The Business Owner’s Dilemma with Ali Nasser, Outstanding Serial Entrepreneur

Ali Nasser, Author, discusses his book The Business Owner’s Dilemma with Alan Olsen.

Transcript (software generated):

Alan Olsen

Welcome to American Dreams. I’m here today with Ali Nasser. He’s the author, the business owners dilemma, and best selling author on Amazon. So welcome to today’s show, Ali.

Ali Nasser

Thanks so much for having me, Alan, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Alan Olsen

So you’ve done a lot in your life. Many, many things. You’re one of those true entrepreneurs, and we appreciate sharing your wisdom and in the books that you’ve given us. But let’s let’s roll back a little bit. How did you start in your business?

Ali Nasser

Yeah, appreciate the question, Alan. So completely by accident, as the short answer. I constantly have different, you know, side hustles, and entrepreneurial jobs or sales positions kind of growing up. And when I was in university, I by accident, got thrown into the financial services industry. And I loved helping people. And I love the consulting side of things. But I was just really disheartened by the conflicts of interest and the challenges and the and the sales and business model of financial services. So I almost left the industry. And then the entrepreneur in me kicked in and said, well, Ali, why don’t you just build what you wish existed?

Alan Olsen

When we roll into the book, what’s the purpose and mission of the book that you wrote?

Ali Nasser

So Alan, about seven to 10 years ago, I had a few engagements with business owners, that kind of changed the trajectory of my work and changed my life. In many ways. Personally, I’ve spent almost two decades working with business owners, but this period was particularly impactful. I had a group of business owners that had all had major exits, they had sold their companies for 20 million, 100 million, and the largest, almost 500 million really successful, successful, financially successful owners. And what I noticed is amidst the incredible financial success that they had, the majority of them were struggling. They were struggling with their identity, they were struggling with the life after they were struggling with what’s next, they were struggling with major financial and life dilemmas that they were facing. And it kind of reminded me of a of a mountain climbing analogy. And that’s that, you know, if you if I asked, you know, and what’s the goal of climbing a mountain? What’s your default response going to be?

Alan Olsen

Getting to the top?

Ali Nasser

Yeah, that’s, that’s the most common answer, I don’t want to get to the top. Well, the real goal of climbing a mountain is to get to the top, and then to get back down safely. So you can celebrate the success and of course, enjoy the journey. Now, while that may sound obvious, 80% of the accidents that happen when mountain climbing, they don’t happen on the way up, they happen on the way down, because we’re so consumed with reaching our goal, which is to reach the summit, that we don’t think about what happens after the fact. And I noticed this to be very similar with these business owners for years, they were building their companies hoping that one day they got to the exit and get that 20 million 100,000,500 million billion dollar check when they when they sell the business. But when they reached that success, they didn’t really have a plan for what comes next. And it made me hyper aware that wealth is a means and not an end. And for many entrepreneurs, if they’re not really clear about their end purpose, their end goal, it’s a bottomless cup, you can keep pouring in all you want, but the cups never full. And what ends up translating into is no matter how much wealth you’re building, that fulfillment, that life success, that that feeling that oftentimes you’ve been yearning for, doesn’t get fulfill. And this was very crushing for me because I saw how challenging it was for these owners after the fact.

Alan Olsen

And it may so only if I if I could just kind of hone in on the three dilemmas, three dilemmas that business owners will face.

Ali Nasser

Sure. So the first dilemma is the reinvestment dilemma. It’s I’ve been successful with my business. I’ve made great profits. Do I really do I put money back in the business July and start a new company? Do I invest in private equity and public equity in the market and crypto and real estate? Where do I reposition my my wealth, reinvest it? Well, that’s the first major dilemma. The second dilemma is the legacy dilemma, which is what is it all for? The wealth that I’ve built is For children, is this for charity? Is this for fun? Is this for my ego? Will my wealth be a source of empowerment for my children, or a source of entitlement for my children? That’s the second major dilemma, the legacy dilemma. And then the third dilemma is the exit dilemma. Do I sell my company? do I scale it further? Do I leave it to my son or daughter or sell it to my executive management team? If I sold my company, what I then have freedom of purpose? Or will I have just sold my life’s purpose? These are all different aspects of the exit dilemma. And what I’ve found is that these three dilemmas tend to occupy 90% of the mental real estate for business owners, when it comes to planning their life’s work. They’re constantly focused on these dilemmas.

Alan Olsen

So why Why exactly did you create this framework BIM? And what value does it bring into the business owners?

Ali Nasser

I was telling this example that I just told you to a business owner many years ago, or several years ago. And just when he heard the three dilemmas, his response was putting just putting a name around those three dilemmas, I now feel more clear. And I’m thinking of all the other thoughts and how they fit into one of these three dilemmas, like just having that framework is powerful to be able to help organize my thoughts and understand what are all these different pieces that are that are moving. So I think, one part of it is just to create a framework to think about it. Because once you can organize things in some way, it’s easier to make decisions and take action. So there’s the three dilemmas. And then within the wealth integration system that I created, there’s six different components, and everything within entrepreneurial wealth fits into one of those six areas. So by creating a framework for it, it allows for for Organization for Progress for for synergy. And then there’s a lens between you know, if you’ve got a tax, you know, wealth consulting firm, or the business owners in this place, and their attorney, maybe they’re a shared framework, allows for a shared conversation, better collaboration, better clarity.

Alan Olsen

So why is Why is planning so different for entrepreneurs?

Ali Nasser

Well, for most business owners, 90% of their net worth is in one micro cap stock. And when when you have your life’s work invested in, oftentimes one major company, or a large part of one major company, you have, they have this, saying that, you know, it’s 90% of your net worth and 200% of your emotion. That’s what your business represents. So just that alone changes the dynamic of planning so much. Because if you’ve got $50 million in one company, it’s very different than someone who might have a diversified portfolio of mutual funds in their 401k and investment accounts. That’s what the wealth management industry is built for. And entrepreneurs are just built very differently. They still need all the planning and advice for estate and legacy and tax and succession and investment, but they need it in a very different way. And they have a very different mindset.

Alan Olsen

Now, in your book, you mentioned that entrepreneurs don’t retire. Can you expand on that? Sure.

Ali Nasser

Well, this notion of building wealth to then one day retire is a very common idea in in America, potentially in the world, but very much so in America. The vast majority of entrepreneurs they love to build. And they I think for most people in general, using their gifts and accelerating their gifts is something that they want to continue to, to do. But in entrepreneurs capacity, it’s almost like an artist if an artist loves to paint. And one day they’ve sold enough paintings that they have financial independence, it doesn’t mean the next day they stop painting, they’re gonna keep painting. That’s what they love to do. In a similar way, entrepreneurs they love to build, they love to create, they love to give, and they’re different gifts. So the idea of building enough wealth or selling your company, and then you’re going to retire, it’s just nine out of 10 times maybe maybe 95 out of 100 times a business owner won’t retire they want to pursue more and use their gifts in a way that that can impact their life, their community, the world.

Alan Olsen

When you look at the entrepreneur and the building wealth, and then like I guess this I don’t like the word word retirement maybe redeploying or something.

Ali Nasser

Yeah, almost like an F word.

Alan Olsen

Why, why is it so important for business owners to look at the intersection of those two of which to the two between building wealth and then read redeploying? In other words, as people go through life, they most entrepreneurs Don’t build a single company,

Ali Nasser

right? They’re constantly building, it’s usually not their first company that was the successful one. And usually over the years, they’re building multiple, multiple ventures, even if the majority of their net worth might be might be in one. So I like to look at this Allen and from two angles, there’s return on investment, which we all understand and know. And that’s part of what we build as entrepreneurs. And the second is a supposed to ROI. The second is ROI, which is return on life experience. And once you’ve had enough, return on investment, you mentioned this idea of redeploying wealth, you built enough wealth that you might have now hit this point of optionality where it’s no longer about I have to make the next dollar to have financial independence or financial success. You’ve built that out. I really want entrepreneurs to focus on what are you looking for, for your life experience? What are the pursuits? Or what do you want to build that not only gives you great ROI, but gives you the life experience you desire. So for many business owners that might be selling a company, or that might be reaching a point in life, where they’re saying, I want to redefine how I do this, and I liked how you use that kind of redefine or redeploy. It’s not just looking at what gets you the highest return on investment. But what gets you the highest return on the life experience you desire. So thinking about, you know, what your gifts are, how you want to impact the world, what social or community impacts might be important to you, where the biggest gap is in the world and applying efforts towards that. It may not maximize return on investment, but your life experience is going to be a whole lot more enjoyable. So rather than thinking about retirement, I think about return on life experience and how do we reposition wealth to create the outcomes you truly want?

Alan Olsen

All if a person wants to reach out to you for engaging your services, how would they go ahead and do that?

Ali Nasser

Simplest way is just just drop me an email directly Ali at Ali nasir.com a li at a li N A SS er.com And that’s that says right drop me a note and we can figure out how to connect from there.

Alan Olsen

Well, I appreciate you being with the city on American Dreams.

Ali Nasser

Thanks so much, Alan. It’s a pleasure to be on the show.

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