Alan Lazaros with Next Level University

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to have Alan Lazaros with on with me today. He is the CEO and founder of Next Level University and does coaching, training and podcasting. We have so much to talk about. Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Lazaros : Thank you, Trisha, for having me. I the aligned things that I do early on podcasts ten years ago really started to sort of help me reconstruct my life. So I don’t take it lightly to be here. I really appreciate it. And anyone who is watching or listening, I think what you pay attention to changes your future drastically. So I don’t take it lightly. I don’t want to waste a second of anyone’s time. I will do my very best to sincerely help you improve yourself and improve your life.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, thank you so much. We have so much to talk about, but I told you before we started the show that we’re going to have to be tight today. Now, first, I’d really like for you to tell the audience, Who is Allen?

Alan Lazaros : Yeah. So I’ll give you the shortest possible version that I can. So I’m 36 now. I used to joke and say, I hope I hit puberty at 37, but now I have a little mustache, so I can’t say that anymore. Uh, but, um, I look very young. And so I’ll give you the three main, pivotal, pivotal, pivotal points of my story. The first one, uh, so started in adversity. Not a great start. Grew up in a very challenging situation. So my father, my birth father, his name is John McCorkle, passed away when he was 28, in 1991, in a car accident. So that was the start. Uh, older sister, mom, stay at home mom, stepdad came into the picture. Steve Lazarus. I took his name around age seven. So from 3 to 14 I had a stepfather named Steve Lazarus. He worked for a company called Agfa AG and for hospital computers during the.com bubble in Massachusetts in the US. So we did very well financially as many people did in the 90s. Uh, so from the outside looking in, it was very good from the inside out. My mom and stepdad did not get along, and that is a very polite way to put it. And they loved to party. Stepdad leaves at 14 because they don’t get along. Takes his entire extended family with him. Also takes 90% of the income. So I go from boats and ski trips to even if I get into college, my dream was to go to WPI mini MIT in Massachusetts, it’s called WPI, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Alan Lazaros : It’s one of the best engineering colleges on the planet, and it’s $50,000 a year. And this was back then. That was my dream to be an engineer. And I went for my hope I get in to even if I do get in, I’m not going to be able to go because we’re broke. We’re not going to starve, but definitely not 50 grand a year type of family. So no dad, no generational wealth. Uh, no future trust fund, none of that. So it’s like, if it’s going to be. It’s up to me. Man of the house by 14. Other side of this coin to mom gets in a fight with my aunt Sandy, her sister. We get ostracized from her side of the family, too, and we don’t associate much with the mccorkles because we were kind of being the lazarus’s. So in some ways, by the time I’m 14, I kind of lost three families. To this day, I’ve not seen or spoken to a single person from my step dad’s side. To this day, I’ve only ever seen two human beings from my mother’s side, so the abandonment challenges didn’t know this at the time. Obviously, because I’m a kid and I don’t know any different. But now it’s very clear that I became this sort of super achiever, prove myself guy. And so straight A’s through all of high school computer engineering at WPI.

Alan Lazaros : Master’s in business. Off to the races. 1% earner in my early 20s. Just investment account. The whole nine. Then I get in my car. Accident. 26 years old. My fault. Crossed the double yellows. Head on collision. Fortunately. Volkswagen Passat 2004 Volkswagen Passat. I bought it for five grand cash just because I didn’t need much. Broke high school and college, that kind of thing. And thank you. Volkswagen totally saved my life. I used to call this car the tank and I was physically okay rattled. But this was my quarter life crisis because I’m 26 at the time, my dad died in a car when he was 28, and this is when I just questioned my entire life. So that was ten years ago. And so after that, I found self-improvement. I found personal growth. I found personal development. I started a little company called Allen Lazarus, LLC. What you’ll never learn in school but desperately need to know. Good luck getting speeches at high schools and colleges with that tagline. And now I have next level university. We have a 17 person team. We’re herding 175 countries. We have, as of today, 1.18 million listens. And we have a global business now. But it all started from very humble beginnings and a lot of work ethic and a lot of pain and suffering and adversity. And that was the shortest the shortest one I could give you. Sorry if it was too long.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. There’s absolutely no need to apologize. I appreciate the vulnerability and being able to share as much of your story as you did today. And I know the things that you like to bring to the table, Alan, are consistency, habits, peak performance, mindset. All of these were kind of shook up in that story that you just gave. So thank you, uh, for doing that. I’d love to focus on the mindset piece today if that works for you. And I really believe in all of the adversity that you’ve been through and the things that we start to tell ourselves, and we believe that mindset is a huge part of that. So you talk about how that I know that it’s played out in your story, but particularly and by the way, he doesn’t look a day over 21 if you’re not looking at the video. I’m just saying, um, in your 30s, how does that play out now from a mindset perspective?

Alan Lazaros : Well, first and foremost, thank, thank you for the the looking young thing that does not help me in my business career, though, particularly with men. They love learning from a 12 year old. Uh, no seriously. But I think later on it’ll be helpful at the end of the day. Mindset. What I would transform that word into in the context of this conversation is actually self-belief. What I think is interesting, and Trisha, I can already tell that you are someone who is an achiever and achievers, for lack of better phrasing, are people who have very high what’s known as self-efficacy. So the adversities that I went through, and I only gave you the tip of the iceberg. And there’s something called an ace score adverse childhood experiences. And I have a therapist named Carol, and I finally had the courage to ask her, like, hey, where am I at on this? And she said, worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen the level of trauma like it is, you know, a whole thing. So. And I bawled my eyes out. I accepted it and and I also am grateful for what I’ve made of it, what I’ve made of it. But what I’ve come to understand as an adult, having coached, uh, hundreds of people over the years, I have 18 people on my roster right now, business owners, and it’s been hundreds over the years. Um, mindset, coach, peak performance coach, life coach, business consultant, fitness coach, and eventually landed on business coaching. What I come to realize is that adversity is only your advantage if you have high self-efficacy.

Alan Lazaros : And I didn’t know that I had high self-efficacy. And by the way, people who have high self-efficacy don’t know that you don’t because everyone pretends they believe in themselves in in social settings, especially around other people who believe in themselves a lot. And so what I’ve come to understand is that, uh, the best way I can describe it is that some people think that they have high self-belief, but unconsciously they don’t. And then some people think they don’t, and unconsciously they do. And then there’s some people that are both meaning they think they do and they do. You’re probably one of those. Okay. So other people look at people like Trisha, for example, and they don’t understand why she always follows through. They don’t understand why she wins at everything she does. The truth is that socially, she feels like she has to dim who she is in order to get along with people at a barbecue. But behind the scenes, she’s a monster. She’s able to crush it. And most people are the opposite behind the scenes. They’re struggling. They don’t believe in themselves, but socially, they puff up and pretend they’re awesome. And what I’ve come to understand through years and years and years and years and years of this, is that your level of success is directly correlated to the amount of unconscious self-belief that you have. And again, if you research it, call it self-efficacy.

Alan Lazaros : You can ChatGPT this. You can Google this whatever you want to do, there’s a way to build it. Now there’s two types of self-efficacy. There’s the external self-efficacy, which is self-belief. My ability, my belief and my own ability to achieve something externally. You and I have that very high. What? We don’t have as much, or maybe didn’t until we were older is, uh, self-worth. Self-worth is how much you value yourself. And usually that’s based on social, uh, being treated well. And so for people who have been very mistreated, uh, particularly by insecure people, you basically feel like, why doesn’t anyone like me, I don’t understand. I feel like I’m treated so unjustly when in reality what it is, is you are triggering the insecurities of other people who don’t believe in themselves and think they do. And so all this is landing for you, okay. And any other achievers, it’s it’s landing too. For anyone who’s not identifying as an achiever, you’re probably not listening to the show. But if you are out there, you got to check in with your level of true self-belief. Now, true self-belief is built with a formula. I’m an engineer and this will be the last piece. I know we’re short medium here. It’s a formula state. Proves self-assign. So state. I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow. Prove to yourself that you’re going to go no matter what happens. And then self-assign it once you go. Then what else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do? Here’s the problem.

Alan Lazaros : If you don’t have high self-belief, unconsciously you’re not going to state in advance what you’re going to do. So my business partner, Kevin, he was an all star baseball player, but he thought he got lucky. He didn’t decide to be. I have never not decided in advance. So for me, I always got to self-assign it after I did it. So the straight A’s in high school, I decided to do that, and then I proved to myself I could do it, and then I self assigned it once I did it and I got the president’s award behind me signed by George W Bush. And that’s building self-belief. But I didn’t know that at the time. I was just doing this unconsciously without knowing it. And now that I’m 36 and I’ve coached so many people, I go, oh, you’re not building self-belief. So of course you’re not going to aim high and shoot for the stars and land amongst the moon and all that kind of stuff. I actually think that’s terrible advice for someone who doesn’t have deep, unconscious self-belief. For someone who has tons of self-belief, you need to go eat humble pie. You need to aim higher, work harder, get smarter. For someone who doesn’t, you got to start really small and you got to build a staircase. What else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do?

Trisha Stetzel: I like that a lot. So, um, you’re gonna we’re gonna talk about it or think about it, and we’re going to show the proof of it, and then we’re going to self-assign it. I think that that breaks it down into such simple terms. So one of the things that I talk with my clients about quite often when it comes to mindset is the actual language that we’re using. Um, I don’t know about you, but I meet a lot of people who use a lot of don’t, can’t, won’t, shouldn’t and negatives in their language. How do you think that plays out in that self-belief, in the actions that we actually take?

Alan Lazaros : Well, if you have high self-belief, we all have a record playing and I’m going to give you Trisha’s record and she’ll nod her head when I say it. So we all have an unconscious record playing the unconscious record playing for you and I, as scary as this is to share, is you got this. You can do it. You got it, you can do it. You got this, you got this. You can do it. That’s not the record most people statistically have playing. So I researched this, uh, back in 2024. We do a monthly meetup every month. We’ve been doing them for four years. They’re totally free virtual events. And the it was setting clear goals for 2024. And I did some research, and I found out that only 4% of people have clear written goals and only 8% of them, based on this research, ever achieve them. And when I heard that, I was like, what? I’ve never not had written goals even when I was a kid, you know? But I’m the weirdo engineer, though. So. So the other record that the majority 96% of the population has playing, and this goes to your question about the the verbiage is you’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. It’s not going to work for you.

Alan Lazaros : You’re not like them. It’s never going to happen. See, those people need self-belief. What you and I need. We’re already optimistic. We don’t need more optimism. We don’t need more delusion. We need humble pie. Right. You think you’re so great. Go run a marathon on a whim. I tried to do it. Humble pie for days. Three days notice. Okay, but for people like my business partner, Kevin, they do not need to run a marathon on a whim and then feel even worse. What they need to do is prove to themselves, little by little that they are good enough. They are smart enough, they can do it. And so it all depends on your wiring. And the record that’s playing is based on the story you told yourself when you were younger. And it’s also based on core wounds. And that’s a lot of therapy stuff. So, um, for you, it’s I’m a winner, I got this, we can do it. We got this. We can do it. And that’s the verbiage that they hear. And it’s like some of your friends and past people from your past are like, why does Trisha win at everything? I don’t understand, like, she must be so lucky. You. And I know it’s not luck.

Alan Lazaros : It’s every second of every day behind the scenes when no one’s watching. Wow. She gets lucky a lot, right? No, it’s not luck. It’s it’s it’s a wiring. And for someone who does have the not good enough, I, I empathize, I understand, I know that I don’t have that. And by the way, anyone listening knows I don’t too. That’s why everyone thinks I’m so arrogant. Okay? But in reality, I’m not actually that arrogant. I’m just confident. Real confident. And yes, sometimes a little arrogant. But at the end of the day, what I’ve come to understand is that if you have the record playing, that you’re not good enough, which is the majority of the population, even though socially no one admits it. You have to work on that. And that comes down to your verbiage that you use. So for you and I, we can say, ah, man, I suck. Damn I suck. Like, ah, I’m really sucking right now. Ah this podcast. I’m sucking. But for us that’s actually getting us humble. For other people that’s very detrimental, very deconstructive, because you and I are going to show up regardless. And so for achievers, you got to give different advice for people who don’t identify as an achiever.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Oh my god. Okay. So I feel like I should be on the on the like on the receiving end of counseling. Today I’m just saying you’re doing a really good job. Head nodding and everything. Um. All right, we’re maybe halfway through our conversation. Uh, if folks are already interested, Allan, in getting in touch with you or learning more about next level university, how do they find you?

Alan Lazaros : Yeah. So I appreciate it very much. And, uh, Next Level University is the name of the podcast. It’s next level, you pun intended. So I’m Allan, version 3.6, far more mature than Alan version 2.6. So every year we upgrade our software. It’s a metaphor. I’m an engineer, so I’m a tech guy. But anyways, um, so next level, you pun intended. It’s a it’s a place where you work on yourself. 1% improvement in your pocket from anywhere on the planet. Health, wealth, life and love. Completely free. And that’s that’s where you can find me. But ultimately, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn. Uh, you can DM me on Instagram. That’s definitely the best place if you want to connect, because I do check that daily right now. And um, my email is Alan at Next Level. Universe.com. If you do reach out, please provide context. Obviously we all get a lot of spam these days. And then next level Universe.com is the website and everything is on there. We have a book club every week. We do. I got a journal, uh, the Dreamliner that helps you reverse engineer your goals. We’ve got monthly meetups we do every month, and, uh, all of it’s on there.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. And listeners, you know, I’ll put the show notes out there so you guys can just point and click if you happen to be sitting in front of your computer. All right, Alan, since we’re on the topic of mindset, things have been a little I don’t know, um, I’m hearing a lot of negativity from my the people that I run my typical circles with, right? Whether they’re my clients or the people that I’m hanging around with about the environment for business right now. Last year, there were excuses of, you know, things that were happening in November this year, there are more excuses about things that are happening. I don’t know right now, yesterday or the day before. And I really believe that this whole idea of being an achiever, what you were talking about, not all of us are. Thank you for helping me figure out what’s wrong with me.

Alan Lazaros : It’s a it’s a beautiful sickness. It’s a gift and a curse. Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: It is absolutely a curse. Um, but how do we. What can we do to help? What questions do we ask? What conversations do we have with these business owners around this mindset where nobody’s buying. Nobody’s moving. Nobody. Fill in the blank. Right. Nobody’s doing anything. And they’re just these business owners are sitting still, waiting for something to shift and the phone to ring.

Alan Lazaros : Everyone wants to jump on a moving train. And I think it’s really important if you can do it behind the scenes when no one’s watching. And consistently. I always ask myself this before I work with someone, and I don’t know if I’ve ever actually shared this in a public medium, but, um, can this person sit alone in a dark room on a StairMaster for a half an hour without anyone watching, without posting it on Instagram? And if my answer intuitively is no, I’m not hiring that person. I’m not going to work with them. So there’s there’s a certain type of person that I’m really good at working with. And this is through massive pain and failure of ten years of mentoring, eight years of coaching. I work with people with high humility, high work ethic, and low self-worth. And the reason I work with people with low self-worth is they’re the earners, not the entitled. And for anyone out there that, uh, is entitled, you’re not going to like me at all because I came from nothing, and I’m. I haven’t taken a day off in ten years. Um, and you probably think I’m arrogant, and that’s okay. It is what it is. But what I would say to answer your question is there’s there’s always going to be a reason not to start. There’s always going to be there is an okay. Kevin and I both grew up without fathers. We both grew up with very little. After my stepdad left, we had nothing. We came from nothing. We didn’t have any generational wealth. We didn’t have any advantages. Um, we were born. Let me rephrase. I was born in a country that helped me with financial aid.

Alan Lazaros : Massachusetts and the US, thank you so much, because I wouldn’t have been able to go to college if it wasn’t for that. So we were born in a large economy. I’m very grateful. Other than that, there wasn’t any advantages. It was you have to make your own way. And I gave you the tip of the iceberg of my story. And, uh, I could have made any excuse in the world, you know, I could have, you know, I could have made every excuse. And what I’ve come to understand back to the self-belief, conversation, the mindset, the record playing. If you do have low self-belief, you have to own that first. There needs to be an acceptance. So there’s that great quote that says it is our dark. It is not our darkness, but our light that most frightens us. Okay. So that resonates with you. That doesn’t resonate with someone who’s afraid of failure. So your fear is success because the more you climb, the more you get socially ostracized by people you love. Okay. All that’s resonating. So that resonates with us and we’re alone in that. And statistically speaking, that’s like 3% of the population for the other people. They’re not afraid of their greatness. They’re afraid of not being great. That’s their actual fear. I’m not afraid of not being great. I’m afraid of outshining and then being villainized by everyone who’s insecure and doesn’t know it and doesn’t want to admit it because they’d rather attack me. And that’s why I’m probably red right now. I’m super red. So you see how red I am on my neck?

Trisha Stetzel: Is that what you’re picking up on? My cheeks are red.

Alan Lazaros : Well, that’s because we’re not allowed to talk about this stuff, right? This is social ostracization. Hard. Yeah, it’s very hard. So in a business networking event, Trisha feels great at a barbecue. Not so much. Right. You don’t fit in at a barbecue. Most people do. Most people do. Statistically. Statistically. So back to the conversation of the question that you had asked. If you do struggle with self-belief and you don’t actually believe in yourself and you do have the record playing when no one’s watching of I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, it’s not going to work for me. I’m not one of those people. Then what you have to do is admit that first. Not to me, not to Trisha, but to yourself. Why would you work on something that you don’t admit needs work. You wouldn’t. So the first step to success, regardless of the economy, regardless of who’s president, regardless of your circumstances, is going inside and going, okay, this is going to be a mountain. This is going to be hard. Most people don’t win despite what social media shows us. And there’s a good chance that I fall flat on my face. There’s a good chance I’m going to get judged. You will get judged. Aunts, uncles, family, you name it. You will be ridiculed.

Alan Lazaros : You will be disliked by certain people. You will fail. You will give a speech that bombs. You will try an event that doesn’t sell out. You will xyz. And it’s better than sitting here and waiting and living with regret later. So the only way that I’ve been able to help people, uh, chase their passion and their purpose for a profit and build a business is to get them to realize the downside of not doing it. Because in two years, there’s going to be another reason not to do it. And in five years, there’s going to be another reason not to do it. And in business, staying power is the game. I’m eight years in. It was crickets in the beginning. Trust me, I couldn’t get a client to save my goddamn life. Um, and now it’s people. Literally. I got an email earlier from a new client. It does. It snowballs. And so you got to start the train because everyone does want to jump on a moving train. Think about a winning team. Everyone wants to be on a winning team. But that same team that’s now a championship team was at one point down and out struggle bus. Nobody knew their name and no one cared. And that’s where everyone starts.

Trisha Stetzel: I like your analogy of the trains. I talk to people all the time. You know, if you don’t start now, you’re going to be six months behind. If you don’t start now, you’re going to be A year behind. You’re going to be 12 months behind. You’re going to be whatever that looks like, right? For that particular person. And I love the idea of the moving train because everybody wants to get on a moving train. So just move the train. And that’s a great place to start and engage with somebody like Alan who can figure you out just like that.

Alan Lazaros : Thank you. Trisha, I appreciate it.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. I’m teasing you. Uh, okay. So I know our time has gone by so fast, which just means that you have to come back so we can tackle another topic together. But before we part today, I would love to hear your favorite success story.

Alan Lazaros : Ah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um hmm. So thank you for priming me for this one, because I do have many that come to mind. You know what? There’s two that I’ll share very, very quickly. My business partner, Kevin, is probably the greatest success story that I’ve ever seen. He. He came from nothing. He’s the first person in his entire extended family to ever even Chase his dreams. Um, he didn’t go to college. He was a forklift operator. He was a gas station attendant. Like he is just. Just such a beautiful display. I’ll share this story that I think, uh, articulates it. So I was at his wedding, and he did his first dance with his wife, Taryn, and I knew them, you know, before they got married. And I started bawling my eyes out. And his, his best friend Matt came over and he gave me, he said, hey, here you go, man. It gave me a handkerchief. And I don’t know if Matt knew why I was crying, but the reason I was crying was because this, this dude could have been nothing. And I don’t mean that negatively. I don’t mean that in any negative way. But seriously, like, he could have been nothing. He came from a I’ll let him share his story another time. But he came from a a humble beginnings and he made something of himself.

Alan Lazaros : And to me, that’s the most inspiring thing in the entire world because we all know someone who had a lot of potential. We all know someone who had a lot of potential. I can think of several. It makes me very sad that didn’t didn’t reach their potential at all, didn’t even touch their potential, actually. And, uh, Kevin, we just crossed 2000 episodes like he’s a business partner of mine. I mean, he’s he’s my my best friend and my my business partner. And we have created a global company together. And he never thought in a million years he always asks, he’s like, did you think we’d get here? I say, brother with like, don’t ask me that on air. Yes. You know, if anything, we’re behind. Um, but it’s beyond his wildest dreams. It’s. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You’re not allowed to say that, right? So, uh. But for Kev, he’s beyond his wildest dreams, and he’s he’s unbelievable. So you know that. That’s so inspiring. And then I have another client named Bianca who also same, same type of story. And, you know, just all of her dreams. I remember going through a checklist when I coached her six years ago, and there’s a checklist of all her dreams coming true. And to me, I’m the ultimate dream chaser guy.

Alan Lazaros : Like, I love dreams. I can’t imagine a life without achievement and without dreams. Like, when you’re a kid, achievement is cool. And then when you’re an adult, it gets all weird. It’s like, oh, good for you, bro. I, I just think that the future could be bigger, better and brighter if we all work toward it. And I don’t like dreams. I don’t like life without dreams. Like, I grew up in the boulevard of broken dreams. I grew up where people didn’t like their life. They didn’t like their career. They didn’t like their job. They don’t. You guys don’t even love each. You guys don’t even like each other. Never mind. Love each other. Like marriage. Scared the hell out of me, right? So I’ll get off the soapbox here. But ultimately, those are the success stories. They both started from very humble beginnings. They both could have been nothing, and they made something magnificent of themselves. And now they’re inspiring so many people all over the world. Both of them are. And that’s that’s possible because they didn’t believe it was possible. And I think that we all need someone to believe in us or love us, depending on which type you are. I think achievers need love. I think people who who don’t have self-belief need someone to believe in them.

Trisha Stetzel: So yeah, absolutely. We all have a story to tell, right? All of us do, whether we’re achievers or need somebody to believe in us. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. You have to come back because I want to talk to you some more. I love this topic of mindset. There’s so many other things that we can talk about. And I love what you brought to the table today. I know that my listeners got a ton of value out of the conversation that we had. So thank you so much for being with me today and having this conversation around mindset.

Alan Lazaros : Trisha, thank you for having me. Thank you for the work you’re doing in the world, and I would love to come back. It was an honor. And for anyone listening, thank you for listening. Because like I said, that what you pay attention to is going to change everything. So. Yeah. Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. Alan Lazarus, tell us how we can find you one more time.

Alan Lazaros : Uh. Next level universe. Com. The person who has next level University.com was charging way too much. And Next Level University is the name of the podcast, and you can find that on all the podcast platforms. Youtube. We just crossed our 2,000th episode. So, uh, if you want a mentor or a guide or just some motivation, inspiration or education in your pocket from anywhere on the planet, completely free, next level university.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Congratulations on your just going over your 2,000th episode. That is not an easy thing to do.

Alan Lazaros : Thank you very much. It was a, uh, challenging journey.

Trisha Stetzel: I look forward to having you back. Thank you again for spending the time with me. That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.