Turning Passions into Profit: Building a Thriving Multi-Service Business with Kevin Palmieri

Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James, here in Wiltshire in England. And we're going over to sunny New Hampshire today to talk to Kevin Palmieri. Kevin, welcome to the show.

Jim, thank you so much for having me. You and I have had wonderful behind-the-scenes conversations, so hopefully they will translate to a wonderful conversation in front of the people today.

Oh, well, I'm sure they will. I mean, we— I think we won't carry on our conversation about cats and how much we love cats. But look, thanks for joining me on what's your 4th anniversary for your wedding, um, with your partner today. So thank you for taking the special time. Um, but it's really wonderful to hear from you about the special work you're doing with the Next Level University because you've got, you know, a world-leading podcast. You've got over 815,000 downloads for your podcast. You've got over 100 active clients, um, that you've managed to attract to your business. And what's really special about your business is you're doing lots of different things. You've got coaching, you've got software, you've got mentorship, you've got community. So, a little bit counterintuitive. So, you and I are going to talk about how you've been building that with a combination of scalable and unscalable marketing techniques. So, Kevin, first of all, tell us about Next Level University.

Yes. So, first of all, thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate it very, very much. Next Level University is a daily podcast. So, we do 7 episodes a week, every single day. We are in your pocket to help you get a little bit better from anywhere on the planet, completely free. But beneath that, we have a lot of different offerings. We have one-on-one coaching, group coaching, web services, podcast production. We do live events, retreats. And I think the interesting thing is it all is based off of one thing. We went all in on podcasting. We said we are going to try to be the best podcaster as we can possibly be. Because when you get really good at one thing, eventually you can kind of do anything you want. And I think we're starting to see some of the benefits of that. But one thing we did early, Jim, is we said, what were the biggest issues we had? And how do we solve them for ourselves? And then eventually down the line, we might be able to offer that to clients who need help solving those problems as well.

So Kevin, you've got a founder, Alan Lazarus. Sorry, Alan Lazarus. Is that how I pronounce his name correctly?

Lazarus. Yeah, Lazarus.

Lazarus. Okay, so he's the younger partner, it looks like, at 26, right? So amazing, uh, young entrepreneurs as well. Um, why did you take off with podcasting first as opposed to the coaching and, um, other, other service offerings?

Yeah, it's interesting because for me, this all started from a place of passion long before there was ever an idea of profit. I was Somebody who loved podcasting. I heard podcasts, I've listened to them. I had been interviewed on one before, and I said, wow, imagine if you could do that for a living. So the interesting thing, Jim, is a lot of the byproducts, aka the results that we have and the money we're making, most of those were just so we could continue doing what we love, which is the— that's the interesting part of it. I never planned on having a multi-six-figure business through a podcast. That was not why I started. I just wanted to have cool conversations with cool humans, much like yourself. So, transparently, I didn't reverse engineer a lot of this. It's a passion for me to be on this microphone. That's why I love doing it. And then eventually, it was like, look, I've left my job. I have to find a way to make a living. How do we do that? And that's when we really started learning.

Well, Kevin, I think that I'm with you. The joy of podcasts is you get to meet amazing people like yourself. And And hear how people are managing to align what they love doing with how they can earn a living, which let's face it, most of the world isn't doing. Now, you've bumped the trend a little bit because you've got, you know, the podcast, you've got speaking, you've got software, you've got courses, you've got other solutions. How have you managed to make it consistent as an experience for the customers? Because, you know, you're kind of going against the grain by offering many different things under one brand.

Yeah, that is a great question. While we're offering many different things, almost everything that is free is catered to our target audience who will consume our content. A lot of the stuff when you get beneath the paywall is actually catered to other people. So I'll put it this way. We have listeners and we have longers. Listeners will listen to us. They will learn from us. And they want to be around us and grow in the community and all that. Longers will have envy for what we've created and they will desire for us to help them create what we've created. And that's something I never understood that, but we have a couple different demographics. We have podcast listeners and community, and then we have business people who want to help us help them grow their business.

That's really interesting. That's in fact how you and I first connected because I was listening to your podcast and I was hearing some of your clients explain how you've transformed their businesses by making the podcast into something that's profitable. Can you just share with us maybe how you've managed that trick? How do you manage to go and make a podcast commercially viable? Because for many people, including myself, you know, we produce the show, we love doing it, But it's quite hard to transition into making that into something you can monetize.

Yeah, I think step number one is understanding what is your unique opportunity for monetization. So a show like you where you have really large guests on and you have really good connections, maybe a sponsorship ad route is probably, you know, maybe that's better for you. If you don't have a lot of time to do coaching or whatever it is. For most people, the biggest bottleneck and the reason they don't make any money is because they don't know their audience. And if you don't know your audience, it's really hard to create quality content. And if it's really hard to create quality content, it's really hard to create quality conversions. So the number one issue that I find is when I sit down with somebody and I say, tell me about your listener. And they say, ah, I don't know. That's the problem. If you don't know the end consumer, how do you create the starting product? You have no idea. That's part one. Then part two, you have to, and you and I talked about this, If you wanna find out who's listening to your show, you have to go find them. They're most likely not gonna come outta the woodwork. The vast percentage of people you don't, you're never gonna know about unless you go find them. When you find them, you start to have conversations with them. When you have conversations with them, they kind of tell you what they're struggling with, and then you figure, oh, interesting. Oh, we could do a course on this, or I could coach on this, or whatever it may be. So I think one, it's lack of audience understanding. And then that second point goes further into that. It's also lack of audience connection. If you connect to your audience, they will give you some really good tips and tricks on how they want to be helped.

And Kevin, so the audience for you and for Next Level University, you've mentioned that you've kind of got listeners and longers, which is a unique distinction. I haven't heard that before because most people will be trying to sell their listeners something, right? Right, either through affiliate programs, for example, or maybe yes, I've had sponsorship from a company called Prowly, for example, to get to my listeners. When you're working with the longers, are you saying that the longers are not listening to your show? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. So hypothetically, if you came to me and said, "Hey Kev, I need help growing my podcast," Next Level University isn't for you. You're not a you're not an emotionally driven human who's very early in the journey. You know a lot of the You know how to set up a morning routine, right? You're, you're really, really good there, but you might not know podcasting at the level that maybe I do, hypothetically. So yeah, we have found that a lot of our listeners, and here's the other interesting thing, a lot of our listeners eventually will start podcasts. So that connects back to the business as well in a weird way. So yeah, most of the people who are longers are people who see what we've built and they say to themselves, hmm, Interesting. I'd really like to build that for myself. I wonder how they did it. Our listeners see the results we have in life and they say, I'd really like to build that for myself. I wonder how they did it. So, we kind of have a unique balance of that going on. Yeah.

Yeah. And thank you for the compliments. Yes. For those people that don't know, I'm plainly not a young man struggling with morning routines. At my age, I'm sometimes struggling to get out of bed, but that's a different issue altogether. Kevin, so that's brilliant. And in terms of the technology that you use, switching gears just slightly because you've identified people want the lifestyle that you've built, the business you've built, and people that want to learn some of the life skills that you've got. How are you managing that from a, if you like, a platform perspective? Because do you need to have 2 sort of CRM databases? Do you then have to have 2 sets of messaging? Because that sounds like you have 2 quite different target audiences.

Yeah. So here's where we talk about the difference between trying to be uber scalable and not scalable at all. We do a lot of our CRM by hand, like very old school, because here's the thing. I'm not interested in creating a drip campaign on emails. I'm not interested in creating a nurture sequence. I'm not interested in that because I can just shoot somebody a message and the ROI on that's gonna be higher anyway. Right? I think one of the things we thought about early on is the stuff that is super scalable usually loses value quickly. The stuff that is not scalable at all actually gets more valuable as you go. So, if you think of whoever, if you're watching or listening, whoever your favorite actor, actress, musician is, If they sent you a message on Instagram, you would lose your mind. If they sent you a video and just said, hey, Jim, it's whoever, just want to reach out and say thanks so much for being a fan, you would lose your mind and you would never ever go anywhere else. So we're trying to have that. I mean, again, I'm not a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but we're trying to have that level of look. I think we've, we've kind of gone past, we're going to try to scale everything and we've lost a lot of personality with that. And I think personality is something that people are longing for. So A lot of our stuff is Google Sheets. A lot of it is lists. We're very old school in that.

Kevin, it's really interesting that this idea that even personalization at scale, which is this kind of mantra, right, almost by definition becomes depersonalization at scale because you can't possibly be intimate with everybody. And are you using some tools with video, for example, to communicate with people one-on-one and build those relationships? Because certainly when I listen to your podcast, I listen to the testimonials that you have from your clients, man. I mean, you couldn't buy that kind of response. I mean, you've got some diehard fans that are, that are talking about you. So how are you engaging those people? You, you've mentioned about, um, creating videos. Are you using some tools that you can share with us?

Uh, no, I use Instagram. And somebody, you know, say somebody in the community comments on my story, I'll literally send them a video. Hey, Jim, I hope you're doing well. How's the new house? How are the kids? That I, I just try to treat the community like family because I know nobody else is going to be able to do it. That's part one. We're, we're also very, very engaged in WhatsApp. So if, say, you come to a live event, we have a WhatsApp group. So we can be in there saying, hey, you know, everybody set an intention at the event. How's the intention going? Anything we can do to help? All right, cool. Then we have a group coaching WhatsApp and we have a, you know, we have a Facebook group WhatsApp. So we have a lot of groups where we can just pop in, send a video, send a picture, but it's all, yeah, it all takes somebody on the team to turn the key. None of it is set up where it's just automated because I think again, you lose that personality and you lose the customization there.

Kevin, interesting. So using WhatsApp, not Facebook groups?

We use Facebook as well. So Instagram, I'll send a lot, a lot of DMs and I post there. Facebook, I post on Facebook and we have a Facebook group. And then we've gotten rid of LinkedIn cuz our audience isn't really on LinkedIn. And then WhatsApp, those are our big 3 now.

Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You're the first person I met that's using WhatsApp as sort of a, a messaging platform at scale. Is that using that new communities, uh, yeah, element in there?

Yeah. And it's just different too because I think a lot like our audience is primarily emotionally driven, so they're not big into email. Email isn't their primary form of communication. So that's another thing we've tried to do really well. I don't want people to adopt our systems. I want our systems to fit their existing lifestyle.

Right.

And that's, that's been an interesting thing to learn. But yeah, somebody asked me the other day, they said, should I be on Facebook? And I said, is your community on Facebook? And they said, yeah, but I don't like it. Well, I would be there because if that's where your community is, it's not about you. It's about impact. It's about helping. It's not about you necessarily. At least that's my belief.

Yeah, very interesting. But also then you're touching on the fact that you've got 2 different audiences. You've got your clients that are probably the business owners or people that want to be a business owner and be living the kind of business life that you're living. And then you've got these people that are signing up for your community-based, um, and listening to your, to your show. What, out of interest, so that people know, Kevin, what sort of content are you sharing on this massively successful podcast?

We try to balance everything from, you know, morning routines to how to have a more fulfilled, aligned relationship with your partner, to how to be more consistent, build belief, understand self-worth. It's a holistic approach to level up your life, your love, your health, and your wealth. That's really what we're trying to aim for. I've had money and been miserable. I've been in relationships but been out of shape. At some point, I was like, hey, there's got to be a way for us to juggle all these things at the same time. So, that's what we're trying to deliver to the audience.

Kevin, I think that's really, really needed right now. More and more young people especially seem to be struggling. with a sense of direction. It's wonderful you're playing that role. In terms of community outreach, I think, you know, before we got chatting, you also mentioned that you're organizing a charity event, a community event. Can you just tell us about what role that plays in your sort of Next Level Universe brand and kind of involvement?

Way more than you might guess. So, Alan and I were both raised without fathers. I didn't know my dad. I didn't meet my dad until I was 27. Alan's father passed away in a car accident when he was, when he was 2. So Alan and I kind of partnered up in 2017. And we would spend every Father's Day together because everybody else was spending time with their fathers. And we were like, hey, do you want to go fishing? Do you want to podcast, whatever it is? Then in 2022, we said, you know what, we're gonna rent the YMCA out. And we're gonna have an event for children of single parents. And we're going to get food and we're going to get games and we're going to play with these kids and it's going to be the best. That turned into doing a Father's Day event and a holiday event. And now we're going to be doing that twice a year for the rest of time, hopefully. But that's what started this podcast. It was 2 young men who wanted positive male role models who realized at some level, honestly, that's probably— we're going to have to become our own role models. And now we can hopefully be role models to many young Children as well.

Kevin, that's an amazing, an amazing, you know, backstory. Thanks for sharing that. Of course. And applaud you both for doing that. Thank you. In Singapore, I used to run a Waifs and Strays Christmas lunch for all those entrepreneurs that were away from home and were feeling lonely, right? And that's so necessary these days that you're doing that. Wonderful.

Thank you.

Is there something that hasn't worked around the next level university. Um, you know, from a marketing perspective, I'm never trying to embarrass anybody, but you know, you're building out this business that's got multiple dimensions and you're doing some things that are a little bit unconventional, if you don't mind me saying. You've got the scalable and the unscalable living side by side. You've got your own proprietary platform as opposed to doing some sort of automated number on one of these big platforms. Kevin, anything that has if you like, kind of not work you've had to revisit?

Yeah, one of the things we struggled with was just the mentorship aspect of things where we've had some very successful mentors, but none of them did what we're trying to do in the way we're trying to do it. So the goal dictates the guide. And I don't think we really understood that. We understood, or we thought we understood, somebody's financially successful, they can help us. They can help you with finance, they can't necessarily help you get in shape, have a wonderful relationship, and build a business at the same time. So that was just, that's kind of a side note cuz that's not marketing necessarily. The other thing we realized pretty quickly was you can take a video at an event and say, hey, we're doing this live event on this time and this place, and it just doesn't convert nearly as well as I expected. I thought people were gonna be like, oh my goodness, this is gonna be incredible. We're a self-improvement company. Self-improvement is just not super sexy, and I didn't really understand that for a long time. There's a lot of there's a lot of resistance and aversion to self-improvement because it's challenging; it's difficult. So the thing I've learned is marketing is really good for priming people's subconscious mind. It's really good for brand awareness. I've had to learn a lot more about sales and influence than I expected because most of our conversion comes from one-on-one conversations, not a Facebook post or, you know, an Instagram post. That's been big for us.

One-on-one conversation. So something that's not even scalable. So Kevin, from a, from a sort of an unnoticed entrepreneur perspective, you know, me sitting here in the UK, you're my mentor here on the mic. Tell me, what would be the one thing that you encourage me to do to get noticed? I mean, from a podcasting perspective, if I wanted to build this out, but also from a business point of view, uh, what would be your piece of advice to the unnoticed entrepreneur?

I think you have to kind of go, and maybe I'm biased, but I think you have to go against the current and say, stop trying to worry about getting seen by everybody. Go, go talk to the people who actually wanna see you. I think we've lost a little bit of sight of if 15 people like your Instagram post, that's half a classroom. Go message those 15 people and start conversations. And if each one of those 15 people tells one person, you just doubled. Awesome. And then just rinse and repeat that. I think that we've lost— some of us, not everybody, but I think many people struggle with the fact that that's not a valuable use of my time. It's, it's as valuable use of your time as your ability to connect, how important it will be in 5 or 10 years. It might seem like a waste of time now, and it might seem like you're losing money, but 5 or 10 years of that, you could have yourself a really, really connected business with a really good community.

Yeah.

And who knows what can happen? I mean, we're a good example of that.

Kevin, I love that. And I think, you know, implicit in that is the patience that one has to have, the patience to build the relationships. And that's the foundation of a solid business, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the last thing I would say is, just be careful who you're comparing to. Right? We're a, we're a podcast in terms of podcast businesses, we're 1% of 1% of 1% of 1%, probably. In terms of global businesses, we are terrible. But you have to hold that unique balance of we're crushing it at podcasting, but we're not a billion-dollar business. So there's a lot of room to grow there. We've grown a lot in podcasting. We're growing a lot in business, but we can't compare ourselves to the people who've been doing it for 20 years. We've been doing it for 6. So there's a lot of time to catch up to where those people are. based on our own unique modalities.

Yeah, Kevin Palmieri, co-founder and co-host of Next Level Universe. Gosh, I'm having trouble saying Next Level Universe today. Next Level University. If you want to find out more about you, where can they go?

I always just tell people, and again, this is just the way the business model works. I always tell people to go listen to the podcast. It's completely free. Just search Next Level University. It's on all the podcast platforms. We're on YouTube. And you'll learn very quickly, one, these are my type of people. Two, these aren't my type of people. No sweat either way. I think it's just the best way to get to know us at a deeper level.

Kevin, well, I've enjoyed getting to know you and definitely my kind of people because I love how genuine you are and I love it on the podcast, how much value you're sharing in such a generous way. So, thank you for coming on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show with me today.

It was my pleasure, Jim. Genuinely, I appreciate you. You're a kind soul and grateful to share this time with you.

Well, and thank your wife for letting us have some of your time today.

I will.

Great. Look, and she's a lucky lady.

Thank you.

And for anyone that would like to get a hold of Kevin, we of course will put his details in the show notes as always, and inspirational in terms of what he's building as a podcast and also what he's doing as a business, but also as a man. And I really respect how he's approaching his life in such a genuine and sincere way. That's really amazing. And From me here in the UK, I hope you've enjoyed this show. Do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thanks for listening.

Nice.