Treat Your Podcast Like a Business | Kevin Palmieri

About the Episode 

 In this episode, I sat down with Kevin Palmary from Next Level University who’s done over 800 episodes of his show. Kevin shared his incredible journey from rock bottom to podcast success. Despite having the car, the body, the model girlfriend, and money in the bank at 25, Kevin was empty inside – depressed, anxious, and insecure. His wake-up call came when he found himself on the edge of a hotel bed in New Jersey, contemplating ending his life because he felt so stuck. Instead, he went ALL IN on his podcast, left his six-figure job, ran up $35,000 in credit cards, and completely transformed his life. Kevin dropped some serious truth bombs about why most podcasts fail, why treating your podcast like a business matters more than chasing download numbers, and how vulnerability creates the bridge that connects people. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast or growing the one you have, this episode is packed with insights you can’t miss.

 

About Kevin:

Host of Top 100 Global Podcast “Next Level University” – 700+ Episodes, Listeners In Over 100 Countries. Some people find rock bottom… I found out that rock bottom has a basement. In my mid 20’s… I had it all. A beautiful girlfriend, a high paying job, a sports car, my dream body… but I still ended up sitting on the edge of a bed debating suicide… several times. After my rock bottom moment, I went all in on self improvement, I was determined to overcome my anxiety, to overcome my depression. Years later, I host a podcast with hundreds of thousands of downloads in over a hundred countries, I’ve grown the podcast into a multi six-figure business and I’ve recorded over 700 episodes. I’ve given nearly 100 speeches and had the opportunity to do hundreds of coaching calls. The main thing that changed was ME. I focused on learning what I didn’t know (and unlearning a lot too) and my life started to shift. It’s my purpose to help other people get unstuck and get to the next level of their lives.

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Rick Jordan  

What’s shakin? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today we’re going all in I’m pumped today because I love, love interviewing other podcasters, because these usually have the most fire of any episodes that we do, because we just have these wonderful exchanges. And get ready for this. You’re going to want to share this episode out with at least three people. Least three people today. If you like podcasts, if you want to start a podcast, if you think you want to do anything with building a network or talking with other people, period, you’re going to want to share this out today because my guest has done over 800 episodes. That’s amazing in his podcast, Next Level University. Kevin Palmieri, welcome to the show.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Rick. Thank you so very much for having me. And if it’s any indication our conversation behind the scenes, I am very excited to chat today, and I’m sure it will be awesome.

 

Rick Jordan  

Dude, same here. Man, same here. 800 episodes. You know, when I was reading about you a couple days ago before our session today, man, I was like, Good lord, that’s amazing.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

There’s only one. It’s difficult to say the least we do. We do one a day. We do seven, seven a week, every single day, six solos, one guest. And I always like to say this, we didn’t start there. We started with one, just like everybody else. So don’t let that number make you think you can’t start everybody’s journey starts in a different place and ends in a different place. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s so cool, man. The only other show that I know that has so many episodes like that is entrepreneurs on fire with JLD has been on his show before, too, man. And it’s a just, it’s a good show. He’s a good dude, by the way, too, a good veteran, right, of our armed forces as well. But, man, I’m pumped, because you made me think about something you know now a days, we do two a week. It all in. And we started with one a week, way back when, too. And we just shifted over maybe about two years into it. You know, when did you make that shift? Because you started with one year, and how did you see that ramp up to the seven?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

So we started with, so I started this by myself. It started off as the hyper conscious podcast, because for most of my life, I was living unconsciously. And I said, What’s the opposite of that hyper conscious awesome? So I started doing one. Then when I partnered with my business partner, Allen, we went up to two in year two. Then we interviewed Evan Carmichael, and Evan Carmichael said, Hey, you guys aren’t doing enough. You have to do more. And he challenged us to do another episode. So I think we went up to three, then I think we might have gone from three to five and then five to seven. So it was kind of like year 1122, to three. Was probably year two, and then the last couple years. It just really, really grown a lot, for sure. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s so cool, man. I love it when those individuals come into our lives and we don’t even expect it, right? And they just challenge us to step it up. He’s like, I love what you’re doing, but you could do more.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, yeah. It was a nice kick in it was a nice kick in the butt, you know? And he mentored us for a while, which was wonderful. He’s a really good human being. We learned a lot from him, but it’s that challenge of somebody who is where you want to be, that maybe they see parts of themselves in you, and they can say, hey, look, I know where you were, I know what you’re doing. You got to ramp it up. And you can, you’re capable of ramping it up. And I think that’s an important thing, especially from somebody who wants to see you win. You know, they have your best interest at heart. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s so cool, man. I love that you mentioned something that how you said, you know, you started this way back when it was called the hyper conscious podcast, originally, and before that, you said, you I can’t remember how you phrased it, but it was like you were without consciousness almost for a long period of your life, you know. Because I know in your bio, you know, it says that you hit, hit rock bottom, you know. And this was around your mid 20s or so, but it was in the midst of having pretty much everything right, is when this happened. Tell me your story, dude.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah. So I grew up in a single parent household. I was raised by my mom and my grandmother, mom and memes, Mima, as I call her, and when all of my friends decided to go to college, I said, That’s not for me. At the time, I was training to fight professionally, and I’m not going to go to college. I don’t want the debt. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’ll figure it out. So I just job, hopped from job to job to job to job. And I got this really unique opportunity when I was 20, I think I was 24 at the time, or 23 where I went to this class for two weeks, and at the end of this class, you got hooked up with a job in the weatherization industry. So just think energy efficiency in state owned buildings. Yes. And we get to the final exit interview, and they said, You did great. We have a company for you. The only downside is there’s a lot of travel involved. And I said, not for me. I don’t want to do it. And they said, but you’re going to be making anywhere from 50 to $100 an hour. And I said, What are you talking about? There’s a 0% chance this is real. And you know, as a kid in his early 20s with no college degree, I’m in, I’m in. So my first job, I met my boss the week prior. I get into a car with him. We drive from Massachusetts to Delaware, we stay in this unbelievably nice, rented house, and I go do a job that I’ve never done before with. People I’ve never met, and that turned into me making a lot of money, which seemed like the answer to everything. And you know, I did that for a couple years. And my my rock bottom, I actually have a rock bottom and a rock bottom basement, but my rock bottom was when I was 25 I had the car, I had the body, I had the the model girlfriend, I had money in the bank. I had all the things that you could think you wanted, but I was super insecure. I was super unconfident, I was depressed, I was anxious. I just didn’t feel good about myself. And my girlfriend left me because I just wasn’t I wasn’t a bad person. I just didn’t have a lot to offer. I was just a shell of myself, and when she left me Rick, I had to look in the mirror, and I realized that I am not what I claim to be, and I am not what people think I am. I am just I am terrified of everything, even though I have tattoos, I’m a bodybuilder, I’m not what people think I am. And for me, that was my initial dive into self improvement. I started listening to Tony Robbins, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You know, all those things that people get into in the very beginning. And I remember that I would lay in bed and it was just quiet and lonely and this empty feeling. And I used to say positive affirmations before I went to bed. I said, I am handsome, I am talented, I am worthy, I am intelligent, and this year, I’ll make the most money I’ve ever made. Problem is I leaned into that last one more than the other four. And the next year, I got a promotion. I was the foreman of this company, and out of the 12 months I was on the road for 10. And when I say on the road, I mean I was home four days out of the week. I was only home Saturdays. Wow. And I loved it, though, because I was making a ton of money, and that that drove me. I loved that I would do anything. We were driving eight hours, working eight hours. I was going to the gym. It was, it was heavy, but I love the paychecks. And I remember standing at my kitchen table opening I didn’t have any chairs because my ex had taken them, and I never got any because I wasn’t home, so it didn’t matter. And I was opening my final pay stub, and I said, Did I do that? Did I make my six figures that I wanted to make no college degree? Did I do it? And I did, but nothing changed. It was the same, same thing. Of I did it again. I thought all this external success was going to bring me happiness, and that’s when I really decided that I wanted to go all in on the podcast. And it got harder and harder for me to go to work, because almost overnight, I stopped caring about the job. I stopped caring about the money. I was calling out. I was leaving work early. I was at one point, I was sleeping in my bed from 10pm until one in the morning, getting up and driving six hours to New Jersey, straight to the job. Wow. And just not sleeping. I was working out at all hours of the night, and the biggest shift in my life, I was sitting on the edge of a hotel bed, Rick in New Jersey. I was lacing up my work boots. Cold morning, winter, dark, just grungy hotel, and I’m lacing up my work boots. And the best way to explain it is, there’s 10 televisions on in my head at the same time, and every single one is on a different channel, and one is saying, you’re stuck here. Two is saying, How are you so miserable? Three is saying, what are your friends gonna think if you leave this job? What will your family think? And the loudest one is, do you really think you can be a successful podcaster? And in that moment, I genuinely felt like the best thing for me to do would be to end my life. Because if I ended my life, I took my problems with me. Luckily, I have a wonderful, supportive business partner. I messaged and he talked me off the ledge, so to speak. And three months later, I left my job and went full time into speaking, coaching and podcasting. And I would love to say that’s the you know, everything was easy and it just worked. Obviously it didn’t. There’s, there’s a lot that goes into that, but that was the pivotal, the pivotal point in my life where I went from old Kevin to new Kevin, and greatest thing, but also the most painful thing that’s ever happened.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, for sure, man, you’re really touching my heart with your story today, too. I appreciate that. And that transition period I’m thinking, you know, because it it’s difficult to I’m sure it was difficult from sitting on the edge of your bed in that moment and when you said, Hey, I’m going all in on on the show. That’s not like a cut and dry shift or pivot, is it? No, there’s probably some lingering stuff that that carried in. How did you deal with all that, too? Because when those feelings crop back up again on you. 

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah. So it was, it was very much I left. When I left my job, it was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It was this weird, surreal moment of, like, Wait, I don’t ever have to go do that again. Shortly, followed by, oh, God, what do I do now? Like, I don’t, I’m not gonna be able to pay the bills. What am I? What do I do here? Like, your identity for a while, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, it was, it was this weird, comforting, but also terrifying feeling. Now, the beautiful thing is, I had kind of set myself up for this. I moved in with my buddy. My rent went from $1,400 to 500 we were splitting cable, we were splitting electric, we was splitting everything. So. So I cut my bills by like a third or maybe a quarter, setting myself up for that. Honestly, I didn’t look back. Rick, it was, it was the best thing I ever did. There was very little part of me that said you made a mistake or regretted it or doubted it. Now, in fairness, my business partner is an amazing business person. MBA, very intelligent, one of the best technical schools in the world. So I’m grateful to be paired with that, and that’s an important part of the story. I can’t take credit for all this, but he, he’s been my mentor since the beginning. So I’ve always had somebody in my corner. And I think my my circle is very small, very tight, but very focused on growth. So that was almost me taking the training wheels off and saying, like, let’s do it. Let’s just see what happens here, and we’ll figure it out, or we’ll go broke and die trying. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome, man, you leaned into it hardcore. Obviously, you went all in. And that’s what this show is about. That’s the theme of my life. And you started it out as hyper conscious, right? And was that almost, I have this envision of you, you know, like to where you were coming from and everything. It’s like, watch what I’m going to do, and you’re just like, giving it the finger. I was unconscious there. But no, watch this, you know, here’s me going forward. Now that’s that’s so cool that you dove in it that way. How did it become, you know, because you were doing one episode a week, but how did it become next level university, you know? And then you had a coaching program around that, too. And all this started with a podcast, right?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, because the one thing I’ve coached a lot of podcasters, and we have a lot of clients, and the one thing I notice is the people who succeed at podcasting are the ones who treat it like a business, and the ones who don’t succeed are the ones who do it just for passion. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, but a business requires being built, and it requires leadership, and it requires monetization. And I think a lot of people, they have a very short vision of what they want their podcast to be where my goal is to have the most successful podcast in the self improvement space. So what will that take? That’s not gonna you know, I can’t do one episode a week. It’s not gonna work. And the other part of that, the deeper part, is, if you want to be the best at something, you have to master it more than anybody else. So I’m just convinced if I do more reps than anybody else, I’ll just be better, because I’ve just spent more time in front of the mic. And if I’m not relatively good at this point, I am in trouble. And I’ve invested a lot of time into something that’s not going to pay

 

Rick Jordan  

For reference from the body, but I saw some of your photos when I was researching it too, Man.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And that’s, but that’s, I mean, that’s taking something concrete, like fitness and bringing it into a 1% improvement over time, a 1% improvement over 850 episodes, that adds up. So I’ll say this Allen, and I realize that if we want to have the impact that we want to have, we have to monetize quicker than most other human beings. Took us a long time to monetize, too long, but now I don’t care nearly as much as the listens, or of the listens as I do about how much money we’re bringing in, because I realize that that money is now feeding the mission. So most podcasters, or many that I’ve seen only care the number that they are caring about more than anything is listens. I think that’s super important. I care more about how much money we’re making as a business, because the podcast is the top of the funnel for the business and the business and the coaching and the speaking and the group coaching and the services, that’s what actually drives revenue. And I think it’s an important thing that if you’re doing something and it’s not making money, it’s gonna be very hard for you to pour money back into that. It’s just not sustainable. It’s gonna burn out.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, for sure, man, that’s any business, or that’s even anything in life, right? Yeah, I even going to the gym, let’s say, you know, and I’ve noticed this, right? Because I work out at home, you know, and that’s how I’ve put the muscle mass on that I have. But I noticed that it was a, it was an issue for me to go to the gym. That was one of the barriers that I had, you know, so I don’t need to be around a group or anything like that. But I then invested in my own equipment at home, just like somebody would invest in a gym membership or something like that, you know, I’ve found out too that if you don’t have that investment into whatever you’re doing, just like you’re talking about right now, you will just do it and it will fail because there is no more money that’s invested back into it. It’s almost everything in our lives has to have some sort of investment in skin in the game in order to have it mean something.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, you need necessity. If there’s no necessity, there’s no reason. If there’s no reason, the first convenient excuse that comes along is going to be the the RA one. I’m in a lot of podcast groups, and somebody said this recently. And I don’t mean this to disparage this person, but it’s just the mindset of it. This person wrote and said, Hey, why should I pay for a podcast host when I can just host on YouTube for free? And it’s like, if you’re not willing to spend $9.99 to get your message out there? Yeah, either you don’t value your message, or you’re not sure of it, or, you know, you’re not as committed as you need to be in order to get the results that you probably want. And I think that’s just a lesson for life overall.

 

Rick Jordan  

For sure, it’s so interesting because, as we were talking, you know, a little before the show, it’s like the stuff for this show, for all in is on YouTube, everything’s there, but there’s no money that’s invested there whatsoever. So you look at it just up there, just to have video, you know, for clips, or whatever else. All of the dollars that have been reinvested back into this is into the audio platforms, which is 1000s of dollars, and that’s how it’s been able to fulfill its purpose and its reason. 

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yep. yeah, it’s a different mindset. I mean, you’re taking, you’re investing in the growth, where other people are just trying to say, like, I want to get, I want to get the most results with a bare minimum effort. Now I think you want to get the most results with the lowest viable amount of effort in terms of finances and productivity and efficiency. Yes, but you have to start somewhere. You have to start it at level one. And I think a lot of people are trying to sneak in under the bar, and it’s just not a sustainable thing. 

 

Rick Jordan  

For sure, man. So going back to when you started the show, one episode a week, you said, right, you quit your job. I understand. You reduce your expenses. How the heck were you paying the bills?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

I saved money luckily. I saved money luckily. And the other part of it, and this is, I love telling this, because I don’t think a lot of people are willing to. I also ran $35,000 up on credit cards. I lived off of my savings, and I lived off of credit cards for the next two years, and I went broke and I struggled, and that was it. That way, I didn’t do a lot of nice things that other people were doing, because I didn’t have the I didn’t have the money, I didn’t have the resources, but I focused on building myself, my character, my abilities. That’s that’s what I did. I used the 10k I had in the bank, and I used $35,000 worth of credit cards to survive for the next few years until we started getting clients.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s really cool. All your shows the top of the funnel too, and that goes into the coaching program after that. Is that?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

So we have like, oh God, we have so many things. It’s, yeah, it’s just free, free, free, free, free, free, and then it’s one on one, coaching group, coaching, it all depends on the person. Our thing is, we coach. I have podcast clients who are multi millionaires. I have podcast clients who also don’t really have a job other than the podcast, and they’re trying to figure it out. They’re early entrepreneurs. So our goal is to have a fit for anybody, wherever they are in life. Easier said than done, because that requires a lot of back end stuff. But yeah, it’s, it’s one on one group consulting. We have services different, different things. Yeah,

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s awesome for somebody that’s just starting out, because I keep using this phrase, and maybe I should come up with something different. But it was like, over the past two years, you know, with all the work from home stuff, it was like, everybody and their grandmother started a podcast, yeah, you know, I was going on before then, which was great. This was already gaining some momentum, but a lot, what’s the average number these days? One time was like seven episodes, right? That the average podcast lasts, or something like that.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

That’s between seven and 21 before pod fade kicks in. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s insane. Man. I was talking with a platform host, the owner of a host that’s out there, and he was saying that a lot of these pod faded shows are even available for purchase too, which is intriguing to me. You know, it’s because there’s so many of these shows out there that have some sort of subscribers, but they just died, you know? And what do you see as the reason for that? Because you’ve so many that start on these things, and I’m sure you see them when they’ve been going for a while, like the multi millionaires, some people that are just starting, what’s the biggest reason you see for the pod fade?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

It’s hard, and you don’t see any results. It’s like the gym. I started a diet three. I started a diet at the beginning of November, which is not good. Don’t do that, because there’s too many holidays in the holidays. Yeah, not a good not a good decision. But I track my weight, I track my calories, I graph it out, and the first 13 days, I didn’t lose any weight. I gained weight in peaks and valleys, and then it started to level out. Podcasting, you’re not going to see results for a long, long, long, long time. And what I find now, particularly is as the barrier of entry gets lower, for some reason the expectations of success go up. I don’t know why that is. Yeah, that’s what I’ve seen, is it’s easy. You all you need is a cell phone and a pair of headphones, and you can go right on Anchor F, anchor FM, start your own podcast. Super easy. You can do the editing on your phone.

 

Rick Jordan  

For your mom and your friends, right? Yeah, of course, right?

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Anybody. And I think it’s, it’s that, and it’s the fact that it was a wave. So clubhouse, everybody said, Kev, why aren’t you on clubhouse? It’s a wave. It’s a wave. I don’t, I don’t want to be on there. I’m a podcaster. I’m going to keep podcasting. I think that podcasting is somewhat of a new wave, where people jump. Bond. And when they realize this isn’t, this isn’t delivering me to where I want to go, they jump off. And I just think it’s, it’s just a flashy thing. You know, it’s the flashy thing that if you don’t have the passion for it, it’s very hard to continue, particularly if you’re not willing to do it for free. Because the vast majority, 99% of podcasts do not make a dog ever, Unfortunately.

 

Rick Jordan  

I see. Yeah, this is interesting too, and we could probably even have long conversations about this, because all in we don’t do sponsors, we don’t do promotions anything like that whatsoever. All of our growth has been organic. Every single bit of it has been just like yours, which is, I feel the way to go. For the most part, there’s no monetization, no direct monetization of the show. So it’s a passion that, like you’re saying, that is the reason that I do this, you know, to give other people exposure. But at the same time, there is a reason for it, because it contributes and bring credit, brings credibility to everything else that we do. Yeah, whether it’s the cyber security company, whether it’s public speaking, whether it’s global media, which all ties back to the the things that do produce money, this becomes one of those reasons. So how are you about doing shows? Because you said 99% of them maybe qualify that a little bit, you know, don’t make money. But does that mean that they don’t monetize them directly to you, or would they have a benefit elsewhere.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

So I would say, across the board, 99% of overall podcasts started out of the I think it’s probably 2.4 million now, they do not ever collect a dime in alignment with their show or brand. And the reason is, there’s a couple of reasons, everybody, not everybody. And I sound I’m getting very fired up about this, and I try not to sound negative. I don’t want to sound negative, but I do think it’s a it’s a mistake to do it this way. So many people say I want to grow an audience so I can run ads. Why don’t you just create a product or service and run ads for yourself? Yeah, that’s that’s a sustainable business model, if you if you’re relying on somebody else to send you money depending on the amount of listens, it’s not sustainable. It’s not sustainable. So I just don’t think people have the business sense for sure, and I didn’t. I didn’t in the beginning, I’ve relied heavily on my business partner, again, he’s very good at business. So if you don’t have a way to monetize in terms of a product, a service, a community, something to add value, which many people don’t because that’s not why they start the podcast. They start the podcast because they want to get an advertiser who will pay them X amount per 1000 downloads. The problem is it’s going to take you way long to get 1000 downloads per episode. So you’re going to be, you’re going to be hustling for for nothing. So I think a lot of people go in with the wrong intention. Where I had a client recently, and she was eight, seven or eight months into her podcast, and she said, I really want to start monetizing. I said, Cool. This is what you do. You take a mid roll, and you offer coaching. When somebody reaches out, you give them a free call, totally free. Do not even try to sell them. Just add value and then see what happens. And then she got three clients. Like, awesome, cool. That’s an extra however much. Yeah, right on charge a month. It’s huge. It’s huge. 

 

Rick Jordan  

I love that. Even those who I’ve seen say, Well, I’m just gonna put it on YouTube and I’ll allow them to run ads during my show. Yeah, I saw the stats, because I’ve never even pursued that either, but I was looking at the thresholds for that, and it’s 1000 subscribers, you know, fine, that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. But then it’s 4000 watch hours per year. Yeah, that’s the big before YouTube even accepts you to be able to be part of their partner program in order to run the ads. That’s a lot of watch hours, man, for somebody who’s only thinking seven to 21 episodes, and then I’m gonna fade away.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing too is we see, and again, I mean this with all the love to everybody, but like, we’re not Joe Rogan, yeah, there’s one Joe Rogan, there’s a lot of other shows. You know, entrepreneurs on fire, you talked about that. Yeah, he was doing it at the very beginning. He’s been doing it. I don’t even know how many episodes. He has, 1000s of things. Has 1000s and 1000s at this point. So for reference, and I don’t think a lot of people would agree with this, Joe Rogan, selling his podcast to Spotify was not a good business move for Joe Rogan, because now, if he’s exclusive on one platform, he can’t monetize on the other ones like you would have did he make 100 million for 10 years? Yes, sure, but he has billions of listens. If he had merchandise, or if he had something else, he could have monetized in a different way. He doesn’t want to do it, understandable, because he’s got so many other things going on. But I do believe the overall thought there is, well, I’ll just let somebody else monetize for me. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s not, it’s not the same. It’s not the same. 

 

Rick Jordan  

Right on, when you have complete control of your products and services and the funnel that goes into them, that’s where you make the most money.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Absolutely! absolutely, and you can do whatever you want, right? That’s the other thing. There’s nobody telling you, like, Hey, I know you want to have this person on, but it’s not in alignment with the brand. It’s like, well, the brands, I thought the brand was mine.

 

Rick Jordan  

Yeah. Right? I love that for every branding agency out there that’s ever said, No, you can’t do this because, right there, listen to Kevin. Dude. This is phenomenal. You know, these, this is great advice for anybody who’s looking to start anything in the podcasting realm. And, you know, let’s look for some tangible things, right? Because a lot of the stuff we’ve been giving some very good strategy and mindset and everything. How about some tangible things you’re just starting out, right? What’s a good way? Because this is where I think imposter syndrome can kind of creep into to where it’s like, well, if I don’t have it sounding the best, or if it doesn’t look the best, you know, or if I have to, you know, get ready and put my notes down for the 10 first episodes, first before I even press record. You know the all these things that come into play that say, Oh, well, you shouldn’t start yet. You know what’s the best way to just get up off your ass and do it? 

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, what helps me, and what helps has helped a lot of people I’ve worked with is understand nobody’s gonna listen in the beginning anyway, like the five people who listen to your first episode, or 10 or 15 people, they’re not as focused on your insecurities as you are. That’s such a huge thing of I would rather you just start because you can’t improve a product that doesn’t exist yet. Just start. Take, take the reason you wanted to start in the first place, and really sit with that. And then you don’t even need a microphone to start. Get a pair of wired headphones, plug them into your laptop, plug them into your your phone, and just start recording. And honestly, I think that once that part’s done, you can figure out how to record an intro, you can figure out how to record an outro and a midtro, and you can figure out how to get the music and what hosts to use. But you have to understand that one of two things is going to happen, and this is what I’ve seen. In the very beginning, everybody is going to support you, everybody, your friends, your family. They’re going to be like, oh my goodness, I can’t believe you did. This is the most amazing thing in the world. Two months later, they’re all going to trickle off and they’re going to forget because it’s not the new thing, and that’s where it really starts to matter. That’s where your 1% improvement, that’s where you’re focused on making the product better. It starts to matter in the very beginning. Just create the least viable product, like the lowest viable product, whatever you can do to get out there and then focus on the improvement. I think too many people want to launch Perfect, yeah, and there is no such there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing. I’ve had clients who they’re very averse to technology, and in my mind, I want to set they have the money, they have the means. I want them to get a Sony, a 73 like I have. I want them to get a mixer and an audio interface and the best microphone and the lighting, but it’s not doable. It’s too overwhelming. I have to lower the barrier to entry so they’ll actually start and get momentum. So that’s what I would say, is understand. Go look at Joe Rogan’s first podcast. Go look at John Lee Dumas first podcast. Evan Carmichael’s first YouTube video. The people who are prolific in this. They sucked at the beginning too. They sucked at the beginning too. And I’ll add this. I still get imposter syndrome. I still get that. That’s, I think that’s par for par for the course. For a lot of people, it’s okay. It gets easier as you get better. But that’s something that you overcome with reps. That’s something you overcome with the internal game, more than the product. You can have the best product in the world, the best studio in the world. If you feel like an imposter, you’re actually going to feel more like an imposter. So I just, you got to launch. You just got to launch.

 

Rick Jordan  

Right on, a coach of mine. Once I’m a media coach of mine, I’m talking like TV media and everything too. He goes, if you play it cool, you’ll look like the fool. Yeah, it’s like, just get on there. Just do it. You know, all you have to do is be yourself, and even more so be like extra yourself, yeah, not what you feel people want you to be, but everything you feel is a good quality about you. Just put it out there to the world, yeah, yeah. And Kevin, I think everybody can take a note from you today too, you know, especially like the the story that you told today, right? Which is so heartfelt and just so human man and for everyone who’s listening to it’s that vulnerability is also so important when you do these things, because the story you absolutely don’t want to tell is the story that you most likely should be telling. Yep, everybody. That’s what’s going to connect with people.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Yeah, I, uh, my, my business partner, Allen, and I, we do a live podcast every week. We’re coming up on week 100 I don’t know, it’s been two years almost, and we do one live in our Facebook group every week. And we did one on the power of vulnerability, and I talked about how I dealt with a pornography addiction, and it’s hard and it sucks to talk about. It’s embarrassing, but afterwards I had people message me, vulnerability opens the conversation. It’s the bridge that allows somebody else to say, Ah, me too. Me too. Because it’s very hard for somebody to come out and say this is happening to me, but when you say it. They can say, Yeah, me too, me too. They can say quietly, from from the shadows, and they feel safe. Vulnerability is such an important thing. I feel that, particularly as a man with tattoos and, you know, a bodybuilder who loves combat, I think it’s important for me to be that, because I want to be an example for other other people. I think it’s super important.

 

Rick Jordan  

Right on, brother, right on. I love how you say, hey, just start there too, because you just need the headphones and everything else, you know. Yeah, when I started the show, it was in a professional studio. That’s just because I hired a branding company. I already made it to a certain level in business, but I pulled from a lot of my musical background, you know. So I’ve been on stages, you know, and even some of that stuff. When we built the studio here, I pulled, which is why I don’t use regular headphones. I use in ear monitors, you know, so I can be, you know, completely. Plus, I don’t like stuff squashing my hair. It’s just a personal preference of mine, you know. But I remember going all the way back because it wasn’t, you know, the guitars I ended up buying, you know, ended up being like, $4,000 Taylor acoustics, you know. But where I started was a cheap Pawn Shop guitar for $10 that I had to swap the saddle on myself. So I put another $10 into it, and that’s the thing that I use. And got up in front of 300 people and played music at church. Yeah, you know, at the very beginning it’s like, whatever. It’s not gonna stop me, you know. And I look back at that, and I found the guitar a few years ago, and then I think I ended up throwing it out. I’m like, Well, I can’t play it anymore. But then I looked at I’m like, man, like, Man, where everything started? You know, was just such a humbling place for all of this. And even when you look back, like you said, at your first podcast episode, and I look back at mine, you think, Oh, that was pretty horrible, wasn’t it? Like, how many downloads did we get on that? Like, three.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

I did that last night. Rick, when I get when I get high, emotionally, and things are doing really well, and business is going great, and everything seems like it’s awesome. I I always look back at how I don’t want to say how bad, but how much I’ve grown. I looked at episode 100 of our show, we weren’t in the studio. We had different mics. The lighting was garbage. The backdrop was just a black curtain, and we had a skeleton as a mascot with a tank top on. So awesome. So it’s important to understand that, you know, 100 episodes in you’d think you’d have it figured out, but you always have room to figure it out more, and you’ll never get to 100 if you don’t start with one.

 

Rick Jordan  

Dude. That’s incredible that you still have that skeleton. No,

 

Kevin Palmieri  

No. His name was Steve McQueen. He is He has moved on to the afterlife. 

 

Rick Jordan  

That’s hilarious. And I really appreciate you being on and just having some real talk about how to get started on these things. Been incredible, man. We can find you at next level universe.com, of course, but I love your Instagram handle. Never quit, kid, yes, that’s incredible, dude. Keep keep going. I’m sure you will. Thanks so much for being on. Kevin.

 

Kevin Palmieri  

Of course. Rick, thank you. I enjoy the conversation and I enjoy what you’re doing. Very much. Thank you.