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Alan Lazaros should have died when his Honda wrapped like tin foil around a utility pole.
With his face shattered and jaw wired shut, he spent his time in rehab tallying every choice that had led him to an expensive car and an empty life. The audit hurt worse than the surgeries: a straight-A trophy, a six-figure paycheck, and zero purpose. So he burned the résumé, quit engineering, and built a podcast studio in his mom’s basement.
Today, the young man who almost paid the ultimate price in a split-second crash operates a seven-figure mentorship brand that teaches people how to scale their success without losing themselves.
Stick with me and next we’ll unpack the four-step reset Alan used to turn wreckage into rocket fuel so you can map it onto your own detour.
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The Night Everything Bent
A January drizzle turned to black ice when Alan Lazaros missed a curve on a Massachusetts back road.
His Honda slid sideways, sheared a telephone pole, and folded like foil. Medics pulled him out with a shattered jaw, fractured face, and bruised ribs. As they cut him free, one thought flashed: his ‘dream life’ felt empty. In the trauma ward, that thought became a vow.
If he survived, he’d rebuild a life that felt as good inside as it looked outside.
High achievement without aligned purpose is debt you pay in soul, not dollars.
The Brutal Self-Audit
Months of wired-shut recovery left plenty of quiet.
Alan filled notebooks with every choice that had shaped his twenty-six years. Good grades won parental praise but never defined a passion. Even the shiny Honda that nearly killed him was bought for status, not joy. He color-coded each entry green if it served a purpose, red if it served only ego, and yellow if unclear. Eighty percent glowed red.
The exercise stung like disinfectant yet revealed a simple equation.
🧠 Did you know? 💡
Trauma can fuel growth; researchers estimate that 50–66% of people who survive a life-threatening event report "post-traumatic growth"—lasting boosts in meaning, relationships, and appreciation of life. (learn more)
Write it, share it, smash it: in a Dominican University study, participants who wrote their goals and e-mailed weekly progress updates to a friend achieved 76 % of their objectives—nearly double the 43 % rate of those who kept goals in their head. (learn more.)
Podcasting’s elite tier is tiny: industry data show that a new episode needs just 1,048 downloads in its first seven days to land in the top 5% of all shows—a threshold Alan’s 1,000-plus-episode series now clears routinely. (learn more.)
Burning the Old Blueprint
When the jaw wires came off, comfortable habits went into the trash.
Alan resigned, sold the condo, and moved into his mother’s spare bedroom to slash overhead. He put the cash cushion toward coaching, books, and a ninety-nine-dollar USB microphone. The plan was to radically focus on three pillars: health, mindset, and influence. He committed to one new habit every ninety days, tracked daily wins on a whiteboard, and recorded the process in a podcast called Next Level University. The first upload reached thirteen listeners. Episode fifty reached one hundred. Episode one hundred reached one thousand.
Growth was slow but steady because each quarter the whiteboard numbers improved a little more, and the show documented the proof.
Watch the full podcast:
Compounding Through Consistency
By the thousandth episode, the show streamed on every continent and Alan mentored founders whose companies out-earned his former firm.
Observers called it an overnight success, but the math tells a different story. Three measurable habits drove the flywheel. First, a daily speaking rep counter reduced filler words and sharpened delivery. Second, a five-time-per-week workout streak protected energy for creative work. Third, a compulsory daily outreach introduced him to one new person who might collaborate, invest, or teach.
None of these tasks took more than sixty minutes total, yet together they pushed every metric—audience, revenue, impact—because gains in one pillar lifted the others. Consistency became a force multiplier stronger than talent.
Alan’s Four-Step Reset You Can Start Today
Radical Twenty-Four-Hour Audit
Reserve one evening this week.
List every activity, expense, and relationship from the previous seven days.
Label each item Help, Hurt, or Neutral in relation to the life you actually want.
Circle three Hurt items to eliminate in the next seven days.
Purpose Alignment Filter
Write a single-sentence mission that fires you up.
For the next week accept tasks only if they move that sentence forward.
Park everything else in a “Later or Never” document. Review it monthly.
Daily Scorecard System
Choose three Most Important Tasks for tomorrow: one for health, one for wealth, and one for relationships.
Add one quantifiable metric to each task. Example: 30 push-ups, 15 cold calls, 1 handwritten note.
Track completion every evening with a simple check mark. Progress is visible and addictive.
Weekly Accountability Loop
Schedule a thirty-minute call each Friday with a friend or mastermind group.
Share your scorecard totals, biggest win, and biggest miss.
Set the next week’s three MITs on the call before hanging up.
Public commitment plus real-time feedback doubles follow-through.
Run this cycle for ninety days and the pattern that lifted Alan from wreckage to worldwide mentor and podcast coach will begin to lift you too.
Ready to level up for real? Enroll yourself at Next Level University and start climbing today. → https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/
That’s a wrap!
Talk soon,
Roman
Struggles? Good.
I help founders turn their story, values, and experience into a high-trust newsletter that attracts the right clients and drives consistent growth.
It’s all backed by real scars. I built and scaled a 7-figure nanotech business, sold over $10M in sales, lost it all, and rebuilt from scratch—twice.
If you’re ready to scale your business, let’s talk.
👇🏼
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