How I Built My Small Business

Ana Homayoun - Why Traditional Success Is Outdated: Erasing The Finish Line

• Season 1 • Episode 46

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Ana Homayoun shares insights gained from over two decades of working with young people.

Ana is the founder of Silicon Valley-based Green Ivy Educational Consulting and the executive director of Luminaria Learning Solutions, a non-profit focused on developing executive functioning skills in classrooms. She’s the author of four books, including her latest, Erasing the Finish Line: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admissions, which highlights the essential skills students and young adults need to thrive.

As an academic advisor and early career development expert, Ana blends executive functioning, technology, and personal development, working directly with students, schools, and global organizations. Her work has been featured in media outlets such as Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and NPR.

Connect with Ana Homayoun:

www.greenivyed.com 

www.anahomayoun.com

www.luminarialearning.org

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Anne McGinty:

Welcome to how I Built my Small Business. I'm Anne McGinty and today we have Ana Homayoun with us to share insights gained from over two decades of working with young people. Anna is the founder of Silicon Valley-based Green Ivy Educational Consulting and the executive director of Luminaria Learning Solutions, a nonprofit focused on developing executive functioning skills in classrooms. She's the author of four books, including her latest, erasing the Finish Line, the New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admissions, which highlights the essential skills students and young adults need to thrive. As an academic advisor and early career development expert, anna blends executive functioning technology and personal development, working directly with students, schools and global organizations. Working directly with students, schools and global organizations, her work has been featured in media outlets such as Good Morning America, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, fast Company and NPR. You can find a link through to her business and nonprofit in the episode's description.

Anne McGinty:

Before we jump into the interview, if you're ever short on time, I bullet point the key takeaways in the last three minutes. In the beginning, I typically get background on my guest for framing and context and then, as the interview unfolds, I try to extract the most helpful, applicable and insightful content. My hope is that something you hear inspires you or gives you perspective. If you enjoy the show, please follow, share it with a friend and check out the other episodes that might catch your interest. Let's get started To anyone listening in. Thanks for being here, ana. Welcome to the show.

Ana Homayoun:

Thanks so much for having me.

Anne McGinty:

So can you share a bit about your background and what inspired you to focus on education and personal development?

Ana Homayoun:

Yeah, so I've been working with students and young adults for over 23 years now, and people often know what they love to do, and it often starts by something they like to do in middle school and high school. Right, there was a woman that wrote an article for the New York Times years ago and she had said I've interviewed thousands of people about their careers and the people who tend to love their jobs the most. It started as something they like to do in middle school and high school, and so, for me, I was always helping classmates, and when I graduated from college, I had always realized that many of my classmates that were incredibly intelligent also struggled with developing systems. So I had actually worked in finance before, but I always missed working with students, realizing that, you know, that's really where I wanted to spend my time and energy is creating systems with students and helping them learn how to organize, plan, prioritize, start and complete tasks and be adaptable when things don't go as planned.

Anne McGinty:

Were you always an organized person.

Ana Homayoun:

No, From the outside, in absolutely Like people will look at our office it's super organized. They'll look at my house, but I am one of those people that I have to have systems, I have to have routines. I come from a place where I need these things for myself too to regulate and I can get off track just like everyone else. And I also know that people that struggle with attention, struggle with focus, but can hyper focus on certain tasks right. They understand what it feels like to feel unfocused and sort of unmoored, and I think one of the talents that I bring to the work that I do is that I don't come from a place of overarching judgment or shame, or you should do it this way. I really come as a level set of like how can we work together to figure out what's going to work best for you?

Anne McGinty:

With your latest book, Erasing the Finish Line. How has your perspective shifted, having worked with students over more than two decades?

Ana Homayoun:

Yeah, in my very first book there is a young man named Henry, and Henry was diagnosed with ADHD. When he first walked into my office he had a two seven GPA and over the course of the next two years he went from like a two seven to a three three, to a three seven to three eight, and he really accomplished these personal goals though. So it wasn't grade focused, it was like that happened, but he had all these personal goals for himself. That also happened. So it wasn't grade focused, it was like that happened, but he had all these personal goals for himself. That also happened, and it was all about this time, structure and support.

Ana Homayoun:

So Henry ended up going to college and graduating and then, about four years ago, his mom emailed me and said you know, it's amazing, henry says that all of the work that he does in his job today, all of the things that he has put in place to be successful and he's incredibly successful started out of things he learned in your office.

Ana Homayoun:

And again, this was a student that was seen as the class clown. He didn't have his own self-confidence around how to learn, how he learns best. So the book came about really as let me go back and visit my students from 10 to 15 years ago to hear their stories, to hear what are the things that have been fundamental to their success. Because I know that in my office every year people are so worried about college admissions, people are so worried about grades and test scores and that that hyper focus on that causes us to lose sight on the things that we all know as older adults is really important. Whether we start a business, whether we're working with our family, whether we are, you know, whatever our goals are for ourselves, it isn't the grades, the test scores and the college admissions that is the long-term driver of our own health and well-being and our happiness.

Anne McGinty:

How do you approach this when students do need to apply to college and place focus on their academics in order to get in, but then you also want them to maintain that perspective on what really makes you happy as an adult? How do you approach that?

Ana Homayoun:

Great question. I'm actually not saying an either, or I'm saying both are better. So what I mean by that is I'm not saying you won't get good grades or do well in school or be academically successful. I'm saying it's actually going to be better for you if we focus on these fundamentals. If we focus on executive functioning skills, that's the first pillar of my book is around systems. If we focus on executive functioning skills, that's the first pillar of my book is around systems.

Ana Homayoun:

If we focus on the second pillar, around connection we know that loneliness is an epidemic, that the surgeon general has called an epidemic. We know that 70% of Gen Zers and millennials say that they feel lonely. That's an issue, and so helping young kids figure out how to find authentic connection also drives academic well-being. We know the social affects the academic. Any parent will tell you right. A child comes home with a social issue that is going to impact how they feel about themselves, how they feel about school, how they feel about their academics. So if we can make sure that every kid develops a system that works for them, that they can also get back on track when things don't go as planned, it's also confidence building, right. So we talk a lot about the research around intrinsic motivation that we know that we want our kids to feel like they have choices and they feel like they are competent and feel like they have a sense of belonging.

Ana Homayoun:

So the pillars that I talk about in Erasing the Finish Line and I show families what you can do at home, I show educators what can you do in the classroom to build those pillars are all tied into building intrinsic motivation for kids.

Ana Homayoun:

And when we build the intrinsic motivation, kids are coming and saying no, no, no. I want to focus on only one task at a time. I want to get organized, because it's de-stressing for me when kids come into my office. All the time adults are saying how do you make kids excited about being organized? And I say, well, I make it all about them. I always say you know, what would you do with an extra seven to 10 hours of free time? What are your own goals for yourself? And kids come up with the most interesting things. It's really about helping students figure out what's important to them and helping them find the pathway to get there. Now, in doing that, oftentimes the grades, the test scores, the activities, the involvement, the engagement off the charts, because they've now felt safe to explore and they have a system to back up.

Anne McGinty:

I love your approach. It sounds much more holistic when it comes to education and success, and it actually reminds me a lot of how people approach their own personal health when it comes to well-being and emotions trickling over into their personal and private lives. What is the age range of the students that you work with?

Ana Homayoun:

We work with middle school, high school, college students, and then we see some young adults that are in the workforce the youngest is probably the fifth grade. Most are in middle school and high school and then we see a fair number of college students, because that transition to college particularly for students that their high school part of it was online or part of it was during COVID that's really been tricky for them, that transition to college. A lot of things that we're seeing right now particularly is that writing skills for a certain segment of students has been really impacted, like they didn't get as much time to practice their writing and build their writing skills. I have several students that are going to college next year and we've been working all summer on developing those writing skills. That just didn't happen.

Ana Homayoun:

And so we have people in our office who specialize in middle school, specialize in high school, specialize in working with college students, and then we also work on the college application process, helping students organize it so it's less stressful. It's all about using that as one part of your journey and your own self-discovery. So, like that personal statement, we see it as a building block for you discovering who you are and really identifying who you are and what's important to you, so you can build your own blueprint for success, because we know that's so key and it ties into entrepreneurship. Not everyone is gonna be an entrepreneur, but we all have the ability to be the entrepreneur in our own life, to build our own lives.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, I know what you mean about COVID really shaking things up and making the learning environment so challenging for some of these kids. Right when you mentioned the writing skills, how do you approach all of the emerging technologies you know chat, gpt and cloud AI like when it comes to helping students with their writing skills, knowing that these platforms are becoming even more readily available?

Ana Homayoun:

Yeah, such a great question. One of the things that has been really helpful is that we do take certain things offline and then we also keep them online, but really in the most analog fashion of online right. So one document I actually don't think AI or all of these cloud platforms are going to take away the need to be a good writer. This last go around that we were doing hiring right. We were hiring for a position. We had 400 applicants and we interviewed 50 of them and a number of them. When we got to the interview, within two minutes 30 seconds, we could figure out first of all, this person didn't write their cover letter or their resume. Based on that, we had given them an initial interview which was only 15 minutes.

Ana Homayoun:

But my whole point is then they get online and I can easily tell. Actually, it took me three or four Cause I was like what is happening? Like cause I hadn't done hiring in this way for a few years, and then I was like, oh my gosh, they have used AI and chat, gp, all the things. Write a good cover letter, but you're going to have to show up, you're going to have to be present. So if your written communication and your verbal communication actually aren't aligned or we can see such a discrepancy that's not going to be, in the long-term, beneficial to you. So I actually believe we would need to work harder, because kids need these skills more. And all the time in my office right, I'm working with kids. They draft an email to their teacher at a very basic level. We edit it together. Right, when we go into the workforce, when we go into life, when we're asking people to help us, these are critical connecting skills, right, just like small talk, just like all the things that we take for granted.

Anne McGinty:

Quite frankly, I mean they're second nature to us in our adult lives. But kids today? They have a completely different learning experience than we grew up with. So for any parents that are listening in, do you have any lessons or insights that you have learned from working with students that you could parlay into advice for them?

Ana Homayoun:

Absolutely. One of the biggest things is that we underestimate the amount of time structure and support that students need and that it needs to be consistent. So, whether that's, you come up with the daily and weekly times that students do homework, free of distractions, and you create that space. Whether that's a kitchen table, the dining room table For some kids, you sit there, you read the paper or you do your own work and it becomes this work time. You need to gamify it too. This shouldn't be punishment. That you gamify it like set a timer for 30 minutes and you go through your purse or your briefcase or your your desktop and they go through their backpack and their their iPad and get everything organized. They look at their online learning portal, they plan out their week on the weekly planner, but you as a, as a parent, creating the time structure, support for that, instead of just saying, oh go, do that, why haven't you done that? Why haven't done that? You haven't done that right.

Ana Homayoun:

The reality of kids today is they have such an information overload. There's so many inputs coming at them and the thing that we can do as adults is reduce those inputs, whether that's if they're a teenager with a phone to take off the notifications right, or to turn off their phone for a certain number of hours every day and every week so that they're truly offline. And then the other piece around it is coming from a place of nonjudgmental regrouping. So if something doesn't go as planned, kids need a safe space where they're going to say I messed that up or that didn't go well, without feeling judged. So the idea is what are the steps you want to take to move forward right and asking these open-ended questions without judgment, because what often happens for kids is that they get stressed out. Some of it's very internal. We have a lot of perfectionists that are very stressed out and then that leads into a shame spiral and that leads to task paralysis.

Ana Homayoun:

So the third thing I would say is a thing that you can do at home with your kids, if they're in middle school or high school, even younger kids but I always have them self-evaluate, like on a scale of one to five or one to 10, tell me where you are in terms of organizing to five or one to 10, tell me where you are in terms of organizing, planning, prioritizing, starting and completing tasks and being adaptable when something doesn't go as planned. So a lot of times I'll have kids who struggle with ADHD or distraction in general and they'll say I am great at starting things, I'm not great at finishing them. Or I am great at being adaptable but I'm not great at organizing or planning. Or I am great at being adaptable but I'm not great at organizing and planning. But you want them to identify their strengths. I have perfectionists, on the other hand, who say I'm great at organizing and planning, not so great sometimes at prioritizing, but I really struggle to start tasks. It's very hard for me to be adaptable when things don't go as planned.

Ana Homayoun:

And we know as adults, especially as entrepreneurs, being adaptable is actually critically important that if you cannot say, hey, you know what that sucks, I'm going to process it, but tomorrow I'm going to find a solution, or next week I'm going to figure it out.

Ana Homayoun:

Or, yeah, that wasn't plan A, but I got plan B, c and D lined up because that's just how it goes right.

Ana Homayoun:

That adaptability we underestimate because in this sort of hyper focus on grades, test scores, college admissions, we forget that if a child is very rigid in their way of looking at things and is not able to adapt somewhere down the line, that's going to become overwhelming for them. I believe that we need to make executive functioning skills the forefront and the foundational skill that all middle school students are really focused on. Because we have seen, we've implemented our nonprofit program, luminaria Learning in Schools and what we see is that after a period of time where there's that time, structure and support from the school perspective around writing in your planner, around organizing your binder, around planning out your week, student stress goes down, they feel less stressed, they feel more organized, they are willing to take healthy risks because now there's the safety of they're not constantly worried that they forgot something and if they did forget something, they know how to get back on track when you're doing anything in life right Once you have that sense of safety, you're more willing to expand.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, absolutely. In the 23 years that you have been doing this, have you noticed any generational shifts over those decades, like in executive function and critical thinking skills?

Ana Homayoun:

I love that question and I have to say so. What's funny to me is my first book that crumpled paper was due last week was written in 2010. And I wrote it because a university administrator had said to me do you know that we have a crisis in boys' education? They're not going to college at the same rates, they're not graduating. Now this was 2005. We're still having the same discussion 16 years, 15 years, 20 years later. And I said well, have you looked at their backpacks? Because middle school boys, it's like an explosion. Have you looked? And he kind of laughed at me. I was like I'm actually not kidding. So we had the backpacks, but then those became the iPads or the Chromebooks, and so what has happened over time is that crumpledness becomes less physical and now more digital.

Ana Homayoun:

And the distractions, right? The number one thing that kids need to use to complete their work is their biggest distraction from getting work done. So when a kid used to come into my office in the early 2000s and I would say what are your biggest distractions, they would say food, sleep, my siblings my dog right. Now, if I ask a high school student, they'll just be like my phone, right. And I was like can you be more specific, because the phone is like a general thing and so, but what we're forgetting is that there's a lot more information inputs. There's information overload for these kids and we get mad at them, but yet we as adults really struggle with staying off our phone, right? We're like you should have figured this out, you, why are you on social media? And then yet we're scrolling Instagram or we're on the things.

Ana Homayoun:

So I really come from a place of empathy and compassion around. We're in this together. Let's find solutions together. No kid wants to feel crummy because they spent too much time online and they have FOMO or they just feel not great, right, and that. Yet there are energizing experiences that students have with technology that promote their sense of connection, that promote their sense of belonging, technology that promote their sense of connection, that promote their sense of belonging.

Ana Homayoun:

So I think more of what we can do is help them be discerning of. Let me opt into what's working for me and opt out of what's not. I would say kids today are savvy. They see a lot more right, there's a 24-hour news cycle. They're engaged with a lot more, whether that's, you know, really hard-hitting news, whether that's world news, whether that's you know really hard hitting news, whether that's world news, whether that's pop culture right, it's a lot of it's coming at them. So I just really think that kids today are doing their best and we as adults need to do better. It's more about really being cognizant and really offering time, structure and support.

Anne McGinty:

That is easier said than done. A hundred percent, as someone who doesn't want to spend as much time on my phone and I also have a very hard time with it how do you teach these kids to manage their time effectively that way?

Ana Homayoun:

Well, I actually work backwards, so I don't talk about you can only spend X amount of minutes or X amount of hours on your phone every day. I actually am like what are the designated times that you're going to be offline every day? So and I give the example when I walk my dogs, I don't check my email, I'm not on my phone. If I bring my phone, it's really from a safety perspective. And then there's times that I'm offline, like I'll turn off my phone after a certain hour, certain hour. I leave it in the kitchen at night, and that's where parental modeling is also important. I'm not saying this is easy at all because parents, they work on their phones Sometimes. The reality is they have their phones which allow them more times with their family in person because they're able to attend to things on their phone. So I'm not coming from a place of judgment or figuring out.

Ana Homayoun:

You know, one of the biggest things I've always said my third book was on social media and technology is what works for one family may not work for another. What works for one child within one family may not work for another. You know that some children are much more prone to addictive personality or addictive behaviors than another. So, yeah, that kid is not going to have full access versus the other kid. You can give them the phone all day and they're going to maybe look at it once a week.

Ana Homayoun:

Different kids have different needs, and so to pretend that there's a one size fits all is just actually, first of all, disingenuous, but also just not fair to families where it's already hard enough raising kids. So you're like, okay, I need to do this and I need to do that and I'm doing too much of this or not enough of that. You got to meet the kid where they're at and you got to understand who each individual child is, and I think that's what has honestly made our work at Green Ivy so successful for the past 20 some odd years, because every kid is different and we understand that and that's the perspective we go in for. There's not a one size fits all answer and it's like let's explore together and find solutions that work for you, that make you feel good.

Anne McGinty:

So, speaking of Green Ivy Education Consulting, what is the overall impact and goal that you're hoping to have with this work that you do?

Ana Homayoun:

Oh gosh, that is such a wonderful question, because anytime you've done something for over two decades or something like that, it can be really easy to be like, oh, I'm just going to phone it in and I don't feel that way. I am excited about the school year. I am excited about the kids. I was sitting in the lobby last night talking to new kids, just like one student was like talking about how he wants to spend more time playing the bassoon, and then another one was telling me about how middle school is overrated and he was very serious about that and I said, don't worry, no adult says they want to do middle school twice. I agree with you and you know I just have fun with it. Right, and so the impact that I want is that every kid leaves the office feeling like there's a little bit of a weight taken off their shoulders, and you can see it when they walk down the stairs Families have said that to us for years Like they feel so much more relaxed, they feel confident, they feel like they have a plan in place for themselves.

Ana Homayoun:

It's not that we do the work for them, it's that we help them figure out what works out for them, and we're working alongside them as an accountability buddy, a coach, all of those things, academic advisors. But the goal is that kids come in. They're like yeah, I can do this.

Anne McGinty:

Can you give us a couple specific examples? Oh?

Ana Homayoun:

gosh, I have so many. So, for example, we've been working with a family on the East Coast since COVID. So what happened during COVID is a lot of families discovered us because everything went on Zoom. So typically before COVID, probably 80% of our students were in person. They were just coming into our office a little cute little downtown, and then, when everything went on Zoom, our office was remote for 18 months because of the Santa Clara County regulations. So we had to develop a lot of online strategies.

Ana Homayoun:

So these two sisters on the East Coast were so stressed out. They had mostly C's and D's, but they were also just stressed out. They were staying up late. There was a lot of conflict with the home, the parents were stressed, the kids were stressed, and so again, we built systems with them over time. Now one of the oldest child is in college, the youngest is now a senior and the mom has repeatedly said you have given us our family back, like we're no longer stressed about academics and our kids feel good about themselves. They're getting A's and B's Again.

Ana Homayoun:

That's not my marker of success, but so since so many people use that as an indicator and I mean it's night and day from where they are, homework is getting done early, they have the evenings to themselves, they're getting eight hours of sleep, they're trying new activities. One of them discovered that they love cooking and culinary stuff and so that has been their job. The other one got a summer job last summer. Like they've just been teenagers and they've had that ability to disconnect from some of the fraughtness that families have.

Ana Homayoun:

When I went back and I interviewed my old students from 15, 20 years ago again, it's like students telling me that moment in your office where I wrote my personal statement for college, was the first time I declared that I am this type of person, or I'm this person, whether that is a dancing journalist, like I'm a writer but I'm also a journalist, but I'm also a cheerleader but I'm also an intellectual, I'm all these things right. And that student is now a young adult who's 32, who has a career that is honestly overarching all of those things. So it's so cool to see that, because I really think that we are planting the seed for every kid to develop their own blueprint, to sort of allow themselves to disconnect from the noise of other people telling them who they should be, who they should want to be, what they should do, and really figure out what's important to me, what are my values and how are my daily habits moving me towards those values or away from those values?

Anne McGinty:

Can we dig into that a little bit more? So like for anybody who is working on a personal statement or maybe there's a parent that's listening in and their kid is going to be working on a personal statement what kind of guidance or specific questions would you ask to offer the student support and assistance in that process?

Ana Homayoun:

Sure, two things. One, we have a whole organizational system that we develop. So our students in our office are generally done with all their applications by the first week in December, if not before, which anybody who's been through the application process with their kids will know that is very early, because we work during the summer and we're all about being proactive rather than reactive. Now, when it comes to the personal statement specifically here's a quick exercise without going into it there's actually two tips that I would have. Kids really struggle with narrative writing. They struggle with writing about themselves. They haven't had a lot of experience with it. So I always suggest that kids start writing even just a page a day, either in the morning or their evening, just even recording what's happened. Right, that's one. And then the second is to have them read a couple autobiographies. Go to your library or go to your independent bookstore and just go into the autobiography section, get a few different ones, see how people talk about themselves. It gives you a good idea of voice. And then the second thing and this is more specific to like brainstorming for the personal statement. I always encourage kids to come up with three to five things that you'd want an admissions officer to know about you that they wouldn't be able to find elsewhere on your application. So whether it's that you're an incredible friend, or that you value integrity or that whatever it is I mean it could be a characteristic, it could be a value, I leave it pretty open. But again, three to five things they wouldn't know elsewhere from your application that you want to make sure that these admissions officers know about you. And then what I would do is bullet point two to three experiences or examples or occurrences that back that up. So I'm a really great friend. Here's examples why and again, these are really off the cuff so or I really value this certain thing, and here's a few examples of how that's played out in my life. And so when kids start to think about that, they start to have ideas that come to them and I have a lot of open-ended questions. So I think my work is both an art and a science.

Ana Homayoun:

Right, you look at the data, you look at the acceptance rates, you look at like early decision, all that stuff, but a lot of it's around sitting with a kid and you can do all the assessments in the world, but a lot of times it's just about sitting with a kid and asking them questions. I mean, I had a student two weeks ago we're talking about college and they're a senior and they said oh, yeah, yeah. So I have the summer job and I do this summer job because I am really loving Korean pop music and so I buy these CDs and then there's these cards and did it and I thought this was fascinating, but also it was so authentically true to who they were and we had this whole conversation and I was like I want to know more about that. I have questions and I like peppered them with some open-ended questions. They're like how are you so curious about this?

Ana Homayoun:

But they had so many details and I'm like that kind of thing that you authentically is important to you is what I want you to talk about, because that reveals who you are right, whether it is why you have the summer job, whether it is the online community you've developed because of your interest in something that maybe your local community members aren't that into, but you have this very rich online community that gives you a sense of belonging. That's the beauty of discovery with kids is that they have things about them that, once they start to open up and they're just like yeah, oh yeah, you want to know more about that. Let me tell you that's just the most exciting part of my job. Every day it makes it interesting.

Anne McGinty:

That is incredible, that you get to see this part of kids, because I think a lot of times kids don't know who they are, so the fact that you're helping them discover that their inner workings and voice is pretty incredible. So, going back 23 years I know that's quite a long time ago, but starting an education consultancy business what was that like?

Ana Homayoun:

Let's be totally honest, I had no idea I would be doing this for 23 years and when I started, 9-11 had just happened. So I had been laid off from my job in investment banking. I had been living in New York up until two weeks before 9-11, taking the train into the World Trade Center, so I had a lot of like serious life. Things happen back to back where I was like, if I'm going to die, I'm definitely not dying in this cubicle and I don't like you know Excel spreadsheets. It's really funny because I use spreadsheets all the time in my work now and I'm like, oh my gosh, I like avoided them for 10 years, but when I started this it was really just like I like working with kids, I'll see where this takes me. And then my parents were like, can you make your rent, can you pay for your health insurance? Great, go have at it, try whatever you want to do. And I think that was like a moment, and I think, again, it was a unique moment. Right, you have, 9-11 happened, my appendix burst, two weeks before 9-11. I had like all these things, the crazy, crazy, crazy thing. And then I had been laid off. So like they kind of were like figure it out, you can do whatever you want. And so when I started I just started working with kids and then I really started seeing the success and it was so rewarding, it was energizing, it was exciting. Like I get excited when kids are excited, like I get thrilled when somebody comes in and they say, guess what, I have this great news. So it kept me going. So for the first few years I was just like I'm going to do this for another year and then I'm going to see. And then after a couple of years I was like I should probably get an office, cause I was like driving from home to home. So my first office was like a $500 office above the liquor store and the little downtown. It was purely yellow, like the owner had like spray painted all yellow. So like the floorboards were yellow, everything was yellow. It was like the brightest color yellow you could have ever imagined and all of it. You walked into this yellow blob but it was $500 a month and I was like, okay. So I think the reality is having any sort of business and having a staff through COVID and surviving that and surviving how quickly things change. I think for me, one of the things was keeping my overhead low and really just always being authentic about we're here to serve students. I never had this dream to have like 10 locations and 200 people. I never had that and, honestly, I really was creative about.

Ana Homayoun:

To your point earlier about how do you impact people, we have a mission at Green Ivy that we serve just as many, if not more, kids every year who could never afford our services, that who walk in our office or who work with us, and so last year we partnered with a great nonprofit that serves first gen and low income college students, and we designed their entire college advising program for them and we work with them. They're a terrific partner and they are national, and so this work will impact 700 students. And so when we think about that entrepreneurial thing, first of all, when I started this work, my office is in Los Altos. Obviously, that's a very part of the Silicon Valley. I grew up here. It's a unique place to be a kid too, and that's why I stay here, because I know what it's like. But the other piece of it is it allows us this opportunity to really be true to our mission that we want every kid to have access to this work. So every one of our e-courses has a pay what you can option.

Ana Homayoun:

I've written my books and I put the information in my book. So some families have, like, I borrowed it from the library and I read the book because we want the ripple effects to be regardless. So when I started, it was this idea of how can more kids have this feeling, this feeling. That was really good and I'll tell you a really quick story.

Ana Homayoun:

When I wrote that crumple paper was due last week and I got that book deal, I remember one of my longtime mentors and she meant nothing by this, but she knew my business was successful, she knew people were calling us, we had a waiting list, all this stuff, she said why are you going to give away your secrets? And when I was writing the book and I said these aren't secrets, I want every kid to be able to see that. And so we're, you know, 15 years away from that and my goal with our nonprofit is to bring it into schools and to really train teachers around this work, because a lot of teachers have never been trained in this work at all and really support bringing this into the classroom and really changing the paradigm. But yet I'm doing it with my own blueprint. Going back to that idea how can you have impact but not grow in the traditional metrics of growing, still have the same small office and intimate staff, but you're impacting. And so we've partnered with nonprofits, we've done these things, and so that's what works for us.

Anne McGinty:

When you were speaking, I was just getting chills thinking about what a legacy like you've figured out your passion, your purpose and it's driving your business and your life, and it's very beautiful. Thank you. Over that time, how many students do you think you've worked with?

Ana Homayoun:

Easily thousands, given the different ways that we've worked with students, but in the tens of thousands, if you think about all that, have been impacted by the books that have come to talks that I've given because I speak at schools around the country. I've spoken with parent organizations, at companies. But you know, in a business you think about different revenue streams. I think in my work I think about different impact streams. Right, you could read my book, you could do an e-course, your kid could come into our office, you could hear me speak or do a professional development with one of my staff. It's like how do we impact in a way that remains meaningful and true to our mission and think about it in a way that we're of service to the kids in the community?

Anne McGinty:

And what have you learned as the biggest lessons over this time, from starting and growing your business to this point?

Ana Homayoun:

Yeah, I really love what I do and I think trusting myself and trusting that this is the work for me is important. It's easy to get caught up in different moments where I've juggled too many things. You know, this year is funny because I don't have a book coming out. Last year at this time I had a book coming out, you know, when we were implementing our nonprofit with new schools. That's always a lot of work, and so this year we have two wonderful new staff members and I really wanted to focus on training them and making them feel comfortable, but also making the kids feel comfortable.

Ana Homayoun:

So I've been fully focused on that and it's also brought the joy back of like, I'm not trying to do 20 things at once. I don't have to do 20 things at once, and so this idea that you don't have to do it all all the time, it comes in ebbs and flows. I think all of us know that, but we don't give ourselves permission particularly those of us who, like, want to make a difference, want to make an impact that you can just focus on one thing and, in the short term, maybe put some other things aside, just just briefly. It's just fun to sit in the lobby and talk to kids when they come in for the first time and see them just like kind of relax after a couple minutes because you know they're like oh, I came in kind of with my shoulders up, but now we're talking about, you know, my cross-country team and like what we're doing and my new chemistry teacher, and so I think returning to the idea of the joy of why I like this work is important to me.

Anne McGinty:

What you're doing for these kids. It sounds not just like personal development skills, but it actually sounds a little bit like therapy.

Ana Homayoun:

Oh, we are not therapists, so I will say that Okay. What we're doing, though, is we're providing an opportunity to connect, like we're not their friends, but we connect with them in order for them to figure out the best solution for them. That connection they may not have as many connections as we would want them to right. The reason I sort of jumped on that was executive functioning skills and mental health are bi-directional, so we know that when kids are struggling with their mental health, when they may be having depressive symptoms or anxiety, it will impact the way they organize, plan, prioritize, start and complete tasks and be adaptable. Right? We know that.

Ana Homayoun:

As adults, we also know that when you are struggling with your executive functioning skills, that can impact your mental health. Right, because if you feel like you're all overwhelmed all the time, and so sometimes people will call my office and there's clearly, you know more, going on like an emotional concern, and I always say start with the mental health piece first, because if you're making a choice between getting executive functioning coaching which is what we do and mental health support, start with that first, because this is so much more effective once we have some strategies and coping skills in place. Right, building these skills support it. But in order to be open and receptive to it, we want you to make sure that the emotional piece is addressed first.

Anne McGinty:

Thank you for clarifying that, and I get it. It makes a lot of sense that they take care of their mental health first so that they can then come to you to work on this next step. What strategies can you share with us just about personal productivity skills and how you suggest that people develop these, either in themselves or in their kids?

Ana Homayoun:

I think the biggest thing to think about that it doesn't have to be complicated. I use a lot of these strategies myself. I need to gamify things. I will set the timer for 15 minutes and like literally my job is to pick up everything around my house or focus on one task. Or if I'm organizing a closet, I'll put a podcast on and listen to it, because I create the habit with the incentive right and there's all this research on that. Oh yeah, and yet we make things more complicated, we buy bells and whistles, we need extra things. So my whole thing around the time structure and support is really figuring out those pieces, I think is critically important from the beginning. So gamifying it, making it simple and then also really understanding who the kid in front of you is. I think we underestimate that.

Ana Homayoun:

When I was working on my last book, I would ask people. I said well, tell me what your kid was like when they were like eight months old. People would be like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I would say, well, what are they like now? They're like basically the same.

Ana Homayoun:

There are some common threads. Kids come out how they come out. They have personalities, they have gifts, they have strengths they, of opportunities for growth, and so the more we can meet each kid where they're at, the more that we can say yeah, you know what, this is what's going to work for you and me sitting next to you while you do this work in middle school and not having any shame or fear or judgment around it is okay. And then when you get to college, you're probably going to do your work in the library or a coffee shop because you need white noise right, that's how you work best. I've written three of my books in coffee shops right, that is how I work best. And also helping them be adaptable to different environments. So, okay, so you can't be in total silence all the time, so maybe you get noise cancellation things. So it builds in the adaptability. We're not completely negating any of that, but we're also meeting kids where they're at and saying how can we help you become the best version of you that you want to be?

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, what would you do with a kid who was a great student, got wonderful grades and was a good athlete, good social skills, everything's going great but in their free time showed a serious addiction to either video games or anything to do with a device? Would you care? Yes, I would. Okay, and what would you?

Ana Homayoun:

do about it? Well, first of all, the traits of addiction are that it impacts your daily living right. So the fact that you would become in a bad mood if you didn't have access to it, the fact that you would sacrifice sleep or be moody or not do general hygiene, those are problems. So if we're only looking at grades as the indicator of somebody doing well, then we're being short-sighted, because we know in life the fact that you take a shower and do the daily habits and chores, the fact that you get your work done and the fact that you are not impacted mood-wise right. So if you can't go four days without video games, it's a problem. If you can't go 24 hours without video games, it's a problem. So, thinking about whether or not that is an addictive tendency or problematic overuse, there has to be a natural break that parents create Remember that time structure and support idea so that there's two days a week in a row or three days a week that video games are not played, because what that does is prevent problematic overuse. So I have families that I know that say Monday through Thursday no video games, right? Or Sunday through Thursday no video games. But you've built in a break, so it's not like they can't go 24 hours, right, because that's where I get concerned.

Ana Homayoun:

When I wrote my social media book, I had parents coming up to me at events that said we took away the console and he punched a hole in the wall or he got violent. They were telling me these quiet stories that were just very scary and very sad. And again, what works for one kid may not work for another. So one kid may have full access to video games and have no problems and really choose and maybe play once or twice a week. Another kid and they're built to be addictive, so it's not the kid's fault. Can't stay off of them, is staying up late, is not doing general tasks, it's not doing family tasks, it's causing problems in the family. So that is where I would say look at the other things, not the grades, as the indicators of whether or not it's problematic. Overuse. Does that help?

Anne McGinty:

It does. Actually, that was incredibly helpful. Getting your perspective is very valuable to me, so thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, and just for a closing question here and this is one of my favorites it's just if you could go back and talk with yourself in your early 20s, what wisdom would you give yourself?

Ana Homayoun:

I would tell myself to go for it and to be confident and that everything will work out, because I feel like a lot of my holding back on things was a result of just like having fear or anxiety or like concern. I think that happened a lot in my 20s. I'm starting my own business, so there isn't really a community that when you're starting your own business and you, there isn't really a community that when you're starting your own business and you're a sole entrepreneur. In the beginning I would have made myself be more intentional about building community outside with other small business owners. There is a sort of kismet connection when you're talking to small business owners and entrepreneurs where you speak the same language, you understand the challenges and, even if it's a totally different business, right, I think it always energizes you, gives you new ideas, new perspective. Thank you so much for that question.

Anne McGinty:

Ana, thank you so much for coming on the show and just sharing your insights, which are incredibly valuable. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Today's key takeaways Systems and routines are key to staying organized and achieving goals.

Anne McGinty:

Consistency brings structure and support to your day, and that helps everything flow. Gamify your tasks, set a 30 minute timer and see what you can get done. Turn off notifications, put your phone away for set hours or maybe even turn your phone off. This way, you can stay focused on what matters. Focus on fundamentals, strengthen executive functioning skills like organization and prioritization, to create a strong foundation. Connection matters too. Did you know? 70% of Gen Z and millennials say they feel disconnected? It affects both social and academic lives.

Anne McGinty:

Intrinsic motivation is about knowing what's important to you. Confidence, competence and a sense of belonging help sharpen focus, reduce stress and improve organization. A personal statement is a building block for discovering who you are. The process of self-discovery can help kids create their own blueprint for life, so encourage your kids to write a page a day about their experiences. Reading autobiographies can help them develop voice and guide them to discover what makes them who they are.

Anne McGinty:

Entrepreneurship isn't just for business, it's a mindset for life. Build your own life with adaptability. If you make a mistake, take a deep breath and think what are the steps to move forward? A shame spiral can lead to task paralysis. Instead, focus on self-evaluation. Too much rigidity can overwhelm, so develop strong executive functioning skills to quickly pivot when plan A doesn't work. Empathy and compassion are essential.

Anne McGinty:

Today. There is so much information and distraction for adults, but especially for kids. We're in this together, so let's work together on solutions. Safety first, then expansion when you feel secure, you're more willing to take risks and grow. Mental health impacts executive function and vice versa. Address both of them to support success. Make sure to set designated hours to be fully offline and recharge. Ask yourself what's important to you and how are your habits moving you toward those values. Success has many definitions, but it always energizes you, whether that's to keep going or to come up with a solution for the latest problem. If something feels rewarding and exciting, you're on the right track. Keep overhead low and stay authentic to how the journey makes you feel. Balance revenue streams with impact streams. Consider the impact you're making alongside your earnings. And, lastly, move through fear and anxiety. Acknowledge it, but don't let it stop you from reaching your goals, make connection with others on the same journey and thrive together. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.

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Anne McGinty

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