A year into podcasting, Alan's coach Alex told him to pick one thing to go all in on. Alan resisted. He's always been a super achiever — why pick one when you can have it all? But Alex pushed: hypothetically, if you had to choose just one, which would it be?

"I think it would be the podcast," Alan said.

"Why?"

"It fulfills me the most. And I don't need permission to practice my craft — I just show up on the mic."

Alan's response: "Here's the paradox. If you go all in on that one, you can have all the rest."

He was right.

One of the most powerful frameworks Alan shares is the difference between the doom loop and the success loop.

The doom loop: you don't believe in yourself, so you invest less, get fewer results, believe even less, and spiral down. The success loop is the opposite — belief drives investment, investment drives results, results drive more belief.

But here's the catch. The doom loop isn't always visible. Most people's actual self-belief is far lower than what they project on social media. After 7,000+ coaching hours, Alan says this is the biggest thing he's learned: people act like they believe in themselves. Very few actually do at depth.

That gap is where the real work is.

When asked what he'd say to the one listener who needed to hear something from him, Alan came back to the same idea every time: personal responsibility.

It wasn't his fault his dad died when he was two. It wasn't his fault his stepdad left at 14. But it was his responsibility to build something from that. No one was coming to save him. No one is coming to save any of us.

"Personal responsibility is where it starts. That has to be the foundation of everything you build your life on."

For podcasters, this means: stop waiting for the perfect setup, the right guest, the big break. You have the mic. The decision is yours.

Whether you're at episode 1 or episode 1,000, Alan's message is the same: go all in on the one thing that fulfills you. Not because it's easy — because it's the only version of the story where everything else eventually follows.

Listen to the full episode of Loving the Journey wherever you get your podcasts, and connect with Alan at nextleveluniverse.com.