Ali Navid - Ready to Ditch Corporate and Unlock Financial Secrets? Discover How THRIVING MINDSETS Levels the Playing Field!

Ali Navid about his journey from the corporate world to crafting Thriving Mindsets financial education programs.  Ali was a former banking VP and private wealth advisor who managed client relationships with high net worth individuals and only working with wealthy people did not align with his personal values.  So, he made a transformative leap into offering the same high caliber financial education, but to thousands of regular everyday people at a very reasonable cost. He places the highest value on quality and has self-limited the number of individuals that he can accept at a time so that he can maintain an open line of communication with his students and so that he doesn't compensate quality.

He is the author of the bestselling book Stock Investing Without Fear and is driven by a passion for empowering others to make savvy investment choices and attain financial freedom more quickly. 

Subscribe on Apple Podcast , Spotify or other major streaming platforms.

If you have a comment, a question you wish I’d asked, an idea for an episode or want to say hi, I'd love to hear from you!

For inquiring guests, please keep in mind that this podcast is for the benefit of listeners and I am not interested in any “puff pieces.” Thank you for understanding!

Feel free to send me a message through my website, or through LinkedIn.

Follow the show/host on Instagram at
Anne McGinty Host.

Transcript

Ali Navid: 0:00

Stress is going to play such a big factor. If your mind is not going to be settled and calm, you're going to make mistakes because you're going to do things out of desperation, and you don't want to put yourself in that position.

Anne McGinty: 0:21

Welcome to the 23rd episode of how I Built my Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today we'll be talking with Ali Navid about his journey from the corporate world to crafting Thriving Mindsets financial education programs. Ali was a former banking VP and private wealth advisor who managed client relationships with high net worth individuals before making a transformative leap into offering the same high caliber financial education, but to thousands of regular everyday people. He is the author of the bestselling book Stock Investing Without Fear and is driven by a passion for empowering others to make savvy investment choices and attain financial freedom more quickly.

Anne McGinty: 1:23

He's been featured in the Times Digital Journal and on CNBC. You can find business in the episode's description. If you've been listening to the show, you know that I don't ask much of you, but if you have been enjoying the show, there is one thing that you can do to help me reach more listeners, and that is to please hit the follow button on your favorite streaming platform. Let's get started. Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Ali, thanks for coming on the show.

Ali Navid: 2:02

Yeah, I'm so glad I'm here. Thank you for having me.

Anne McGinty: 2:06

So, to start off, can you tell our listeners about Thriving Mindsets Like what is it that your company actually does?

Ali Navid: 2:14

Yeah, sure. So I've been in the financial industry for over a decade, right, and over this decade I've always worked with people to help them with their financial. And over this decade, I've always worked with people to help them with their financial questions, to essentially help them build out investment plans for them. And something that I realized was in my years in the banking. I realized that there are a lot of people out there that are just not being serviced properly because maybe they don't have the type of money that's needed for a financial advisor to help them out.

Ali Navid: 2:46

And so I thought to myself, how cool would it be if I created a service where I can teach people how to invest, I can show them through my own process of investing and I can show them my investment portfolio exactly. You know how I'm managing my investment portfolio in different market conditions, and so that people who are underserved or underserviced in the financial industry they can take this program and they can essentially learn from my footsteps on how to manage their own investment portfolio. So Thriving Mises is where people come in to learn how to invest and then, beyond that, they can even get more complex with, you know, meeting with me one on one, going through my own investment portfolio and whatnot to essentially get them more help so they can achieve their financial goals sooner, rather than going through this route on their own and, you know, maybe taking a decade or so to learn on their own own and, you know, maybe taking a decade or so to learn on their own.

Anne McGinty: 3:48

Well, this is an incredible service, because I feel like oftentimes the highest financial advice is reserved for the people with the most money, which is just kind of an ironic thing. So take us back to your earlier life before starting Thriving Mindsets.

Ali Navid: 4:04

Yeah, so right before starting Thriving Mindsets, I was a private wealth advisor and a vice president for Union Bank. So I worked with clients who were private banking clients. They had over a million dollars to invest and I would help them out with managing their relationships and then helping them invest as a team. It was myself, it was definitely other people involved in the relationships as well, and the total relationship that I was managing was over $70 million. But prior to that, actually really, I started at Bank of America, first when I was 18 years old as a teller and I just kept moving my way up higher, went to Wells Fargo and then, just as my experience increased, as my knowledge increased, I just kept moving up the corporate world until I got to Union Bank where I was a private wealth advisor.

Anne McGinty: 4:55

So what was the specific moment, then, when you decided to transition from corporate America to starting your own business from?

Ali Navid: 5:07

Good question. So there were a few things that contributed to me, you know, jumping into the business world, getting out of the corporate world. The first thing was that, being in a corporate world, being a licensed investment employee, I couldn't, you know, have social media or anything, so the most amount of people that I could reach out to was maybe a few hundred people, and I knew that my knowledge was unique in the investment world. So I really wanted to take the step out and help thousands of people, help millions of people, and I couldn't do that inside the corporate world. So that was one thing. And then the other thing was that, you know, I was just getting married right around that time when I wanted to leave the corporate world and I thought to myself do I want to be a father who has to ask for permission from his boss to take a few days off, or do I really want to just be available to my family? And that was one of the other things that really contributed to me leaving the corporate world.

Ali Navid: 6:10

And then the last thing was that and I think a lot of people can agree to this is there's a lot of times where you have to change your personal values, to shift that and shape that in a way that the corporate world is asking you. And so sometimes you have to step on your personal standards and you know, lower that personal standard to be something that the corporate world wants you to be. And that was something where you're probably okay with when you're in your twenties or maybe you just don't have enough money to save and you can't do something on your own. But there's a point in life where you say you know what, I'm just not going to do, that I'm going to keep my personal values and I'm not going to change that for another company. And so those things were the three major contributions that led me to decide that I need to get out of the corporate world and start my own business.

Anne McGinty: 7:08

Well, those all sound like incredible, very heart centered reasons. So, yeah, good for you.

Ali Navid: 7:14

Thank you.

Anne McGinty: 7:15

What were the first steps that you took? Once you decided, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to start thriving mindsets. What did you do next?

Ali Navid: 7:27

So, so I knew that if I wanted to start a business where it's, you know, my face is in the social media world, I knew that I'm stepping into a very saturated world, right? Anything you do today, you're stepping into something very, very saturated. Whether it's podcasts, whether it's finance, whether it's fitness, it's just all saturated. So how do you stand, you know, how do you stay unique?

Ali Navid: 7:51

So what I did was the first thing that I did was I published a book, because I wanted to have some credibility.

Ali Navid: 7:58

I wanted for people to look at me and say, oh, this guy knows something, this guy is out there. So I published a book and I worked really hard to get it to about 100 reviews, because I thought, you know, 100 reviews is going to be where people are going to say, okay, this guy is legit. So that was the first thing that I did. And then, beyond that, I started taking courses to learn how to run a business online, because there's so many things there is doing videos, there is editing videos, there is building up a website, there is building up a course, there is, you know, marketing, email marketing, social media marketing. There's just so much that you have to learn as a business owner in the beginning and you have to do all of these things on your own at first. So you know I look for courses. I think I paid a couple of thousand dollars to learn all of this. So I think the first few months I was just learning I was a student.

Anne McGinty: 8:57

Wow. Can you share the courses that you took?

Ali Navid: 9:26

no-transcript.

Anne McGinty: 9:32

It's amazing because when you talk about it, it's like, well, yeah, that makes so much sense. Of course, anybody can learn how to do anything, but hearing you lay out exactly which courses you took just makes it make a lot more sense. So how much capital did it require to get started?

Ali Navid: 9:47

Yeah, so my book I think it costed me about $7,000 to write my book, to pay editors, do the book design, all that stuff. It was about $7,000. I paid a couple thousand dollars to just learn from courses. There was another $2,000 where I paid for the software to run my website, to run my course.

Anne McGinty: 10:13

So what was it like taking a leap from a steady paycheck to the unknown?

Ali Navid: 10:20

So in the beginning you definitely you have a lot of fear in you. You're very nervous because you know I came from a job that was paying me well and I was getting married. And imagine you're, you're a married man and you're going from this high salary to zero right. So it's really scary in the beginning and it's, and the fear comes from not knowing what to expect. You just don't know what to expect. You're, you know that there are a set of things that you need to do, but you don't exactly know where you're going to end up a year from now, and so the fear is a lot in the beginning. But as you just keep building up and building up, you start to see small results coming in, that fear starts to go away and you know exactly what you need to do to just keep building that and making it bigger.

Anne McGinty: 11:14

And to get your first students to sign up. What was that process like?

Ali Navid: 11:19

So it's funny because so in my first few months I was just putting out videos on social media right, I was putting out videos as much as I can and one of my videos finally just got really viral on Facebook, I think at the time I had like 500 followers on Facebook and then all of a sudden one of them just got really viral and I woke up one day. I had like 5,000 followers and then I had 10,000, and I had 15 and I got to 20,000.

Anne McGinty: 12:19

And that first student. Did they know that they were your first student? I don't think they knew. It must have been a little bit. I mean, with every business right, it's clunky at the beginning and you're sort of working out your systems and but it sounds like it went through and I assume that the program has continued to develop from there. Can you share a success story from someone who has benefited significantly from your financial education programs?

Ali Navid: 12:49

Yeah, sure, so this wasn't my first student, but it was one of the first few students that I got into the program and he actually ended up narrating my book on Audible, so it happened to be a really good relationship.

Ali Navid: 13:04

His name is Mike super nice guy, semi-retired, very mellow, just an awesome, awesome person. He was in his sixties and he thought, you know, after going through narrating my book and talking to me multiple times, he thought you know, ali would be a really good person to meet with and have him manage my portfolio. And I had to break it to him that, mike, I'm sorry I can't manage portfolios anymore, I'm out of that world, but I can help you build up your investment strategies. And so we ended up doing a few one-on-one sessions and afterwards I built up his investment strategy for him and his wife according to being retired and fast forward a year. We actually met, I think, about a month ago and he's done incredibly well. I think he's probably close to about a hundred thousand dollars in profits from that meeting which happened to be just super awesome, Super awesome.

Anne McGinty: 14:06

Well, and I don't mind sharing. I mean, I follow you on Instagram and I took one of your tips and I made an investment based on it and I made 10 grand in a month. Oh, awesome, thank you.

Ali Navid: 14:18

I'm so happy to hear that.

Anne McGinty: 14:20

So when did you know that your business was going to work? When did that fear just completely disappear? Or maybe it hasn't, but was there a point that you reached when you thought I'm onto something and this is going to work?

Ali Navid: 14:35

Yeah. So I think I started feeling really comfortable when people started reaching out to me. So my pro investor program there's a limit on how many people I can bring into the program and I'm working really hard to increase that limit, but for now, you know, there's a limit. So I started feeling really comfortable when people reached out to me and saying hey, can I join your program please? You know I know there is a limit, can I join your program? And I felt really good at that point. Just knowing that there are people out there who want to join and they can't wait to join, just it put me in a comfortable mindset that I'm doing the right things and I just need to continue doing the same things at a bigger scale to grow the business.

Anne McGinty: 15:24

And what is the reason for the limitation on how many people you can bring into the program at any given time?

Ali Navid: 15:35

bring into the program at any given time. So the program is really built in a way that when you come in you have all the support from me. You have one-on-one sessions, you have Q&A sessions and then you can message me anytime inside the private community. So in order to provide that service to every person that comes in, I have to put a limit, because if I'm bringing in, you know, 100 people at a time, it would be impossible for one person for me to be able to give the same attention to 100 people. So I have to put a limit to make sure that I'm giving the best service possible. It's really hard for people to believe this, but I truly don't do this just for the money. I mean, it's great that the money is there, but I genuinely do it from the bottom of my heart to help people achieve something great in their lives. So in order to do that, I have to say no to too much money and just accept a limited amount so I can give the best service to people when they come in.

Anne McGinty: 16:33

That is really amazing. I mean, it's a self-inflicted limit and that is so incredible that you are aware of the dilution of the quality. If you were to just let everybody in that wanted to come in.

Ali Navid: 16:46

So that's very impressive, thank you.

Anne McGinty: 16:49

How has becoming an entrepreneur impacted you and your family and your life?

Ali Navid: 16:56

I think, in terms of time freedom, it's incredible.

Ali Navid: 17:00

I work actually a lot more hours as a business owner, but I also have control over that time.

Ali Navid: 17:07

So you know, if there's one day out of the week that I want to spend time with my wife because she's sick and she's at home, I can do that. I couldn't do that, being a corporate employee. If there is a time where you know my wife is tired, I'm tired and I, you know we want to get out and go away for a week, we can do that and I couldn't do that being in the corporate world. Being in the corporate world Now, I can just take my laptop and work out of anywhere and still provide the same service to my members and still be able to enjoy that time with my family. And I think we don't have kids right now, but you know, when we do have kids, I think this is going to be incredibly good for even our kids just being able to be a father and being available to my kids and not having to be at the mercy of the corporate world to take time off only when my boss allows me to take time off.

Anne McGinty: 18:01

Yeah, yeah, and being able to choose to fully unplug if you want to as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned working more hours, so how many hours a week are you working now?

Ali Navid: 18:15

So in the corporate world I was probably putting in maybe 40 to 50 hours a week. As a business owner, I'm doing it from Monday to Saturday, giving myself a day off on Sunday If I can. Sometimes I work on Sundays too. A day off on Sunday if I can. Sometimes I work on Sundays too, but say, monday through Saturday, and we're talking about maybe 7 am to 7 pm. So that's about 12 hours a day. So it's pushing over 60 hours a week.

Ali Navid: 18:45

But the great thing about that is that there is again one I'm loving what I'm doing. I'm truly enjoying like I really don't understand that I'm working 12 hours in a day, like I could go 12 hours and I feel like, oh, that was just an hour, you know. So that feeling is really good. And then, beyond that, if I want to unplug, like he said, for a couple of days, for half a day, I can still do that and I think that's one of the best things. Yes, you're working more as a business owner, but the flexibility that you have as a business owner is truly amazing versus working for a corporate.

Anne McGinty: 19:23

I agree wholeheartedly with that.

Ali Navid: 19:25

Right.

Anne McGinty: 19:26

Can you describe what is a typical Ali Navid work week? Look like what are you doing day to day?

Ali Navid: 19:33

Oh my gosh, there's a lot. So I'm still wearing a lot of hats and I think it's totally understandable for your first couple of years to just wear all the hats that you can. And then you know, my goal actually from this year is to wear less hats, to just do less. But right now I'm obviously meeting with my members every week, so I have to zoom. I have the Q&A sessions, that I'm researching the stock market every day to find the best opportunities to invest, so that takes up about four to five hours a day for me. And then beyond that I'm making videos, I'm posting them on social media and I also am trying to be in more social media platforms. So that's also another extra couple hours a day. And then beyond that I'm working on the website. I continue to work on the program to bring in more education inside the program. So I'm constantly redoing my videos, I'm constantly adding more videos to the program to bring more education. So it's a lot of work.

Anne McGinty: 20:48

It is, but you're building something and, like you said, the first couple of years you really you got to hit the ground running. You got to do it.

Ali Navid: 20:56

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Anne McGinty: 20:58

Can you discuss the evolution of thriving mindsets from your initial vision and maybe how it's transformed up until this point, and maybe what you see for the future too, too.

Ali Navid: 21:08

Yeah, so. So in the beginning it was just a course. It was just a course Like that's it. When I first thought of thriving mindsets, I said, okay, I'm going to build out a course and I'm going to call it the 30 day pro investor program, and it was designed so that you learn everything in 30 days. So you take my decade of experience and you learn it in 30 days. Decade of experience and you learn it in 30 days. So it was just a course.

Ali Navid: 21:37

And then, as I kept building out the program, I started to find out what people were looking for and how the course, the program, needs to be designed in a way that makes people's lives simple. Right that I bring in something where people can take it and it's super simple for them. Right, I brought in the TMV6 algorithm, where people don't need to be experts in technical analysis. They can just put an algorithm on their charts and the algorithm tells them when to buy a stock at deeply discounted prices. And then, beyond that, I started sending out investment alerts. So every time I bought and every time I sold a stock, I told people what I'm buying and what I'm selling. So everyone had the opportunity to capitalize on my research instead of doing research on their own.

Ali Navid: 22:25

And then I brought in the economic analysis, where, you know, once a year I send out economic reports and I'm telling people what's happening in a given year. That way they don't have to look at thousands of indicators and charts to find out what's happening in the economy. I'm taking that and I'm bringing it to them. And then, beyond that, then the one-on-one sessions came in. The Q&A sessions came in. The private community came in came in. The Q&A sessions came in. The private community came in. So it just kept evolving and becoming better and better and better. And to anyone out there who wants to build a business, the thing that I say is start out, but be open to the fact that your business model is going to change over time as you learn more about your clients and your prospects. You are going to need to evolve to better serve the world that you're looking to focus on.

Anne McGinty: 23:20

Yeah, so stay flexible.

Ali Navid: 23:22

Stay flexible Absolutely, because it's going to constantly change.

Anne McGinty: 23:26

How did you figure out what it was that people were looking for? Did you hold interviews or were you just looking at comments from the book Like how did you figure that out?

Ali Navid: 23:38

So it's probably a combination of a lot of things. One, the feedback that I get from people. Two, sometimes a lot of the feedback is just people's hesitations. You know you have to figure out what is it that's holding people back from doing business with you, and a lot of times they're not just going to tell you that you have to do a lot of digging right. So, finding out what are people's hesitations.

Ali Navid: 24:05

And then, three, one of the things that you can do is to go on Reddit, to go on other social media platforms and even to go on Amazon and read through people's comments.

Ali Navid: 24:18

So let's say, you know, if you're in a fitness niche and you want to see what is it that people are looking for, go on Reddit and find out what questions people are asking.

Ali Navid: 24:29

Go on Amazon and look at fitness books and go into the comments section, the review section, and find out what is it that people don't like about the book and you can start implementing that in your business or your program or your course. And then go out into social media platforms and look at the gurus out there, people who have 500,000 or a million followers, and look at what comments people are putting in on the videos what questions they're asking and you can get a lot of indications as to how to build out your business to cater to those people. Because, essentially, as you start putting out videos and you start marketing yourself, people are going to notice that you know what. Ali is offering something else that's different from everybody else and is offering all of these really good things that I never thought I needed it, but now that I think about it I need all of those things.

Anne McGinty: 25:24

That is so sappy. That is such good advice.

Ali Navid: 25:44

You're even making me just wonder for myself, like how can I improve as a podcaster? Yeah, I should be looking at the people who are hating in the comments, because because I know they're frustrated and it sucks for people to show their frustrations, especially if you're like a content maker or you have things out there but people's frustrations can be turned into amazing opportunities.

Anne McGinty: 26:09

Right, yeah, it's a gap. It's like a sliver it's a gap. Oh my gosh, it's so smart.

Ali Navid: 26:14

Yeah.

Anne McGinty: 26:14

Can you give us an idea of what your business growth has been like since you started?

Ali Navid: 26:20

So I started. Let's see, 2023 was like the year where I really went really strong in this. 2022 was when I was building out the program and the course, and it actually took me a good six months to build out my course just the contents, the video editing, you know what topics I should talk about. It took a really good six months. So 2023 was the time when I started putting out videos and everything, and that's when I started attracting people to the program. So I'd say you know your first six months.

Ali Navid: 26:58

If you're going to put out a program or a course, your first six months is you shouldn't be expecting anything and hopefully you've had enough saved up from your corporate world to pay for your life expenses until you can start getting clients, right. So first six months was nothing. Then the second six months, I started getting some clients and then I'd say, since the third quarter of 2023, that's when I started seeing the business really starting to pick up it takes time for people to trust you, the business really starting to pick up. It takes time for people to trust you. It takes time for people to know that you're genuine, that you genuinely care about them, and so if you're not getting business in the first six months or a year. It's not because something is wrong with your business model. Of course, you should always be improving your business model and your offer. But it also takes just. You just have to know that it takes time for people to trust you and come into your program or do business with you.

Anne McGinty: 27:58

And have you been doing anything to just help keep yourself sort of mentally and emotionally lifted? Because I know at the beginning of a business, when the revenue is not coming in as quickly as you want it to the first six months it can be very disheartening and it can give you self-doubt and it can make people feel like they have imposter syndrome. I mean, I know that's a very used word these days, but it's real. So how did you navigate that part of the process?

Ali Navid: 28:30

How did you navigate that part of the process so that fear is not going to go away? You know doubting yourself, second, questioning yourself as to whether this is going to work or not. It's not going to go away, but it's just going to become less as you continue to progress. One of the things that's truly helped me in my life is meditation. For me, controlling emotions is all about a meditation practice, and it's helped me as an investor a lot, and I always tell people in my first few years of investing in the stock market, I actually wasn't profitable and it was because I couldn't control my emotions. And when I started to control my emotions, finally my mind started to become very objective. I knew exactly what I need to do to grow, and it's the same thing in business as well.

Ali Navid: 29:21

If you have all of these emotions, you know controlling your actions throughout the day, it's going to be really hard to be productive, and the way I always describe emotions is emotions is like a dust on your windshield.

Ali Navid: 29:36

Right, they're like dust, and if you have dust sitting on your windshield, you're not going to see your path very clearly. So what you need to do is to to turn on your windshield wiper, and the way you do that is through meditation, to lower the emotions. And when you lower the emotions you see everything more clearly. You can be more objective and you can have plan A and a plan B. You know, sometimes if your business is not picking up that quickly, maybe it would be wise to have a plan B, maybe say you know, I'm going to work somewhere part time. That may make your mind a little bit easier, knowing that you have some income coming in in the meantime, just so that you're not nervous or anything. Because you can't show your audience that you're nervous, it's going to be really hard to attract people. If you're going to be nervous, if you're going to show people that you're desperate for that income, it's going to be really hard to attract customers.

Anne McGinty: 30:33

Yeah, totally agree. And so meditation, is this a part of your daily practice, your daily life?

Ali Navid: 30:41

Yeah, twice a day. If I can do 30 minutes a day each time, that's prime Like if you can do two meditations a day, one in the morning, one at night 30 minutes each time, and learn to control your emotions that way it's absolutely going to be a game changer. You can accomplish anything, anything by controlling your emotions, because I always say, your thoughts lead to emotions, your thoughts carry emotions, your emotions lead to certain results, and so if you can control the thoughts that are entering your mind, then you can control the emotions, and if you can control the emotions, you can control the end result.

Anne McGinty: 31:26

Yeah, I think meditating twice a day would be an ideal for me. Every time I make time to meditate, I'm always so grateful that I did, and so I just have to remember to not let it escape me. Well, it's hard. It is hard. It's like having a regular practice to anything.

Ali Navid: 31:42

Yeah, you have to stay committed, Especially when you have kids and you're running a business. It's a lot to say. I'm going to carve out another 30 minutes a day. You're right.

Anne McGinty: 31:53

So, with thriving mindsets now, is this your main source of revenue, or how many sources of revenue do you have to support your lifestyle?

Ali Navid: 32:02

Sure so thriving mindsets, the book sales and also my income through the stock market. So if I would do, you know, an options trade or something throughout the month, that would generate income for me as well. It's pretty much those three things.

Anne McGinty: 32:18

And how costly is it to put together the programs and the videos? What are your expenses like?

Ali Navid: 32:25

So running an online business, you don't have a physical store, so you don't have that expense. If you want to work from home, you could just make one of your rooms into a home office, and if you own your house, that could be good tax write-off for you as well. But beyond that, your major expense is going to be the softwares. You're going to need softwares to run your business, software to have your courses somewhere, software for email marketing, software for business analytics, software for having a private community, if you want to set up a private community. So I would say those are the main things. It's all going to be softwares. And then, beyond that, if you want to advertise to scale your business, to find more customers, then I'd say your biggest expense is going to be advertising. But hopefully that expense is a revenue generating expense, which is going to be fine.

Anne McGinty: 33:19

And for you, like, for your vision for the future of thriving mindsets and how you want to scale its impact in the coming years. Are you advertising or how are you planning to create that and support that growth?

Ali Navid: 33:33

Yeah. So you're asking that question at a good timing, because yesterday I just hired a mentor to essentially help me take my business to the next level and this is probably my biggest, my most expensive payment to a course or a mentorship, which was about $24,000. It's $24,000 a year and what I wanted to do is to pay somebody who's gone this path, who is 10 years, 20 years ahead of me, who can tell me exactly what I need to do to scale this business to 10x, 20x and 30x. So that's my vision for this year, and next year is to scale the business to a 10x.

Anne McGinty: 34:21

That's incredible. I've heard multiple entrepreneurs say how important mentorship is when they're starting a business or scaling. How did you find your mentor?

Ali Navid: 34:32

So I just went through social media and tried to find people who essentially can help businesses scale and what I did was I wrote down their names, I followed their platforms that I went through. Some of them have free content so you can go through their free course or something and get a feel for them and see which one is the most genuine person that you want to work with. But absolutely, mentors are so essential and I think it's the most essential expense as a business owner or if you want to do anything, because essentially, with a mentor, you're buying time. You know that somebody has gone this path for 10 or 20 years and you're buying 10 years of mistakes, 10 years of errors, and you're allowing yourself to just cut through that by small payment. 24,000 for what I want to achieve is going to be very small payment, because I know that paying somebody who can teach me that path is going to lead to so much more revenue and growth.

Anne McGinty: 35:37

Well, I can't wait to see where you take this. So I've got two more questions for you, and you did touch on one of them a little bit already, but maybe you have more to offer. What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs who are interested in leaving their corporate jobs, like you did?

Ali Navid: 35:53

So if you don't have a year worth of expenses saved, I'd say the first thing, the most important thing you could do, is to start early while you're working at a corporate.

Ali Navid: 36:05

In my case, I couldn't because it would have been a conflict of interest, so I had to, you know, save a year and make sure that I can quit and then start my business. But if it's not going to be a conflict of interest for you, then make sure that you start ahead of time. There's so much that you can learn by starting a year early. If you put in an extra three hours a day and just take some courses, build out your website, research what you want to offer to people and, you know, make your offer really good. If you can do that in your first year and if it's not a conflict of interest, like, start putting out content and social media, that would save you out a lot of time. And doing this while you're making an income from your corporate world, you're not going to be nervous. You're not going to have that anxiety that oh my gosh, I need to take off immediately and a lot of times they haven't worked out because they didn't have the safety net.

Anne McGinty: 37:16

And if they had that safety net they could just really approach the business without the stress.

Ali Navid: 37:22

Exactly that stress is going to play such a big factor. If your mind is not going to be settled and calm, you're going to make mistakes because you're going to do things out of desperation and you don't want to put yourself in that position.

Anne McGinty: 37:37

Yeah, that's right. So for a closing question, if you could go back and talk to yourself when you were 18, 19, 20, what advice would you give to yourself?

Ali Navid: 37:49

I think the most important thing is learn, learn, learn and keep taking actions. Practice doesn't make things perfect, it's perfect practice, and I've seen a lot of people I mean even you know as as a mentor, as a stock market educator, as an investing educator I see a lot of people coming into the investing world and just start buying stocks. They don't know what stocks they're buying, they don't know how they're buying them, they don't know the financial metrics, and so practice doesn't make things perfect. Just buying stocks or starting a business not knowing what to do it doesn't make your business perfect. It's perfect practice that makes things perfect. So learn as much as you can pay mentors, pay courses, and you're going to really buy time for yourself and then just keep taking actions, improve your process and just keep taking actions.

Ali Navid: 38:46

Imagine you're in the wilderness and you have a river running. You're on this, on this side of the river, and then on the other side of the river is your life goals. Okay, how do you get to the other side? You got to build a bridge, right? So knowledge is going to be that bridge where you can cross over and get to your goals. So if you try to start something without knowledge, it would be like you walking into the river and then you're just going to get carried away with the river, right? So you don't want to just take actions right away. You want to build a bridge, and that bridge is going to be your knowledge, and then, as you're building up the bridge, start taking actions until you get to your life goals.

Anne McGinty: 39:32

I love that and it reminds me of my dad, who he passed away, but he was always always learning, I mean up until the day he died. There was something he was always learning, yeah, and I just I think that's so important.

Ali Navid: 39:49

I think so too.

Anne McGinty: 39:50

Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your knowledge with all of us.

Ali Navid: 39:55

Of course, anne, thank you for having me. It was great. This was really fun.

Anne McGinty: 40:03

As always, thanks for being here. Today's key takeaways If you have to shift your personal values or standards in order to fulfill your job at work, that might be a sign that it's time to look for other options. If you want to start your own business but you don't currently have the skills you would need to do so, pinpoint the exact skills you need for the type of business you want to start and invest in the education to learn them. At the beginning of any business, you'll be wearing many hats and you'll be a student learning. You will face fear because you don't always know what to expect, but as you build your skills and experience, that fear will start to go away. For at least the first two years of most businesses, you will likely be working more than full time, but you'll also have new freedoms, like choosing when to work. That flexibility has tremendous value. Has tremendous value. Plus, what you are building has the potential to far supersede what you could make from your corporate job. Stay flexible and be ready for your business model to evolve over time. If you need ideas for what people want, dive into negative feedback and reviews for other authors or business owners in what you find to be an interesting niche, then find the gap and fill it. If you aren't getting tremendous sales in the first six months to a year, just remember that it takes time to build trust with customers and for them to know that you are genuine. If people see that you are desperate for the income, it's going to be a lot harder to attract customers.

Anne McGinty: 41:58

Meditation is a powerful tool to tackle self-doubt and control emotions. In Ollie's words, emotions can be like dust on your windshield and you won't be able to see your path clearly. Your thoughts lead to emotions and if you can control your emotions, you can control the end result. Seek out mentors with 10 to 20 or more years of experience and who are willing to share their. You can find a saving. At least a year's worth of living expenses can provide a safety net and a safety net can remove stress and if your mind isn't settled and calm, you're going to make mistakes because you'll do things out of desperation and finally never stop learning, learn, learn, learn and take action. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.