In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews serial entrepreneur and educator Ajit Nawalkha, co‑founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach, and Global Grit Institute. Ajit shares a pivotal personal story about sacrificing his health, relationships, and overall life while obsessively building Mindvalley, which taught him the importance of holistic life balance. He advises entrepreneurs to view themselves as a business rather than merely a personal brand, emphasizing that customers care about results, not personality. Ajit introduces his "home‑team" philosophy, arguing that investing in a lifelong, loyal team outweighs short‑term cost‑cutting and is essential for lasting enterprises. He offers personal values—serve and love daily—as guiding principles, and defines happiness as knowing and living one’s own version of it now, without waiting for external validation. Ajit recommends the book Sapiens for its insights into human evolution and societal behavior, and shares a favorite Buckminster Fuller quote about solving problems by creating new realities. The episode concludes with information on how listeners can connect with Ajit via his upcoming book Live Big and his social media channels.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Ajit Nawalkha with us. He is a serial entrepreneur, global educator, and consultant. He is the co-founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach, and Global Grit Institute, and the author of The Book of Coaching and Live Big. So welcome to the show, man.
I am excited to be here, Tyler. Thanks for inviting me.
Of course. Grateful to have you on. We'll dive right in. The first question that I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Wow. There's so much that happens in our lives all the time, which has underlying beautiful messages. The one that I would love to share right now is where I was running one of the most successful companies that is there in the space of personal development, personal excellence, which is Mindvalley. Just a few years ago. And as I was running the company, I was getting really, really great success. And career-wise, this was my dream job. I had hoped to get that and worked really hard for it for almost 7 years, and eventually I had it. But while I was having that great success in career, what had happened in life is everything else kind of drifted away. I had chosen to basically pay for my career with my entire life. And that seems to be the case with a lot of people. And I learned it the hard way because I realized that it's everything else in life was just not at the place where I would really want it to be. And I lost my health at that time, my relationships, my friendships. And I had to learn the hard way that you have to consider everything in life instead of just considering one element of your life, which threw me on a journey of really discovering myself and really discovering how does one live big. And that, that, that got me eventually to the place where I am today, where I don't only have a phenomenal career for myself, but I also have a phenomenal personal life, health, and all the other stuff that I want. And I can be very intentional about it and create it in my life now because of that lesson.
Yeah, man, thank you for sharing that. I think that's a really, really huge lesson there. The The next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
The most valuable piece of information, um, if I have to not go for tactics right now, because there are tons of tactics that we can share and discuss and that will take a little bit of time, but if I was to give one insight that would be very key and critical for anybody who is in this space is consider creating a business. What happens most of the time, especially if you're an educator, trainer, or a coach, is you tend to create just a personal brand. And what happens with that is it is so attached to you and your personality that you also tend to forget that the people that are working with you, are playing with you, buying your products, actually want results. They want the product results. They don't care if you're the coolest dude in the house or the greatest girl in the house. They care if you can actually create results for them. And that consideration would probably switch gears. I mean, personal brand's important. No way am I trying to say that's not important. But what is even more important is if you consider yourself as a business, because as you consider yourself as a business, you would start to wonder, does my product create the results that I promise? And if your product, and that includes your social media profiles, by the way, because that is your product or part of your product, is you must consider it, or at least that would be my invitation, is to consider that you are a business, not just a personal brand.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? And it might tie in directly, but not necessarily like industry-specific. So let's just say, it seems to me from your history, like you definitely went the entrepreneurial path. So for somebody just starting out, like entrepreneurship's like the big thing right now. Like what would you tell somebody just starting out that wants to be a successful entrepreneur?
[Speaker] So if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, this lesson I learned much later in my own career, and that's why if I had to even tell myself this several years ago when I started my first company, is people matter. People are the most important thing that is there in a business. And it is one of those things that entrepreneurs, for some reason, and it's the education that we get as well, we start to treat them like numbers. It's like, oh, I can get another employee to do this. I can get another person to do this. Oh, I can outsource this to somebody who's cheap labor somewhere else in the world. And that is probably one of the biggest mistakes you can make in when you are building a business. Now, I'm not saying not to consider costs and so forth, but people, a team that stays with you for a lifetime is probably the most, one of the best investments you can make into your business creating from ground up. I call it the home team concept. It's like, think about it like this, Tyler. When we start a business, irrespective of what industry you are in, what are you thinking? Are you thinking that this business will last me 3 months, or are you thinking that this business will last me 30 years, or it will surpass my lifetime?
I'm thinking, I'm thinking long term, right?
30 years, 50 years. It might even go past even if I am not there, my kids might run it or somebody else might run it, right? If that's the case, why think about your team in the context of next month, the next 3 months, or even next 3 years? Why not think about building a team that will last a lifetime? And that's one of the big shifts that happened. And that has helped me tremendously in starting multiple companies, but not having to work like as if I have multiple companies, because I got to build a team that I call my home team, which are the set of individuals that I know will play with me till the time I'm playing, and I will play with them till the time they're playing.
Yes. Yeah, that is huge, man. It's— that's so interesting. And the way you laid that out was, was really nice because it's, it's weird how like even though maybe you have a thought of like running a company until after, or it's still running after you die, um, like for some reason sometimes our mindset goes to like a monthly expense and we don't think about the people. We just think about like outsourcing and numbers like you're saying. So yeah, I really like the way you put that, man. I appreciate you sharing that. The next one I have for you is if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Well, one of the— if I had to talk about not in context of business, because in the business context of business, I would tell my myself, younger self, is think about people. People matter and consider them as a team that will play with for a lifetime. But if I have to just give advice to my personal self beyond business is I would say serve, love every day. And these are the values that I live by in today's time. It took me a while to come to these values, but that's something that I live by and I love myself when I'm living by those values. And so my advice to my younger self would be to find the values and hopefully they'll find the value of serving and loving every day.
And again, it could tie in, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
The key to happiness? Oh, that's a big one. How do you, how do you answer that in a quick way? A key to happiness?
Doesn't have to be quick.
Is knowing what is happiness for you and living it on a daily basis, not to think or attach itself to something or someone or to a destination, to what the world tells you. But to really know what it is for you. And everybody is different. Everybody's happiness is different. We tend to think it is something that somebody else told us what happiness looks like or feels like, but it usually is true in our hearts and our souls that we know what happiness looks like and feels like. We just don't take the time to really discover it. So my invitation would be to find what is happiness for you. And that would be the first key. And the second key will be to not wait for it. And that's the second thing that we tend to do is we feel like we'll finally be happy when blank. But that's not true. And we all know that unconsciously, we are aware that happiness lies right now if we choose to have it, even in the toughest of times, you can really find pleasure in those.
And I'm excited for your answer on this next one. It's kind of tough for a lot of people, but what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?
I can see why it's a tough question because for people like us who read a lot, it is very hard to pick one. Currently, and that's why it would be really hard for me to pick one, but the one that I recently finished reading, actually not so recent, but that's the last book that really stuck with me. It's a book called Sapiens, and it talks about evolution of human beings. It's by a guy called Noah Harari. I might have said his name wrong right now, but I really, really appreciate that book because it gives perspective to how we evolved as tribes, or at least there is a theory around how we evolved as tribes, and what are some of the things to consider in today's human being nature, and why sometimes society tends to go into areas that don't seem obvious and do feel wrong, but still we can understand that and so we can course correct that. So that's what I was really excited about when I read it like 2 months ago.
Awesome. And what is your favorite quote and why?
Hmm, favorite quote and why? Well, I mean, it'll be hard for me to pick quotes because I don't really remember things in quotes. Actually, one of them that has stuck with me for the longest time, and so I will just claim that to be my favorite for now for this conversation is, you don't solve a problem by solving a problem. You solve a problem by making the problem, by creating a new reality and making the problem obsolete. This is a quote by Buckminster Fuller. And I might have misquoted him a little bit here as I was saying the quote, but the essence of the quote is that don't focus on your problems, focus on creating a new reality, because your problems will become obsolete because you've created a new reality. And I honestly live by that code. And that is why I've had the fortune of not really feeling that I have problems. I only have situations and challenges and I create new realities to solve them.
Yeah, I've never heard that quote. And that is awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
You might want to Google it to really state exactly how he says it because he says it beautifully, but it's in context of problems are not really there.
Beautiful, man. Thank you. Again, so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
The best way to connect with me at this point is to go to livebigthebook.com, L-I-V-E-B-I-G-T-H-E-B-O-O-K, livebigthebook.com. It'll redirect you to a website that has the offer of the new book that's coming out, Tyler, which is called Live Big. And at the same point of time, it will also redirect you to a website which will allow you to connect with me various social media channels and my email address and so forth. I love to connect with my readers, so you can reach out to me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, these 3 platforms. I'm not so much of a Snapchat and Twitter kind of guy, but everything else, I'm definitely there.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for joining us.
Absolutely. Thanks, Don.
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