Ep 286 | What Type of Leader Are You? with Alan Lazaros

In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of leadership and personal growth with the one and only Alan Lazaros. As the CEO and CFO of Next Level University, Alan has an incredible story to share about how he turned his own personal tragedies and challenges into a mission to help others reach their full potential. From losing his father at a young age to a near-fatal car accident that sparked a major life shift, Alan's journey is both inspiring and insightful.

There are so many different types of leaders. Understanding who you are and how you work are critical to becoming the best leader. Take it to the next level by bringing in team members that can balance out your skill set. This is when you become a powerhouse leadership team!

What you'll learn:

→ Alan's background and how he found his passion for self-improvement
→ The importance of self-belief and self-worth in leadership
→ Strategies for building a culture of authenticity and belonging on your team
→ How to navigate the fears and doubts that can hold leaders back
→ Practical tips for taking personal responsibility and being your own hero

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[03:26] Leadership isn't always easy. Having honest conversations about what you need and who you care is so important. Without it you can't be the best version of yourself and make the most of your best skillsets. 
[13:18] Challenges are constant. Choosing to respond positively to adversity, rather than falling into depression or despair is important. You can't control what happens to you, only what you chose to do when adversity happens.
[19:40] Core values are so important. They help you know how to lead and communicate with your team. 
[31:54] As leaders, we all have fears. Different people have different fears so it's important to understand where you line up. Do you identify with the fear of not being enough vs. the fear of being too much?
[31:54] When we are true to ourselves we can fear that we are going to lose. Embrace your unique strengths and gifts, even if they make you “not normal” in the eyes of others.

Resources

Bronnie Ware's book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”

Full Transcript

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Being a leader is tough, and keeping people on board, keeping people excited, keeping people engaged, motivating them in the way that they need to be and want to be motivated. It's a lot, and there's so many different ways that we can talk through how we kind of work with our teams, build our teams, how we motivate ourselves, and so I'm really excited for this conversation with Alan Lazaros. It's a little different than I expected. I got a little business coaching of my own, but I think it's a really interesting way to kind of look at ourselves and look at our team, to kind of figure out how we can best continue to move forward and grow and be the best versions of ourselves. At age two, Alan's father passed away in a car accident at age 26 after getting into a nearly fatal car accident himself, he questioned everything he was doing in life. He questioned who he was, the choices he was making, and was at an all time low, filled with regret. He searched for answers and found two of the brightest lights he had ever seen. The first bright light was a book by Bronnie Ware entitled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, and the second was a TED Talk by Tony Robbins. Both of these resources helped him find his way and guided him to make the choices of going all in on self improvement and to design a life of meaning and purpose. On this self improvement journey, he learned to believe in a heart driven no BS, approach to inspiring, motivating and educating others on what really it takes to get to the next level. Today, he's proud to say it is his mission to help others design fulfilling lives, maximize their own unique potential and build aligned businesses they love on their own terms. He has a powerful combination of technical expertise and business acumen, specializing in peak performance, productivity, organizational design and individual team and business optimization. He leads a global team at NLU, and has given hundreds of trainings all over the world, and has happily completed 1000s of one on one coaching calls with clients. It would be his honor to help you with the next level of your life, love, health and wealth, and it's a really fun and interesting conversation. I think you're gonna like it. It's definitely surprised me in a great way. And I just think it's a great way to kind of round out 2024 as we jump into 2025 so hope you will enjoy this episode as much as I had fun with the conversation, but before we get into it, don't forget to make sure you download our December freebie. This is a guide to help you with 50 ways to think about self care in the workplace. How can you build a culture of self care with your team, with yourself in the little pockets of time that you have each day, so that you can stay motivated and efficient and effective, and kind of keep taking those steps back away from burnout. So you can grab this guide at thefirstclick.net/resources, I hope you'll check it out. I think it's a great one, and I really appreciate you just checking it out and all of the other resources that we have on the website, again, you can find it at thefirstclick.net/resources, let's get into the episode.

Intro
You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Hey friends, please join me in welcoming Alan Lazaros to the podcast. Alan, thanks for being here.

Alan Lazaros
Hello. Hey friends, that's a great start. Hey friends, it's a very friendly beginning. So thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I can. This is going to be awesome, and I'm grateful to be here. So I start with gratitude, and I end with gratitude, and everything in between will be an absolute mess.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
It's going to be beautiful mess. That's what we need. We're all a mess, right? There you go. Alan, I'm so excited for this conversation, because year end is such a stressful time for anybody, especially nonprofit leaders. So before we kind of jump into everything, they've heard your bio, but kind of tell us a little bit more about you, and kind of why you've you've built, the business that you've built, and kind of how you're energized, or how you kind of work through adversity and your story.

Alan Lazaros
Nice. Yeah. So I'll try to be as short as I can. I'm gonna be 36 in November. I used to make a joke and say, I I, even though I look 12 and I'm hoping to hit puberty at 36 I can't say that anymore now that I have this little beard thing going. So apparently I have hit puberty now. So that's good news. Congratulations. But no, I'm gonna be 36 Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. I've been waiting for decades. I still look very young, but it helps me my business coaching career, right? People love being coached by someone who looks 12, but ultimately I'm going to be 36 and so I'm going to try to condense 35 years, essentially, into a very, very, very short time here. But so now what I do and who I am, I think that's important. So. So I'm the CEO slash CFO of next level University. I told you that I'm an engineer, so that needs to be set up front, it turns out, because I think very differently and very weird, and everything's formulas and numbers and math and so bear with me on that, although I do think it's going to be a good thing. And then, in terms of where I am now, we have an 18 person team. The company is next level University. We are heard in over 175 countries now, and it's really a company that's built on the idea that if you want your life to improve, you have to improve yourself. And it's really about reaching your potential. And holistic self improvement is the core value. So health, wealth, life and love is what we say. Level up your health, wealth, life and love. So that's kind of the high level of what I am now. And I'm business coaching, as I mentioned, tongue in cheek earlier, is 26 people on my roster currently, all different industries, all different backgrounds, all different cultures, all different people. And the reason I'm saying that as well is is not to brag, but to provide context to what I do, so that the people know I'm not just talking and that's really what I'm doing. Mostly coaching at this point is my favorite thing in the world, and it's, it's goals, metrics, habits, skills and identity, those that's kind of what it is.

Alan Lazaros
As long as you're aligned and those things are aligned towards your goals, you should be successful given enough time and consistency. Okay, so that's kind of where I am now. Now taking you back to the beginning, I often, I never had the courage to share this before, but I started sharing this because I think it's important I kind of look like a silver Spooner, particularly if you're on video. I've got the awards in the background. I but it couldn't be farther from the truth, and I realized that people will not be open to what I have to say if I look like someone who was born on third base. And so for me, it was actually the opposite. So my my father passed away when I was two years old. Most of my childhood was tremendous adversity. There was some good things I need to be clear about that. There was some bright spots, but most of it was tremendously terrible, kind of atrocious, to be honest. So when I was two years old. Father passed away when he was 28 I was two. I had an older sister who was six, I think, in numbers. So it's all numbers for me. My mom was 31 my mom was a stay at home mom. And my real last name is actually McCorkle. So John McCorkle was my dad. It was Jim, Joe, John, Jane, Joan Jeanette. Big Irish Catholic family. He was one of six all j and i had a stepfather named Steve Lazarus, who came into the picture when I was three. He was around till I was 14. When I was 14, he left, took his entire extended family with him, as well as 90% of the income. So we went from sort of boats and ski trips and snowmobiles and lived on a big pond, small lake and all of that to.com bubble burst. He takes, he leaves type of thing. He gets the yacht and the apartment building. We get the house and the dog. Same year, Aunt Sandy and my mom getting a big fight, my aunt Sandy ostracizes us from her side of the family. Same year, my sister moves out, so I'm 14 freshmen in high school, going into high school, and kind of lost three families by this point because we didn't really associate with the mccorkles anymore, either we've since, you know, reconnected with them, of course. But ultimately, the whole beginning was pretty terrible.

Alan Lazaros
So my trauma response to that was two things. One was so fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawn is sort of appease and become this sort of social coward engineer who just didn't want to get abandoned anymore, so he just kind of chameleoned and fit into any friend group he could. Type of thing. Sort of Good Will Hunting is a good sort of analogy or metaphor for that. And the second piece trauma response was fight. I became this sort of super achiever. Just I aim higher, work harder, get smarter. Aim higher, work harder, get smarter. Aim. It was just the amount of drive is just, it turns out, in hindsight, as you get older, you realize that not everyone's this driven. So I was super driven. So straight A's through all of high school. Eighth in my class got all the science and math awards you can imagine, tons of scholarships and financial aid. And I didn't know how I was going to go to college once my stepdad left, because the school I wanted to go to, Worcester, Polytechnic Institute, WPI. It's kind of like a mini it not cheap. I wanted to be a computer engineer, not cheap. It was $50,000 a year. And this is back then. Whoa. And so I got all the scholarships, financial aid I could. I got what's called the President's Award. It's behind me, signed by George W Bush, where you get straight A's through all of high school without, you know, above a 95 or GPA. And so I was able to go got my computer engineering degree, master's in business. And at this point, this is post 2008 so it's like 2010 2011 2012 type of thing. The economy is kind of coming back. And I'm a computer engineer with an MBA, so and I'm used to being broke. So high school and college, I was broke. So I'm used to not needing much. I don't have kids. I'm living with my girlfriend named Courtney at the time, on a late. It's, it's 500 bucks for rent. I drive a 2004 Volkswagen Passat and I, and I'm making, I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125 and then 125 to I peaked at 180 in corporate. And that's, I mean, when you don't have kids or a mortgage or any expenses, I mean that it was just wild, is wild. Or in my early 20s, I became a 1% earner globally. Globally, people will technically, yeah, all right, so fast forward. I'll go quick with this. I know this is a long story. Fast forward, I end up getting in my own car accident.

Alan Lazaros
So I'm in my early 20s. I pay off 84 grand worth of debt in a single year. I've got $150,000 in a Vanguard account. I invested all my money because I thought wealth was the answer after my step dad left, sort of saved my family type of mentality thing, you know, no trust fund, no dad, no generational wealth. So like I'm in trouble if I don't build it right. And none of this was really conscious. This was kind of just unconscious trauma responses to all the adversity, because I didn't start doing therapy until my 30s, which has been tremendous. But then I'm 26 I'm in New Hampshire. My little cousin, the only person actually who ever really came back into my life from my mother's side. His name's Jeff. He has a son named Dan. My second cousin. Dan was in the car with me, but ultimately head on collision. My fault was supposed to yield, and didn't. I looked up from the GPS and I saw the biggest, brightest lights I'd ever seen, what I thought was a Mack truck. Two things saved my life. Number one, thank you, Volkswagen, the passa. I used to call it the tank. This is a German engineered steel trap of a car, and the whole front end was completely smashed in. This was not a fender bender. This was intense and but the frame stayed and the airbags deployed, so we were physically Okay, definitely rattled, but no permanent damage. The second thing that saved my life is it was a lift kitted pickup truck. It looked like a Mack truck, but it was just a lift kitted pickup truck. There's a lot of those up in New Hampshire. Those obnoxious lift kids. Look how big my truck is. But anyways, so my fault, and my dad died in a car when he was 28 so I'm 26 at the time. Wow. And this is the second chance he never got. So that was my quarter life existential crisis. You know, all the regrets you can imagine. Did I make the right choices? Am I in my purpose? What is my purpose? What is my and that's when I found self improvement. So before 26 I was externally successful and internally unfulfilled, without knowing it really because I was certainly more fulfilled than the people I was spending time with. However, in hindsight, it's very clear, then I flipped the script. I went all in on self improvement, personal growth, personal development, fitness coach, fitness competitor, fitness model, chasing my dreams, starting my own company, happy, healthy, productive, but I went broke, liquidated all my assets. I went past zero. Now I'm externally unsuccessful and deeply fulfilled, but I can't sustain it. And so then I, you know, finally reached where I think we all want to reach, which is being both externally successful and internally fulfilled, where the work we do is both meaningful and profitable. And that's really what I help people with now, and that's actually really hard to do. Took me 30 years to do that, and now it's just, how do I you know, it's the mountain that gets higher as you climb it, type of thing.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Yeah, that's an incredible story, and I think can align a lot with a lot of our nonprofit leaders, because inherently, if you choose to work in nonprofit, you're already doing what you kind of the pendulum swaying to the far side, right? Like I'm working in this space because I feel empowered and excited and this cause is important to being meaningful, right? So that part is always there, and also the fear of, Can I do this thing? Can I step into this space? Can I take this risk? I can't, because it's donor dollar, you know, like, so our minds are like playing all these things. And so I guess my question to you is, with that incredible story, you could have gone two ways with that car accident. You could have said, This is the second chance my dad never got, and holy cow, I'm gonna go into this deep pit of depression because he never got to do this. I lost my dad. What was me like you could have gone that way, or you could have gone the way that you did, and I'm sure you probably had mixtures of all of that while you were kind of sorting through it, but you could, you went instead to Okay, I'm gonna listen to what is happening to me, and I'm gonna trust this process that I need to go through and just take it kind of step by step. Like, what do you think it is about you that allowed you to go in that direction, versus kind of the woe is me, this is awful.

Alan Lazaros
That is the question I've been asking myself my entire adult life, because I grew up in an environment that there was very little fulfillment. There was no self improvement whatsoever. I am disappointed, particularly just the male role models and the lack of them. And again, I've had some good coaches and mentors in corporate and stuff, but I've been asking myself that question a long time because I. I playfully refer to where I grew up as the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. And now I'm going to be 36 and you reflect back and you see, oh, so in high school, everyone had these dreams and they had these aspirations, and maybe it was more talk than walk. And why, like, Why did I never stop? Why am I one of the only people, statistically speaking, that I grew up with that's still chasing their dreams that really is out here, actually building a company. When everyone talked about it, right? There's two things. One, they were talking about it because everyone's mirroring you, and I'm all goals and dreams. I'll always find a way to talk about goals and dreams always, even when I was a kid. And number two, and this is the one that I really figured out to answer your question, is self belief. In psychology, it's known as self efficacy, but I call it self belief. And self belief and self worth are really the two things that matter most. Self belief is external. I know I can build the castle. Self worth is I deserve to live here, and I'm gonna honor the castle, and I'm not gonna let my friends spill beer on the carpets. So I was high self belief, super low self worth. But here's the thing, the high self belief is external.

Alan Lazaros
So for me as an engineer, I need to make this as clear as possible. I when you know the recipe, you don't really question whether or not you can make the cake, and I can reverse engineer stuff really freaking easily. And that's always come naturally, and it's math and science. And as esoteric and arrogant and pretentious as that sounds, this is what I do for a living. People tell me their goal, and then I okay metrics. What are the metrics, habits, skills and identity that you need to achieve that goal? And then it's just a matter of time. And now it's just work ethic and grit, and I just happen to have a lot of those things so but the truth is, Why does someone choose to work harder, aim higher, get smarter, versus go into the bottle or escape? My escapes were video games, movies and and alcohol, unfortunately, biggest mistake of my life, alcohol. And I think for me, alcohol helped me fit in, because it turned off the engineering long term thinking, and it made me belong and fit in. So I think that was the abandonment piece. But for anyone out there who struggles with self doubt, number one, you can tell I kind of don't, so you're like, I don't know if I like this guy. Seriously, it is what it is. I never used to own that because I didn't know my business partner, Kevin. He said, Dude, that doesn't make any sense. That's never going to land for anyone else. Because I used to say these weird things, like, I've never once questioned whether or not I could do it. It's only whether or not I want to. And he'd be like, That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And I'd be like, I don't I mean, I'm not going to be I'm not going to beat LeBron James at basketball. But for the most part, there's very little that's not available to me if I really want it bad enough. But I'm not going to say, Hey, I'm going to build $100 million company and then go to the Bucha, right? So, so I'm the weirdo who's worked every day for the last 10 years, like without a single day off. Doesn't mean I work all day, every day, but I need to be clear about that. I'm not the statistical norm. And when you're not the statistical norm, you don't know that.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
You correct, because other people don't tell you. Only know what you know your own life experiences. Yeah.

Alan Lazaros
And then as you mature and get older, you realize, oh, so this is really freaking so no one studies Einstein for fun on the Thursday night. Got it Okay, so I used to have be too much of a coward to like sharing that. But the point that I'm making is I can't tell if I had high self belief because I was gifted, or if I had high self belief because I built it. And I think it's Yeah, because the truth is, some people aren't statistically on the high end of the bell curve. So for example, I went to school with a lot of geniuses. Some of them, I mean, all, most of them, are very wealthy, and they're all going to just win forever. Now, some of them are immature children, emotionally who still play Halo when their wife's cooking, but which I think is obnoxious. However, they're all going to be very successful in the economy, particularly the computers, right? So it's, it's my long answer to your simple question is, you've got to check in with self belief, because if you don't have high self belief, when things get bad, you'll shut down instead of getting and for me, it always drove me, like I had more adversity than I can articulate publicly on this show, because I don't want to incriminate anyone. However i Oh, it always, it always drives me. It still does. It still does. And I realize if I didn't have self belief, it wouldn't drive me. I would, it would, it would shut me down. And Kevin struggles with that, my business partner, and he's always found a way to to step up to the challenge. But he said, Without me, he wouldn't have, he would have shut down and give Well,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
this is a really important piece, too, and I'm glad that you kind of naturally led us there, because this is what was going through my head as you were talking is that as leaders, same like the way that we lead, the way that we process, the way that we work through busy times, right? Like, you know, you might be at a period in your organization where your goal for year end was 100 $1,000 and you're only at 50,000 and you're stressing, you're freaking out, right? And you also have to get ready for 2025,

Alan Lazaros
so and ready for,

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
right, all of the things, right? So you, or you might be in a space where you're like, holy cow, we're kicking butt. But like, how do we keep that momentum going? Like, either way, there's always, like, we need to keep, keep the bus moving, always. And so as leaders. We work in our own way based off of the work we've done for ourselves, what we've been taught, our past, mentors, our past, all of the things. So how can, like, how have you guys kind of worked through that as partners? But also, how can we take some of these things that we know to be true for ourselves, but also make sure that we are being true to our employees and our team so that we can get the best work out of everybody. Like, what's that communication style look like?

Alan Lazaros
Well, so it depends. If you have a Everything depends, right? The medicine that will cure one patient will kill another. So you got to take everything we say with a grain of salt, which is why I like coaching more than podcasting, although I'm super grateful to podcast as well, because it's just a wider net. However, to answer your question, it depends if you have a business partner or not. It depends what your chief executive team, whatever director. So for us, we do three chief officers. We call ourselves the three cowards. I basically have to be bad cop because one of us has, yeah, right. It's me, Christina and Kevin. So she is the backbone of the business operations. COO, he is Chief Sales Officer. People love him. He's just super relatable. People love Kevin, and he loves people. And I do too, but I'm an engineer. People don't like so and then me, I'm CFO, CEO, numbers, metrics, habits, discipline. So we run our company through that. And to answer the question, though, when it comes to leadership styles, I think that we all need to check in with lead one. Where are we not leading by example? Where are we expecting things from others that we're not doing that doesn't work if you're not leading by example, just shut up. I'm joking, but, but if you're not leading by example, no one will do it. Most leadership is unconscious, yeah, and what I mean by that is we admire people who lead by example, who take ownership, who take personal responsibility, who admit when they are sucking, who are vulnerable enough to explain when they do things wrong. Although vulnerability goes both ways, because we inflate, we deflate, or we omit. And that's the three ways we live, lie to ourselves and each other. And so for me, I actually deflate. So it's it was vulnerable to say I'm gifted, yeah, but if I don't, everyone listening already knows that. You can tell it's like, who gets straight A's in high school without trying after that much adversity, it turns out nobody, right? So it's like, if I don't share that upfront, everyone's gonna shut off to everything else I say, because they're gonna think, ooh, not like me. Kevin says that. He says, Every time you enter a room, everyone goes, not like me. And the truth is, I'm not. That's why I opened with engineer and the gifted thing, right? Because if you don't have those two and adversity strikes, you're not going to be able to Okay, I'll find a way. But I think and so you need to go get a COVID.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I think the point that you're making there is that we, we walk into a room with the team, even if you have a team you work with all the time, you don't necessarily know everything about them, nor should you, but you don't know kind of what those internal monologs are or how they're processing. So I think, like what you're saying is, like truly understanding this is my role in the organization. This is everybody else's role in the organization. This is how we're all working towards the big picture. This is a culture that we're creating, like communicating what the why with what we're doing, and then allowing people to be who they are and speak up and say, Okay, well, it would be really helpful if I got the information this way, or it would be really helpful if I could present things in this like, I think what you're saying is being vulnerable in the way that you guys communicate together, so that everybody gets what they need to help lift the whole company up.

Alan Lazaros
So being vulnerable is being in whatever the truth is, good, bad or ugly. And so some people deflate to belong, other people inflate to belong, and if you do that, you're not leading. So for the longest time, I would deflate to belong, but not actually lead, because it's what's unique about me, that's actually the leadership, right? How? And it doesn't mean you don't want to create a culture of belonging. The belonging comes from the core value, and that's core value, leadership is very important, because culture, what is culture? Right? Right? Right? Culture is set by the whoever the leaders of the organization are, but it's set by your actions. So, for example, our three core values at NLU is impact, so service driven over everything. Growth mindset. You have to have a growth mindset and want to improve. If you don't, you're never going to work here. And number three is humility, and that's by far the most important, it turns out. And I don't come off as super humble. I figured out why. Finally, because if you have level 10 self belief and only level eight humility, you're going to come off as level two. Arrogant. Got it. Everyone called me arrogant my whole life. Number one, maybe you don't believe in yourself, and I do. Number two, I definitely have more belief than I do humility. So I see you. Okay, that said in the organization, humility is key. But how do you tell when someone's not humble? Because people can fake it. People say words, you know, lie actions don't no, no actions. Lie to people can take actions around you that are not truthful. That's not who they really are behind the scenes. And that's the you need to catch someone reading that self improvement book when you when they think no one else is watching, because a lot of people, seriously, are out there just playing the game and pretending to be something you're not. All of us, to some extent, are doing that just from belonging, the core need of human beings. And so if you can create a company and a culture of authenticity where vulnerability encourages, at the core, the vulnerability and courage to be who you really are, and then to hire and fire based on that.

Alan Lazaros
So, for example, I we have 18 person team, but we went, you know, it was, it was four, and then three, and then it was seven, and then five, and then it was, you know, it's been brutal, absolutely. I mean, of all the things I've accomplished in my life, leadership is by far the hardest. It has been atrociously difficult now is that because I'm an engineer and no one gets me, and I have abandonment issues for my childhood, I'm sure some of it, but the other piece of it is leadership is just so freaking hard because there's so many different complementary skill sets, and it's very hard to figure out what the core values of your organization are and how to create that sort of culture. So here's what I've got. It boiled down to for me, but I want everyone thinking about themselves. So for me, this is what I've started finally saying, and it took me freaking eight years to figure this out. At NLU, if you are humble, have great work ethic, and you want to earn everything, and you're not entitled to anything, and you want to earn everything, you're going to love. NLU, we are just try hards. You're gonna love it. If you are entitled, ungrateful on any level, arrogant and you want massive rewards for minimal effort, you're gonna freaking hate Yeah, you're gonna hate me, and you're gonna hate NLU. So whether you're a community member or a listener or or on team, and we hire from within the community. You're gonna hate it here, because we're we're try hards who earn everything. We don't believe we deserve much by default, if anything, we all have low self worth. So it just won't fit. So anyone who comes in, you know, thinking They're awesome, they're so yeah with us, because we think we suck kind of compared to where we need to, yeah, and again, we don't think we suck intrinsically, but yeah, I mean, I need to go get better at everything, basically, so we're but if you don't figure out who you are and own it, you basically hire the wrong people, then they rip your freaking heart out. You don't know why, and you leave like crap. And then think you're a bad leader and think it's you or you think you're awesome, and no one tells you you're not because they're too afraid of you, because you're a dictator. So leadership is the hardest thing in the entire world, and it depends on your level of self belief and self worth. That really dictates sort of which leadership ship style you. Yeah, no, and

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I love that, because I think that's true about our customers, our donors, our audience, also in that at this time of year, we tend to, like, scrape the barrel for like, Hey, can we just like, let's just go after everybody and we're just gonna talk to everybody, and we're just gonna have our team say to our team, like, Okay, you just go talk to everybody and see who can give us $10 $100 whatever. Like, we just kind of, like, have this shotgun approach, um, spray, right? Whereas if we were more consistent in and comfortable with the nose then and the you're not the right fit for us, that actually sets us up long term for a much better situation, whether that's board member recruitment, whether that's, you know, hiring a new staff person, whether that's going after a donor, like being consistent, I think in the work that you're talking about actually sets you up to be less stressed out in the stressful periods, because you know exactly where to go, even it's not that it's gonna be easy all the time, but now you know exactly where to go because you've got the foundation in place. And it to say no or to say that's not the right fit, feels better because you're so rooted in this is who we are. This is what we do. This is why we do it. And then those people stick around a lot longer.

Alan Lazaros
They will always stick around if it's aligned with core values, if it's if it's not, they almost will never stick around, regardless of how hard you try to keep them. And it is really important to understand and uncover what your core values actually are. And I think it's uncover. Yeah, I think it's uncover. And, I mean, you can think about this with I always say this. I say Tesla should not sell energy drinks and Red Bull should not sell cars. We aren't everything for everyone, trust me, I did that after 14. And I tried to be everything for everyone, high school friends to the college parties, college friends to the corporate referral program. I was so afraid to lose people, because I was this esoteric, weird engineer who had to kind of be different in order to fit in. And I never really owned it, whereas if I just owned it and had the courage to love who I am, really who I am, and accept who I really am for the esoteric weirdo that I am, I think that people, the right people, would find me quicker, and I would identify the contrast more. And so I think what I did unconsciously was I inflated other people's value and deflated my own. Unconsciously, I wanted to believe everyone was better than they were. I wanted to believe I was so that I could belong and fit in. And again, some people are the opposite. Some people want to pretend they're better than they are, and other people are worse to make themselves feel better about how much they can suck. And the truth of the matter is, is that all of us have to figure out and accept who we really are. My business partner has this great freaking quote. Is the best, one of the best I've ever heard. He said, You were everyone's afraid. There's two types of people in the world, people in the world, people who are afraid and liars. We're just not all afraid of the same things. Okay? So you are either afraid that all of you is not enough, that is the majority statistically, or that all of you is too much, that one's me, holy crap. I'm dialing it down right now. Imagine this tempo. I'm dialing it way down. This I am way more driven than you think. Most people think I'm dialing this up and this is fake. No, no, this is me actually dialing it down. Just because you're faking your energy doesn't mean I am, plus I've got some cash. But the point is, the point is, is that when you when you think 50 years ahead, and your number one core value is legacy. And you happen to be this super driven person. You You are a leader, and that's great. However, you're not normal. There's a bell curve with everything.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
And I would say not normal is a good thing.

Alan Lazaros
I Yes, and I gotta be honest, harness it you when you learn to harness it. Yes. However, being not normal is very scary, yeah, because you're not in the majority. And when you're not normal, and I've coached a lot of them, you have social vulnerability, and people try to tear you down unconsciously, you ever, you ever play a board game with someone where they don't even care if they win? They just want to see you lose. That is a good metaphor for what it's like to be extraordinary and Oh, poor me. I'm so extraordinary. I'm not trying to play the victim here. What I'm saying is people who are out there that you you're not afraid of being too little. Some people are. They're afraid of not being good enough. They put on a show on social media. They pretend they're better. You obviously aren't in that bucket. Do you know how I know the back the glasses, the showing up? I know.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
I mean, I, you know, I did sort of get myself ready, but today was like I was sharing about this beforehand, that this morning was just a little bit bonkers with sick kids and stuff, but it's like, the show must go on. And for me, it's not about how I look showing up. It's more about like, what is the content, what's the conversation, and how can we support people and what they need to do? So 100% like, yeah, I have not unpacked my office. This has been my backdrop for so many episodes, but it just it's life.

Alan Lazaros
Do you know how so? So some people spend their whole life trying to hide that mess because they're afraid deep down, they're not enough. You're not that. Yeah, you're the other one. You're afraid that if you were to really dial up, you're too much for people, I can tell, so you're afraid of success more than you're afraid of failure, so you'll sabotage not to lose your peers again. I've done this a long time, 100% true, okay? And that's also why I feel free to view myself on the show, because I can sense you're not insecure about my greatness. Okay? So anytime I'm with someone who has the core wound of defective, which is not good enough. I can tell they're very insecure around me, and it makes me unsure about their insecurity. And when you're so the three main core wounds, and in the psychology you can study this, there's a lot more than that, but these are the three main ones. Is defective. Mean, I don't feel good enough, smart enough, capable enough, that's not yours. The other one is unlovable. It means who you really are is not worthy of love, and that's the one you and I share, I think. And again, Kevin's like people love when you tell them about sorry. Okay. And then the third one is unwanted, which is sort of a whole nother ball game that I'm still working on. But ultimately, you're afraid that all of you is not enough. That's not yours from my perspective. The second one is you're afraid that all of you is too much, like if you were to really dial it up and reach your potential, you would be a real pain in the butt to a lot of people, and you'd be a really big mirror, and you'd make a lot of people in Sakara, and you'd lose a lot of friends and family. And that ultimately is true. That's the problem you actually would Yeah. And so you'll stay in this little comfort zone between not not enough of a failure to not feel bad about myself, but not enough of. A success to get ostracized, and unfortunately, that's where I lived. Most of you know it's

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
really funny, and we do need to wrap this up, because I know you have somewhere else, another meeting, but it's funny that you say that, because when I got married to my husband, my dad said to him, Are you sure you want to do this? Because she's a lot like in a joking manner. But it's funny, yeah, you say that, and it'll be really interesting, because my brother is my podcast editor, so we'll have to see what he says as he listens to this episode and how he comes back. But I agree with you, and I think what I'm loving about this conversation is it's neither one is good, bad or otherwise. It's just, I think the point is learning who you are in those modes so that you can become the leader that you want to be, to excel and and, and take those parts of you and turn them into positives and turn them into your strengths, so that you can kind of learn how to better maneuver with your own, your own system. So I love that, and thank you for for calling me out on that. I appreciate that. And I'm working on my 2025, plans, and that is something that I am very much like in tune with right now is like, what does next year look like, and that I'm not gonna play small. So as you kind of leave us Alan, I would love for you to share how people can connect with you, the next level University podcast and all of the goodness. And also, if there's any kind of last words that you would love to kind of end the episode with,

Alan Lazaros
the first thing is, thank you so much, and thank you for this opportunity, but also just for being you and doing the work you do in the world. I don't mean this lightly. I think the whole world, in my opinion, I used to say I want self improvement to spread like COVID, and I realize that's not going to be good. Kev said, you can't say that. So what I say now as an engineer, is 248, 1632, 64, 128, I will COVID spread exponentially. That's why it was so scary. I want self improvement to spread exponentially. Kept said, Ah, much that'll land. Engineers have no idea what's gonna land. Straight up, we have no idea.

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
Neither do marketers, by the way, you have,

Alan Lazaros
yeah, but anyways, so, so I really appreciate what you're doing, because at the core, it's mindset and self improvement and helping make the world a better place. So thank you for that. As far as where people can find me, Next Level University is the name of the podcast and the brand and the business. Next level, universe.com. Spelled just like it sounds, is the URL. Everything's on there. We have a book club. We do monthly meetups every month for free. We got a bunch of different stuff on there, tons of different stuff. We do a group coaching program, all that. And ultimately, this is what I've been saying, which is, if you have humility, if you really have a sincere desire to improve yourself and improve your life. If you have work ethic and grit, and you're grateful for your gifts and you want to prove that by developing them, you're going to love NLU and you're going to love what we do. If you are entitled on any level, if you think you deserve things by default, if you don't have work ethic or humility, just don't even reach out. Please. Just leave us alone and let us do our thing. So, but most likely you're not listening anyway, because you wouldn't listen to a podcast like this, and you would have turned this off the moment you heard me. So that is what it is, okay. But as far as where to go from here, I ending notes. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it, and personal responsibility is, I think something that has helped tremendously with everyone I've coached and everyone I've worked with, is I know the world sometimes feels like it's against you. I know that we've all gone through tremendous adversity, some more than others, for sure, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for your own bigger, better, brighter future, and no one is going to come save you. And I think that you have to be your own hero. I think we all do. Yeah, I would

Sami Bedell-Mulhern
agree with that. Well, Alan, I could talk to you for hours. So thank you so much for giving your time and sharing your your story and your thoughts on the podcast. I really appreciate it, and you'll be able to find all the links and all the resources that Alan shared in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/286 thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Okay, so I wasn't really expecting to kind of go in and get coached by Alan, but he definitely has me thinking about a lot of different things in the way that I show up, and how I want to show up in 2025 how I really want to think about me in my role, how I'm supporting organizations, it's definitely got my brain spinning, and I hope that it does for you as well. Kind of getting out of our own ways and focusing on how we can be the best versions of ourselves, easier said than done, but leading by example and supporting our teams are really going to help them. You can find resources and additional information on Alan at thefirstclick.net/286 for now, this is our last episode of 2024 so thank you so much for spending another year with us. This is so much fun. We will be back in 2025 with the podcast every other week. So I'm excited for that. We've already got some great interviews that have been recorded, so we're ready to kick. Off the new year with you and still be side by side with you as we walk through online fundraising and strategies to help grow our impact in our organization. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, especially if you're watching us on YouTube, so you don't miss out on a single episode. We are on YouTube at Digital Marketing therapy, but thank you so much for being here. Happy Happy holidays, happy New Year. I'm thinking about you all as you finish out your year end giving campaigns, and as you take some rest and relaxation to recharge as we go into January. Thank you so much. I appreciate you, and I will see you in 2025.