than cost, like the whole thing. So, right, as a numbers engineer, I think that that's the biggest gap.

That's brilliant. And, and again, I don't want, don't want you to have to deliver a whole session to people, but I mean, something you had touched on there is very much close to me because I talk about 24 KPI dashboards to my clients. I run the numbers on my own business every single month.

Yes.

I know exactly what's happening. I know what my growth looks like. And I know the effort I'm putting in, what it's actually netting out so that I can change it no more than 30 days. if it's not working so that I know I'm not wasting my time. But when you talk about building cultures, that example you gave of the performance where it looks good on Zoom but when they're not on Zoom, you don't. What can you give one tidbit of how you've been able to frame that or capture that to know that?

Yeah, 100%. So we have something that Steve Jobs used to do called DRI, directly responsible individual. So we have, I think it's 18 departments, 17 departments and a charity. And we have a DRI of each, meaning directly responsible individual. So there's accountability built in. And then each of those departments has its own metrics. And there's only 3. I always say 1 is too few, 5 is too many. That's my sort of motto.

Okay.

And so a good example is we have a book club we've been doing for 5 years. So Brandon is the directly responsible individual for book club.

Yeah.

And I run it. I'm like the host of it. But he's the person with— so we have a metrics meeting every other week.

Okay.

And in the metrics meeting, we update the top 3 metrics.

Yep.

And then we are green, yellow, or red, whether or not we're winning, coasting, or losing.

Okay.

And so there's— we— I try to simplify things as much as possible. But every every department and every individual has their top 3 priorities.

Yep.

And as long as we're tracking a metric underneath each of those, things tend to— behaviors follow systems and, and metrics.

Yes.

And so what you track gets traction. And I've designed a system where everyone's rowing in the same direction toward the same goals, and the goals at the top of the company trickle down.

Yeah.

And then there's the sort of direct reports that follow up. And so, yeah, but as long as— and here's the thing, I'm on every metrics meeting every other week for a half hour with every team member. So my calendar is jacked. It's every day, all day, Monday through Saturday, from 11 AM to 8 PM every—

yeah.

So one thing I will share.

Mm-hmm.

I actually— this is my opinion. I know a lot of people don't like this. Yeah, I always say if anyone outworks me as the CEO, like no one's gonna care more than me. So to me, I'm the tip of the arrow.

Okay.

And I'm not expecting anyone to work harder than me. I'm not expecting anyone to care about my business more than me. I'm not. So leading by example, I think is everything because people can sense when you're on a trip chilling.

Yeah.

Trying to kind of get them to work harder than you. I think that's crap. And I don't think it'll ever work either. So okay. I think one of the ways that the virtual culture actually works for, for me is I think that people see you leading by example in everything.

Yeah.

And I think that there's this sort of, as long as you have the right people, there's this sort of unconscious pressure.

Yeah.

To constantly better yourself and make sure that you're on point. And then you reward people for their efforts. in a way that's sort of public. And so we have a biweekly Zoom meeting called an NLU team huddle every other week. And that's when we go through each department and we have green, yellow, red under each. And then we do a most important win and most important improvement under each department every other week. So twice a month, which is 26 times a year. So the more you measure something, the more it improves. And there's obviously an optimal stopping problem there. You shouldn't necessarily measure it every 5 minutes, but definitely not every 5 years. Right.

Absolutely.

And so that's my runway and I call it a runway. Because if you have the runway set up right, and you actually execute against it, which is the discipline piece.

Yeah.

People do, they, they get in a rhythm, and then you get momentum. Right. And when you get momentum, at that point, it's just how do we not get too overwhelmed?

Yes.

And how do we not overspend and overextend?

Yeah, that's an absolutely beautiful representation of, you know, Covey's, you know, saying, you know, he talked about an I don't know that he's actually the one. I've read different pieces that suggest he didn't say it and others did. But he's always credited for saying that, what gets measured gets managed. What gets managed gets done. And that's exactly what I just heard you articulate so very clearly. And that's just a beautiful representation of that Covey logic.

Yeah, I think that was Peter Drucker.

Was it Drucker?

Yeah. Managing Oneself is a little, little tiny book Peter Drucker wrote way back. And I think Stephen Covey might've gotten it from Drucker, but at the end of the day, either way, principles are principles. For all we know, Drucker got it from someone else.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

There are no new antiques. Yeah. Now, despite what that YouTube channel wants to tell you.

I'm sorry. All right, we're good.

It's okay.

It's okay. I mean, here I was going to go into my serious question and you make me laugh again. Look, the podcast talks about the paradox between humanity and leadership. That idea of balancing authenticity, accountability, the self-awareness. I guess, what does that mean for you in the work that you do Um, do you see the paradox? To you, is there not a paradox? Is there something else? I, I would love to hear your thoughts about that.

I see paradox everywhere. Okay, everywhere. I, I— paradox was my favorite word in 2024. 2023, 2024. It's 2026. Yeah, 2024. So, uh, everything was paradox and duality for that year for me. Okay. There's also a book called The 8 Paradoxes of Leadership. I wish I could remember the author off the top of my head.

Okay.

But I picked up that book because I was thinking about it. I realized this, and bear with me on this one. I think work smart, not hard is dumb. But because I think it's dumb, it's probably smart for me. Okay, so let me unpack it.

Please.

People who say work smart, not hard are usually fairly lazy, in my opinion.

Okay.

And usually you don't work smart until after you beat your head against the wall for a while. Like, we all know, work hard, work hard, work hard, and then the pain gets great enough. And eventually you innovate.

Yes.

So work smart, not hard is a great saying on a bumper sticker or a fortune cookie. But in real life, usually it's massive pain and failure that creates innovation. That's why so many innovations happen during wartime. So it's a metaphor for inside a company.

Yeah.

But I realized that because I don't like that saying, That means it's actually probably good for me because I'm overly work hard.

Okay.

And so I'm the grind it out, you know, 70-hour weeks every week.

Right.

So work smart, not hard might actually be smart for me paradoxically because I don't like the same.

Yeah.

And so I think that's a good example of how I think everything is paradox. Work smart, not hard. You need both. Um, another one is, uh, you know, on one end, you're a dictator. On the other end, you're a coward. You have to be able to be warm and loving and call out the nonsense. Yeah, it's an and. The power of the and. Jim Collins talks about that a lot.

Yeah.

In his books, Good to Great and Great by Choice.

Right.

I think the and is everything. And I think that's one of the reasons a lot of us have trouble succeeding.

Mm-hmm.

And then when you study successful people, You realize that the other people around them are mitigating their weaknesses.

Okay.

And a lot of times they stumble upon that. So I called our 3 chief officers, me, Christina, and Kevin, at the top of the organization, I used to call us the 3 cowards. And I'm playful with it. But the reason why is because we just, we kind of let the team lead us and not us lead the team for a little while. And we started getting in trouble.

Okay.

And it was overly warm and loving. And it was, it was overly EQ. And eventually, it was like, wait a minute. What happened to us? Like, Kev, what happened to our, our ability to lead? And we need to like, we can't let them run the company. They— this person I'm referring to, I'll keep it anonymous, who I'm not a fan of at all.

Okay.

We've fired her. is like trying to run the company as if she's some savant.

Okay.

And we're letting her do that. We should— we need to stand our ground and say no. Like, truth be told, you actually wouldn't even be successful if you tried to build your own company. Because I think one of the hardest parts about starting a company is people have never done what you're doing. And a lot of people think the CEO is like not doing that much. It appears like we're not doing that much, but we're doing so much of the cognitive labor, so much of the responsibility, and some CEOs aren't, they are actually chilling. But I think that the lead by example piece needs to be there, because then you'll have the ground to actually call people out on their crap.

Yeah.

And the moment that you allow the team to start making long-term decisions, when the team, quite frankly, this member I'm thinking of specifically, has, has no vision, but acts like she does. Okay, she doesn't know what she doesn't know. And my intuition was saying, tell her that's not the way. And so for a little while there, I started losing my own company. And Kevin and I had to get together, business partners, and say, like, we need to— we're gonna go out of business. We need to get back to our core values. And like, we started to like fire people. And we, we limited departments down to only 8 of them, the ones that are actually profitable. The ones that we actually ran. And I think that there's the hunter-farmer metaphor here where the hunters bring in the business and then the farmers get entitled and they have never hunted, so they don't know how hard it is.

Mm-hmm.

And these entrepreneurs think they're entrepreneurs and then they start trying to make bigger decisions. So it's this weird thing where you have to be warm and loving and build trust, but you cannot ever lose your spine and your backbone. And that is a hell of a paradox right there, because I want to be kind and respectful and warm and loving, of course. And every now and then it's like, what? Like, listen, no. And, and that's not who we are. That's not what we're doing. And I know it's a fun idea, but this isn't for fun, right? Yeah.

Yeah. It's— I wonder if the, the analogy that was used in my corporate leadership days was that the CEO is like the captain of the ship. And they're saying, well, we're going over here. That's not a debate. It's not a discussion. It's no, we're going over there. The next group, the team, so your leadership team are, how do we get there?

Yeah, right.

And then, the people below with, you could have mid-level managers and so forth. Their job is to do the work to get you there.

Yeah, exactly.

And the whole idea that the CEO is holding everyone to account to pull their role because they're going, well, we're not making it to that destination. We're off track and we got to come back on track. And so, that was the leadership. And it wasn't that they did it without empathy. It was that very delicate blend of empathy but at the same time being very firm because that was their job, right? Was to plan the trip, to say, this is where we're going and this is why, right? That's the business outcome that we're desiring. And everybody else's job was to do what they needed to do to get it there. And there were clear lines of responsibility to do that. So yeah, hard—

hardest thing in the world is leadership. I, I'm convinced.

Yeah.

Most important, most valuable skill on planet Earth, but by far the most challenging.

Yeah.

The metaphor that I adore that I think would be of value here is you have the crew that rows the ship. It's— I think of it like a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid is the crew that rows the ship. You have the first mate that runs the crew. You have the captain that steers the ship. You have the Commodore below deck with the map and the compass. And then you have the commander that commands the whole And the CEO needs to be all 5 at all times.

Okay. Okay.

And I think that that's the hard part is if you stop rowing the ship, the team will start to think you're entitled and not listen to you and start to feel like you don't get them.

Right.

Because you get disconnected from the front line. And, but if you don't, if you lose sight of getting to where the puck's gonna be, You're in trouble as well. So, it's very challenging to be the best at all 5 of those positions simultaneously, obviously, in priority order starting from the top.

Yes. Yeah. Well, it's amazing. It's, as someone who you've already described yourself as being very focused in the whole bit, we started with an intent. We wanted to be very quick and on point with our call today. And we absolutely have. I think we're on record. So, I didn't want to do a wrap-up here unless I gave you an opportunity to really, you know, kind of talk about what guides you in what you're doing. Like, you've talked about the principles and so forth that are sustaining your work, you know, the way that you are sharing the knowledge, but because it's based upon work you've done yourself, it's wisdom. Right? Because you actually know it. It's not just a great theory that we'll share. It's actually something you've done. And I wonder, how do you communicate that to an audience to give them some hope that leaders can take away from this story and went, man, I saw Alan and he really made it very clear to understand This as a takeaway that I can really— I feel like I can implement that tomorrow. And obviously, if they need more, they can call you and connect, which we'll deal with as part of our closeout. But is there a message that you typically embody that for an audience of people wanting to be the best leaders they can, that they really need need this nugget that you can share with them, um, to take into their own story.

There's one thing that jumps off the page, uh, and as I say this, I'm looking at my desktop background. On every computer I own, it's the same background. It says, no deviation from the mean. I'll explain that concept in a second. And there's a compass with a— with maps, and the compass has on it What, what's my sort of true north. And I have this North Star around my neck as well that I wear.

Okay.

Oh my goodness, it's downstairs. Oh no. Uh, it's usually on my neck.

Okay.

That's the kind of day I've had so far.

Okay.

Um, but the, the true north behind me, yeah, it starts with one word in the center, and then it's, uh, 3 passions, and then there's an upside-down triangle with 3 vehicles. So I'm Alan Lazarus. I'll give you mine, but I want you thinking of you. I, Alan Lazarus, help people become more successful in health, wealth, and love through the vehicles of coaching, training, and podcasting. Because I have 10 out of 10 clarity, it gives me a level of confidence about saying no to a lot and focusing really deeply on my things.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that clarity is like the unsung hero of all success. Because most of us in the 21st century are running around like chickens with our head cut off. How do you— I was actually at a meetup 2 days ago on Tuesday. I'm looking at my calendar over here.

Yeah.

With a guy named Sean. He invited me to the CEO roundtable thing. And right in the middle of it, I did, I had a moment of, this is not for me. I'm not really a fan. This is not aligned with my core values. And I just left.

Okay.

The old me never would have. The old me would have sat there, tried to make it aligned. I didn't have the courage to just, just leave, just sail away. And so I think the nugget for everybody is 2 things. Number one, it's clarity is everything. If you are not clear on where you want to go and where you want the company to go, and you're a leader, you can't lead the way. So that's number one. Number 2 is you have to have undying self-belief. And this is the one that you actually can build. But it's mostly subconscious and unconscious. So I used to rub people the wrong way a lot because I seemed so arrogant. I think Good Will Hunting was kind of a good metaphor for my life. I do feel very— math and science came very easy to me. I got straight A's in high school, like, yeah, that kind of thing. But people thought I was arrogant. I realize now that some of that is because I was young and I knew a lot of theory but didn't have a lot of experience under my belt. I think some of it is that. I think also some of it in hindsight is the other people actually don't know how little they actually believe in themselves. I think a lot of it is I just have a lot of what's called self-efficacy.

Mm-hmm.

So self-efficacy in psychology means you believe in your own ability to create external outcomes. So you come off very delusional, and some people actually are delusional. As a matter of fact, a lot of people that act 10 out of 10 confident actually are delusional. So be careful.

Yeah.

But some people aren't. Some people actually have reverse engineered exactly how to do something, and they really do intend to do it with or without you. And that may come off very off-putting for, for you if you're insecure. But that's also what you want in a leader is someone who, who has confidence and humility, who has hard work and smart work, who has inner empathy and hardcoreness. And I, and I think that that's the nugget I would leave is you need to have more clarity than everyone else if you want to be the leader. You have to have more self-belief, which is also known as self-efficacy. And you can build that with state-proof self-assign. Like, I'm gonna do this, prove that you do it, and then self-assign it once you do it. And I think that when you do that enough, you do— as the leader, you have to be the most confident and the most humble. And that's a hell of a duality. You have to be the most hardworking and the most intelligent. And I think that— I don't mean intelligent in everything, I mean holistically. You have to see the whole forest and be in the trees. I think that's one of the things that I find really hard is people have a hard time believing that you're better at their job than they are. But the truth of the matter is, sometimes that's the case when you're the leader. And they don't really know what it's like to be you, but you do know what it's like to be them. And I think that can be really challenging.

Great takeaway. Great takeaway. If people are going, I need more of Alan, how do they connect with you? Where do they find you?

So, if this resonated, Next Level University podcast, the tagline is success and personal development content in your pocket from anywhere on the planet every single day, completely free. That's Next Level University. It's not Next Level Kevin. It's not Next Level Alan. It's Next Level You, pun intended. Yeah. If you did like this, and haven't turned it off yet, it's— you will love the podcast. It's 1% improvement in your pocket every single day. And we don't talk about anything other than success and personal development. We pick one meaningful idea each day. And I told you the magic is in the middle. So it's me, you, and the listener triangle.

Yeah.

And we contemplate and have a healthy debate about that idea and we talk about the paradox of it and the duality of it so that you walk away from every episode more motivated, more inspired, and most importantly, more intelligent, more educated. Because I think a lot of the YouTube content that does really well these days is very— it's candy. It feels really good and it gets you inspired and motivated, but it doesn't actually teach you anything. Whereas the boring books are actually more valuable, but they're too boring and unsexy for people. So We do have a boring show, I will warn you, but we make it. We have some funnies and we're very intense and we're very committed. And we both, you know, came from nothing, both no fathers, and had to kind of bootstrap our way to success. So, you know, we lead by example.

Brilliant. Thank you so much again, Alan, for being here. To our audience, thank you so much for being here with us. I hope that you absolutely enjoyed the conversation with Alan. This conversation was as good as the pre-conversation we had. So clearly, Alan is very consistent in having amazing conversations with. And I would absolutely encourage you to take a look at the Next Level University U because that's somewhere you can go to learn to grow. And Don't forget, if you love this and the other leaders that we've had, please feel free to subscribe and continue to follow along on your platform of choice. Thank you and have yourself a wonderful day and a healthy, happy, prosperous 2026.