Show Transcript

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Have you ever found yourself at a point in life, maybe it's even where you are

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right now, where you kind of feel like you're in a hole?

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You've had something happen that's kind of shook you, that's made you look at

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life from a different angle.

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And to be honest, you don't really understand who you even are,

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what you're doing, where you're going, and you just feel lost.

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Lost well you're not alone in matter

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of fact today's guest alan Lazaros he

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was in that very position now what's awesome about alan's story is that he's

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going to prove to you that there's a way out and as you hear his story he's

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going to help you at the same time today's episode is one that

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you're probably going to want to take some notes on because the information,

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the stories, just the unbelievable knowledge dropped in your lap by Alan Lazaros

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is absolutely incredible.

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My friend, this is the episode that is going to take things to the next level,

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helping you to level up your life, your love, your health, and your wealth.

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This is episode 296.

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Bye.

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Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life? Because those bad days,

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they're just doors to better days.

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And that's exactly what we do here at Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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Your host, Kevin Lowe, he's been flipping the script on his own life,

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turning over 20 years of being completely blind into straight-up inspiration,

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motivation, and encouragement just for you.

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So, kick back, relax, and let me introduce you to your host,

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Kevin Lowe. My friend, is there any chance that you are looking to get the most out of this summer?

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That you are ready to make these summer months into a launch pad to be sure

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that the second half of 2024 is your best year ever?

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Well, then you need to take advantage of my sizzling summer special.

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I'm offering free coaching sessions all summer long.

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Yes, all June, July, and August, I have opened up my calendar for you to book

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a free 30-minute breakthrough coaching session where we can get clear on your goals,

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figure out what's standing in your way, and to set you up for success in the second half of 2024.

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All you have to do to grab your spot is to text SUMMER2024. That is all one

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word, no spaces, SUMMER2024 to the phone number 33777.

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That is 33777.

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And I will respond with a link for you to book your session.

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Now, if you would rather just have a link to click, well, then just scroll down

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and check out today's show notes where you can do just that.

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And with that, it's back to today's episode.

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I used to listen to shows, podcasts, and I used to hear these people tell their

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stories and they always seemed so articulate and they seemed like they had it

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all figured out and they seemed like they understood the narrative.

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And now here I am nine years later, I started listening to podcasts nine years

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ago and I'm a podcaster as well.

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And so now I'm telling my story starting to sound like that.

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So the first thing I want to share with everybody is I did not have any of this

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figured out So when I share my story,

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that is my 35-year-old re-watching the movie of my own life version.

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It is not the understanding that I had at the time during it.

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So I always use Finding Nemo as a reference because it's an awesome movie.

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I went and saw Finding Nemo when it was 2003 when I was in, I think,

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middle school. I used to ride my bike to Bellingham and to the movie theater.

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And we were supposed to see a different movie. We ended up seeing Finding Nemo.

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But my point of Finding Nemo is I saw that movie when I was a kid.

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And then my second date with my beautiful girlfriend, Amelia,

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I ended up watching Finding Nemo again.

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And there was jokes that I now understand. There was moral of the story I now kind of understand.

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So when you're an adult and you see a movie that you saw as a kid,

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you recognize things in the movie.

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Nothing changed about the movie. Something changed inside of you.

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Yes. And so when I tell this story, I want everyone to understand that I am

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telling it from the 35-year-old frame of reference, having rewatched the movie of my life.

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Whereas at the time, I had no clue what was going on.

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So I was born into adversity, although I didn't know that at the time.

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Again, that'll be a theme. Yes.

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And I was two years old and my father died in a car accident when he was 28.

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So he was 28. My sister was six. I was almost three. So I was two and my mom was 31.

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And my real last name is actually McCorkle. So I came from the McCorkles and

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my birth father, John, John McCorkle, had five siblings.

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So six kids, big Irish Catholic family.

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John, Joe, Jim, Jane, Joan, Jeanette, all J.

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And so when he had passed away, my stepfather came into the picture and my stepfather,

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so my last name, Alan Lazaros, I took his last name, which was Lazaros when I was around seven.

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So between ages three and 14...

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We kind of didn't talk much or at all, really, with the McCorkles.

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And the reason why is we were trying to be the Lazaroses, quote unquote.

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And so it was me, my mom, my sister, and my stepfather, Steve Lazaros.

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And my mom and stepfather did not get along well.

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And that is a polite way to say it on a public medium.

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Yes. And so, and again, I didn't have the courage to share any of this until

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my 30s. So you're in for a real treat, Kev. No, I'm kidding. Yeah.

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But again, I didn't understand any of this until recently. I started doing therapy

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in my 30s, Kevin, and I reflected again on all this and now I kind of get it.

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So from three to 14, I had a stepfather and I now playfully refer to that part

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of my life as boats and BS.

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And so we had motorcycles, we had snowmobiles, we had trucks.

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My mom drove a BMW. We had ski trips and we had vacations and we had a yacht

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and we had ocean boats and all kinds of stuff. Not to mention,

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it was also the 90s, late 90s, early 2000s.

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And the 90s, particularly in the US, but globally, the dot-com bubble,

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the economy was booming.

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And so, there was definitely a lot of money. My stepfather worked for a company

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called Agfa. They did hospital computers during the computer boom.

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And so, we did very well financially. initially at 14.

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So I was, I was Xbox, Dreamcast. I was, I was early Christmas presents,

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but at home things weren't good behind the scenes, but it looked really good

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from the outside looking in based on the boats and the, and the snowmobiles

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and the vacations, all that stuff.

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So 14 years old come, I'm 14 and my stepfather leaves.

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Now he takes not only 90% of the income with him. And I go from Dreamcast,

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Xbox, early Christmas presents.

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I'm quote unquote, the rich kid living on a small pond, big lake to,

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I now get free lunch at school because our income is so low.

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I now shop at Salvation Army for clothing.

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My mom trades in her BMW for a little Honda Civic back in the early 2000s.

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And not only that, but my stepdad leaves and takes his entire extended family with him.

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So my grandma, Joan, grandpa, George, my uncles and aunts, that whole side of the family gone.

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I haven't spoken to a single one of them since. Wow. Yeah.

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My mom and her sister got in a fight, my Aunt Sandy, and my Aunt Sandy kind

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of ostracized us from her side of the family, the Higgins.

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So we're not talking on the McCorkle's, my birth father's side,

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because we're being Lazaroses. The Lazaroses leave when my stepdad leaves.

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And then on top of that, the Higgins kind of ostracize us from that side of the family.

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And the only person I've seen from that side of the family since is actually

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my cousin Jeff, who I didn't see until eight years later.

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So 14 was a tough year. Now, on top of that, my sister moves out with her older

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boyfriend at that same year.

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And so I essentially, for lack of better phrasing, lost three families by the time I'm 14 years old.

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Wow. And I didn't realize the abandonment issues that came with that at all.

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Because at the time, I didn't know anything except for challenge, struggle, adversity.

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And obviously, there were some bright spots too. You know, we grew up in a nice

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area in terms of the nature.

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I grew up on a pond. And so there was a lot of fun and bright things too.

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But at the end of the day, it was definitely not normal and definitely not super positive.

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So now I'm 14 years old. It's just me and my mom in that big house.

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And my dream was to go to Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

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It's WPI. It's kind of like a mini MIT in Massachusetts. It's one of the best

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technical colleges in the world.

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And it's extremely, extremely, extremely expensive.

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It was $50,000 a year back then. And so when I was 10 years old,

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my uncle Merle was the track and field coach at WPI.

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And so the field there is still called Norcross Field, named after him. He's since passed away.

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And since I was 10 years old, It was my dream. My mom said, you're good at math.

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Engineers make a lot of money. You should be an engineer. You should go to the WPI.

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You'll make a lot of money. And so I had two paths in life, two big dreams.

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I had a lot of little ones, but I had two really big dreams.

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My two career paths when I was a kid, which now I realize is weird,

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were lawyer, politician, president.

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I kid you not. That was actually what I was considering. I'm not even kidding.

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It was lawyer, politician, president. I now realize how crazy that is now.

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Or it was going to be engineer, MBA, CEO, like my hero at the time of a Fortune

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500 company, a tech company like my hero, Steve Jobs, at the time.

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Steve Jobs is no longer my hero, but at the time he was. So it was always Bill

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Gates versus Steve Jobs.

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And I built my first computer when I was 13 and that kind of thing.

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So anyways, lawyer, politician, president, or engineer, MBA,

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master's in business and Fortune 50 CEO or Fortune 500 CEO of a tech company.

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So I chose obviously the engineer road.

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I got into WPI and I went from, I'm excited to see if I can get in to,

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I don't even know if I can pay for it if I do get in.

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So I ended up just doing what I now refer to as my trauma response,

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which I didn't understand back then.

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Whenever life was really painful, fortunately, my trauma response was aim higher,

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work harder, get smarter, fortunately.

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Yeah. And so I did. I bootstrapped through all of high school.

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I got what's called the President's Award. It's actually behind me right now in my office.

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And it's signed by President George W. Bush. And it's essentially you get straight

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A's all through high school in all report cards.

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So that's four report cards per year, four years, 16 report cards straight.

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I got straight A's. I got 189 in honors English. Fortunately,

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it was an honors class, so it was weighted.

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But I never took honors English again after that, I'll tell you what.

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I was the math and science guy, Kevin.

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So I call it STEM, science, technology, engineering, mathematics,

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business, and finance. Those are my jam.

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And writing and reading and all that kind of stuff weren't nearly as natural for me.

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So anyways, what I had to do, got into college, did it, straight A's in high

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school, and I got financial aid and scholarships, so I was able to go.

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But you can't lose, those are academic based. So if I screw this up, I'm in trouble, right?

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And this is a $50,000 a year school. And I realized real quick that some of

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the other people that came to this school, my peers at that time,

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did not have to face what I had to face to get there.

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And they also have have the money to pay for it. Whereas if I flunk out, I'm screwed.

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So it's a little bit of a different dynamic there.

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So I just found the smartest people I could, surrounded myself with them.

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I did a lot of partying too, which we will get to.

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But essentially I got a 3.4. I graduated with computer engineering.

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I graduated with distinction.

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And then I stayed for my master's in business. And then I was off to the races.

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And that's when I went into corporate.

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So I worked for a bunch of different tech companies. I worked for iRobot,

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Sensata Technologies, Oz Development, development, Tyco Safety Products.

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Lens America, a bunch of different tech companies.

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And I did a lot of job hopping and soul searching post-college.

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And I went from 65 to 85, 85 to 105, 105 to 125, 125 to nearly 200,000.

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So I was at about 180 when I peaked.

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And now I'm 26 years old. At this stage, I paid off $84,000 worth of college debt in a single year.

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I have $150,000 in an investment account for Vanguard and I bought S&P 500, which is an index fund.

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I bought a bunch of Cognex and a bunch of other tech companies that I knew would grow.

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And I had no mortgage, no family.

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I went from basically bootstrapping bro college kid to 1% global earner.

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And again, earner, not net worth, earner in a very short amount of time.

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I remember painting houses in Maine, the sophomore summer of college to when

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I graduated college making so much money, I didn't even know what to do with it all.

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That's why I invested most of it, fortunately. But so now I'm 26.

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I'm working for a company called Cognex.

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Cognex's motto is work hard, play hard. I used to say work hard,

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play harder, which we're going to get to.

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And I was an inside sales engineer, started a little inside sales engineering

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team. And then I was an outside sales engineer and I managed a territory.

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So my territory was Vermont, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

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I'm selling industrial automation equipment into manufacturing facilities.

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So imagine the biggest ice cream company you can think of that you adore or

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the chips that you eat, I would sell into those manufacturing facilities.

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And it was machine vision equipment. So we would sell the eyes of robots, so to speak.

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And again, it's a very simplified version of what we were actually doing. So I did very well.

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Boom, boom, boom. Now I'm 26, SpaceX making almost $200,000 a year.

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I'm rising in corporate and I have what I thought was the American dream and

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I did it, right? I made it, quote unquote.

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Now, I'm 26 years old. I'm in New Hampshire with my little cousin.

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We're playing Call of Duty, also known as Call of Dudeski.

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We're playing Call of Duty and we're not drinking, not partying or anything

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like that. It's a Friday night. We're going to TGI Fridays and I'm driving.

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Now, to save money and get out of college debt, because that was my goal.

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Several years earlier, I had bought this 2004 Volkswagen Passat. Thank you, Volkswagen.

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So, this car, I bought it in cash, five grand cash.

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And I used to call it the tank. This is a German an engineered steel trap of

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a car that I called the tank.

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And that car definitely saved my life. So we're driving to TGI Fridays.

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It's 2015, really bad winter. The snow banks are covering the signs and there's

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a yield sign that I don't see.

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I'm supposed to yield and I don't. I end up on the wrong side of the road and

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I look up and I see what I thought was a Mack truck.

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And my computer engineering brain goes, there's no chance. This is the end. No question.

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Fortunately, it was not a Mack truck. It was a lift kitted pickup truck.

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And I was driving that steel trap tank of a car. Thank you, Volkswagen.

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So both airbags did deploy. My little cousin hurt his knee on the airbag.

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I hurt my face on the airbag, but we were okay.

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Now, normally I show the pictures of this car in my speeches.

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And the reason why is because I've seen pictures of my dad's car and they don't look very different.

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And so for me, this was the physically we were okay, but mentally,

00:16:10.782 --> 00:16:13.542

emotionally emotionally, and spiritually, I was beyond messed up after this.

00:16:13.622 --> 00:16:19.122

This was my quarter life crisis because I got the second chance that my dad never got. Wow.

00:16:19.722 --> 00:16:24.882

And so this is when I flipped the script and I was filled with regret. What did it all mean?

00:16:25.562 --> 00:16:30.662

Who was I as a man? Did I make good choices? Were these really my dreams or were they ego driven?

00:16:31.082 --> 00:16:34.502

Was this what I was supposed to do versus what I am called to do?

00:16:35.002 --> 00:16:38.682

And so the best way I can describe it as this, and I promised you that I'd do

00:16:38.682 --> 00:16:42.002

the short, mid, or long version, so two guesses which one this is.

00:16:43.102 --> 00:16:48.082

This is the long version. The point is, though, is that I now,

00:16:48.202 --> 00:16:50.262

the best way I can describe it, again, this is in hindsight,

00:16:50.302 --> 00:16:51.922

whereas at the time, I had no idea.

00:16:52.502 --> 00:16:56.502

Before 26, I was very achievement-oriented, I was very gritty,

00:16:56.502 --> 00:17:01.122

to the point of this podcast, I had big dreams, and I was improvement-oriented

00:17:01.122 --> 00:17:04.002

toward those dreams, but I wasn't self-sufficient.

00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:09.860

Improvement-oriented. I wasn't personally developed. I was professionally developed.

00:17:10.140 --> 00:17:13.660

I wasn't personal growth. I was external growth.

00:17:13.920 --> 00:17:19.360

And so rather than achieving at the expense of fulfillment and inner work,

00:17:19.560 --> 00:17:21.540

I now flip the script hard.

00:17:21.800 --> 00:17:26.800

And that was nine years ago. I often playfully joke, I'm hoping to hit puberty at 36. I'm now 35.

00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:31.980

And I look very young. I know know, you haven't seen me, but I look very young.

00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:36.300

And so, so anyways, I often get made fun of, I look 12.

00:17:36.820 --> 00:17:42.980

So, but anyways, so now I fortunately, so I've been successful without fulfillment and that sucked.

00:17:43.300 --> 00:17:47.120

I have been fulfilled also without success because after that car accident,

00:17:47.180 --> 00:17:50.840

I went all the way past broke as a broke entrepreneur starting my own thing.

00:17:51.020 --> 00:17:52.220

I know a lot of people can relate.

00:17:52.580 --> 00:17:56.840

And so I've been successful without fulfillment. I've been professionally developed

00:17:56.840 --> 00:17:59.080

without self-improvement and personal development.

00:17:59.460 --> 00:18:02.240

And then I went all the the way past and I was fully personally developed,

00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:05.000

but I wasn't successful. And so I was fulfilled, but unsuccessful.

00:18:05.320 --> 00:18:08.160

And so I always say this, success without fulfillment sucks.

00:18:09.020 --> 00:18:14.920

Fulfillment without success turns out also sucks. And so the best way to move

00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:19.700

forward and what I've found over the last nine years really is how do you design

00:18:19.700 --> 00:18:23.660

a life that you can be successful and fulfilled simultaneously?

00:18:24.020 --> 00:18:29.480

How can you be professionally developed and personally How can you be the duality,

00:18:29.480 --> 00:18:34.100

the dance, the yin and the yang of a holistically well-rounded man or woman?

00:18:34.360 --> 00:18:39.220

And that's really what I've come to is it's actually really difficult to be

00:18:39.220 --> 00:18:42.580

ambidextrous in the 21st century. Yeah. Wow.

00:18:43.280 --> 00:18:49.880

What a crazy journey just to get to 26 years old.

00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:54.400

I mean, it's crazy when you think about it.

00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:59.800

And I want us to go back be