Episode #627 - Building Belief And Self-Worth with Kevin Palmieri, Founder and Co-Host at Next Le...

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. Now, as you go through your day, how's your day stack up? Now for someone doing what you do, how does your day, what's your typical day look like?

Ideally, alarm clock goes off at 4 or 4:30, I get up, I go to the gym, come home, shower, then I'm in the office. I'm in the office from 6, 7 to 7 at night. It's usually like it's either a coaching call me on a podcast or recording our own podcast. And my public facing time is from 10:00am until 6:00pm that's like, that's when I'm here doing this.

Does your coaching work where you make yourself available and they call you when they're, you know, stuck or wanting to check in or do you have specific times where they check in with you and they give you a rundown of certain things? How do you do it?

Specific times, usually bi weekly. So usually I'll jump on the phone or jump on zoom every other week at the same time on the same day with the same client. That's usually how it runs because then it's, if I don't do that, it's very hard to book podcasts, it's very hard to book new clients, it's very hard to figure out what's going to happen. So same time every other week with most of my clients, that's the way it works.

Yeah. And so you go through your day talking to people one way or the other. Like we were, we were talking on our business call Monday. It's like every business most businesses come down to, you're doing meetings. Even if you're a doctor, you know, you got a meeting in the office, you know, a five minute meeting, you might have 40 or 50 of those a day. But then maybe you're in the hospital having meetings in the hospital room from room to room to room and, but you know, surgery, you know, surgery, they're in surgery having a surgery meeting. But everything kind of comes down to meetings. We were talking about, even if you're a waitress, you know, in the restaurant, you've got like 10 meetings with 10 families or groups that you're going to deal with today in your business. So you, you stack your, you gotta be organized or you're not gonna be able to cram those things in. But also it's Hard to. If you don't get organized, you don't set it up a schedule, you can never find anybody.

Well, I think the. The interesting thing for me is like, I don't expect. And maybe this is the opposite of many other people I don't expect to get much done from the hours of 10 to 6, because I'm not gonna be able to do paperwork. I'm not going to be able to be in spreadsheets. So for me, it's like that silence in the morning. If I can get 2 hours by myself, I can crank out my 28 habits or whatever it is, and then I could just, for the rest of the day, put my phone away and just do this. I'm not thinking about client stuff. I'm not thinking about, you know, that. So for me, when my days go off the rails, it's when I sleep in. And I don't do the system the way I should because then I'm way more reactive. If I can be proactive, showing up for 10 of these is actually, I don't want to say easy, but it's easier than juggling stuff behind the scenes.

How early in your business career did. How long was it before you had people to manage a crew to keep up with? How long did you work for yourself before you moved up and you. Now you're. You're running a crew?

Probably like two and a half, three years.

Okay. So you move, you learn the fundamentals. You got a solid base of fundamentals. You must have done well because of a. They eyeballed you for, you know, to move up. So you must have mastered those fundamentals. And, you know, you were, you were a role model at doing that job. So now when you went in and you ran your crew, that gave you the springboard and the. I always ask people. I don't always ask. I don't always do anything. I always, I always follow the bouncy ball of where my curiosity takes me. But the thing is, do you, you know, a big key is where you, you. You get out on your own, because we all started. I don't know if I'm going to do anything. I got to prove myself. And how do you do this? And you develop a marketable skill of some kind, and then you get good at it. You know, you're asking a lot of questions, then you get good at it, and then you. You see where that takes you, but. But where you go out and now you're working with other people. Do you remember the lessons you learned.

There at my old Company.

Yeah. Because that's kind of the foundation, whether you know it or not. Let me just tell you this. Well, you know it or not, that's the foundation of what you're, that's, that's, that's in your, your, your gray matter up here.

Yeah.

You know, you have to have rev. You know, it's like value is. I was talking to my assistant earlier. It's like people give you a number, but it was once that number referred to, it would compare to, you know, it's just like you give me a million rubles, you know, what is that? Oh, well, that's, you know, 40,000 pesos. Really? Well, what's 40,000 pesos? You know, tell me something in dollars. I know what dollars are. You know, so when you get out there and you start having success, you have, you know how to measure your progress. You know, how to measure if I got done today what I was supposed to get done today, and if I got three people on the crew now, I, I have a general idea of what we're supposed to be getting done and, you know, kind of governs you. And so that's kind of the foundation that whether you subconsciously you think about it or not, how you figured out problems early in life successfully is pretty much what your mind is going to go back to. Those synapses are connected in your mind. And so the problem solving, subconscious mind is going to go follow those same roadmaps. And when you had that early success, you started, you know, you learned some things and you, you had some successful ways of looking at your people, looking at the project, looking at time management. And how did you get those? Did they give you a tight schedule and did they micromanage you from the top or did they give you a lot of freedom to figure it out on your own?

It's interesting because we got some really specific KPIs and we got some really specific expectations and break even numbers. But then we were sent out on our own with a van, a credit card and floor plans and they said, all right, go do this. And then we'd have kind of check ins. One of the things I realized pretty quickly is if a lot of people talk about under promise and over deliver, I think that it should be promise and over deliver. Yeah, because when you say we promise then over deliver, it's way more valuable than saying, hey, this is probably going to suck and then it being good. That was something I learned pretty quickly at my company because one thing we did really well was we kind of broke the Mold on what you'd expect from people doing physical labor. I mean, how many times have you seen somebody doing physical labor and they leave a mess behind? And it's this whole thing. Our thing was we always leave it cleaner than we found it. That was huge. That separated us from. From other companies. That was one. And then the other thing, I learned pretty quickly that I have a tendency to. If something isn't getting done to the standard that I want, I go, just do it. And when it comes to leadership, that's not necessarily the best course of action. When it comes to scalability, that's definitely not the best course of action. So understanding that at times I also had the potential to micromanage letting that go and say, look, some people have to make mistakes on their own, just like I made mistakes on my own. And honestly, when's the best time to coach somebody right after they've made a mistake because they're ready to learn? So that was a big one for me too.

Yeah. And one of the best ways of handling that is not to go in with a bunch of, you know, commands or, you know, specific instructions, but questions.

Yes.

You know, you question them and get. See what they think about it, how they evaluate, let them solve, and they. There's a lot of conversation coming out now about child raising that it's smart to let the little toddlers figure things out on their own. Like when they. They fall down or they get, you know, into a situation, the tendency is for the tiger mom to run in and fix it and push things out and pave the way and make it easy for the kid. But not the smart thing for the kid. The smart thing is to let the kid be there and unless it's a crisis or something, see how the kid figures it out. And, you know, it's like when they figure things out at that age, there's a tremendous. It's the beginning of them having some self confidence. I can do things, you know, just like being able to put their shoe in some. The mud boots, you know, like that and navigate getting that foot down in there. You know, it's just like, hooray, you know, I did it. And the. I was in the restaurant. I spent half the year in Aspen. And I've got photography all in this breakfast lunch place right across the street from me in Aspen Square. It's called Poppycocks. So I eat breakfast in there quite a bit. And there was this family, and they had the table next and everybody's got jackets and everything because it's. It's been non stop blizzard in Colorado this year. And so they had all their jackets and this little two year old girl, you know, she's like this. But she, she gets down of course ahead of the, the others. They're ready to go out of the restaurant. I mean she's ready to go. They're trying to finish their coffee and chit chat and everything. She hops down, she's ready to go. So she put on her jacket. First arm went in great, but then the second arm, the, the she couldn't figure, you know, she couldn't get it in because she had put her arm in the wrong sleeve. And I thought I'm sitting over there watching this saying this is going to be entertaining to see how this goes, you know, because you figured the mom would come in and do this, that and the other. But no, they were oblivious. They were just talking over there and she's out there and she just like that, this little sucker. I was surprised she could stand on her own two feet. She was that small but she had that big heavy coat and she stuck.

It in like that.

It was like a split second and she goes and she whipped it around and got the right arm in and she was ready to go. But she had figured that out just like that. And there's a confidence that comes and by being able, letting people figure things out rather than being spoon fed everything, you know, let them get it all, you know, hold the spoon and get it all over their face, they're not going to be doing that next week, you know what I'm saying? And it's all right if for a few days they're getting it everywhere. And so as you were working with your people, the did you find you had a tendency to micromanage or to hands off?

Most of the time I think I wanted to micromanage but because it's like we only have 40 hours to get this job done. If you're making mistakes for five of those hours, that's a lot of time. But that's the interesting thing is we have to also understand that's an investment, that's time investment for faster results later, which I don't. I'm not a natural, I'm not natural when it comes to the long term thinking. I'm not a natural long term strategic thinker. I'm a natural short term operator. And it was very important for me to understand today matters. But today also matters for five years from today if you can figure out that that was always really challenging for me in the beginning to figure that.

Out and can, you know, thinking back to how you looked at things and what motivated you on the job, were you really motivated to get good at that thing and to improve and develop those skills or was just like, good enough?

Yeah, I think, unfortunately, as bad as it sounds, I think I was more of a good enough. I was never really mastery driven. I think I wanted to look good more than I wanted to be good, honestly. And I told a story recently on one of our episodes. I used to do a lot of Brazilian jiu jitsu. I wanted to fight professionally. That was one of the things I wanted to do. And I remember when we used to grapple and drill, I would only grab, I would only drill the side I was really good at, which obviously is not good long term because you're going to have some weaknesses. So that's something that I think I had a very fixed mindset with, with the way I looked and the way I performed and how I learned.

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