In this episode of the Business Blast Podcast, host Tyler Wagner interviews entrepreneur, brand strategist, TEDx speaker, and author Sabah Ali. Sabah shares the pivotal moment at age 19 when attending a speaker for extra credit led to a mentorship that sparked her entrepreneurial path. She recounts a similar experience of proactively reaching out to event organizers, which connected her with Tim Ferriss and resulted in a six‑month mentorship. Sabah emphasizes that storytelling is the heart of personal branding, especially on Instagram, and illustrates this by documenting her senior year with 265 consecutive Facebook Live sessions, which dramatically grew her audience. Consistency, momentum, and audience accountability are highlighted as key growth drivers. Her core business advice is simple: just start, even without a perfect plan, and maintain confidence—she advises her younger self to be more self‑assured. On happiness, she stresses contentment and gratitude over comparison. Sabah cites Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich as her favorite book, highlighting the mantra “whatever the mind conceives and believes, the mind achieves.” She repeats this quote as her favorite. Listeners can connect with her on Instagram @thesabaali.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Saba Ali with us. She is an entrepreneur, brand strategist, TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and the founder of Unforgettable by Saba. She focuses on teaching people how to craft their story, brand message, and build their presence online to attract the right type of audience, especially on Instagram. So welcome to the show.
How's it going, Tyler? Super stoked I'm here with you today.
Yes, it's going great. How are you?
I'm good, I'm good. I'm excited.
Yes, excited as well. And we'll just let the audience know beforehand, me and Saba are both going to 10X, so we're both excited. Me down in Miami.
Yes, super, super stoked.
So that'll be fun. But yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. And the first one I got for you today, Saba, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Yeah, so the best story is actually when I was 19 years old, I was still a college student at the time, and I went to go listen to a speaker at my university. I was staged just for extra credit. For one of my classes, not knowing that eventually that speaker became one of my great mentors who actually got me into the field of entrepreneurship. So that right there was kind of like the spark of igniting in myself that I can be doing something so much more greater than just like going to college, graduating, and getting a job. So with that, like, story right there, the underlying message is go to every single opportunity that you get, even if you don't think that you'll get any return from it because I just went just for extra credit, not knowing that this person literally changed my life.
Yes, I love hearing that. And actually, I'll tell a little story as well because it's very similar to yours there that actually what got me to drop out of school and start and write a book and start my company— me and you have kind of similar backgrounds, at least with the book stuff— was because I actually went— it was same type of thing. I went to see this guy speak And what the guy said when he was in college, he said he would reach out to conference coordinators and ask them if he could help them like set up in exchange for coming to the event for free. And he said that at the event. So I go home, I see an advertisement. Are you familiar with Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek?
Yeah, yeah, I am.
Yeah. So I see an ad with his face on it. I click on it and he was the keynote speaker at this event. I go to the page, the event's like $5,000. He's the keynote. Like, I'm in college, I can't afford it. I'm like, In fact, I have like negative money. So I reach out to the coordinator and I ask him, hey, like I'm an aspiring entrepreneur, what can I do to come to this event? And literally same day we hop on a Skype call and then 6 months later he flies me out and I get to meet Tim Ferriss. And then I actually worked under him for 6 months and he became my mentor.
That is so, so crazy. I love that story. I feel like every time, like even With my mentor that I met, his name was Brandon T. Adams, and I interned for him for an event that he was throwing that same year that I met him, and I just consistently added value. And during that event, I met so many big influential people, which at the time I didn't know that they were big people, like John Lee Dumas and Kevin Harrington. I was just like, what in the world?
So cool. Yeah. And just to clarify, I didn't know if I worded that correctly. So my mentor became the guy that put on the conference. I didn't work directly under Tim for 6 months, just to clarify. Just to clarify in case it came out that way. But at the same time, I think the point of what you're saying, what I'm trying to say is sometimes you don't have to have the full plan laid out, but just by going to these events and just taking action consistently, things start to open up. And I think that's what's really cool about for you, you just go to this thing for extra credit and it turns into a whole nother ordeal that changes your life.
Yeah, no, totally.
So thanks for sharing that. Second one I got for you, Salva, What is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So the most valuable piece of information within like my expertise, which what I do is branding, is sharing a story. When I first started in the world of entrepreneurship, I didn't know that I was sharing a story when I was documenting every single thing that I was doing. Because when I would work with my mentor alongside his companies, I would go to all of these events, red carpet events, premieres, and like TV premieres, movie premieres, and all I would do was like take pictures, blog and post it on social media, let alone I was like building my brand and building my story because people started to follow me that way. So like branding, I feel like sometimes people get confused on like how to brand themselves. But what really defines a good brand is the story message that's like behind that. So like every time, like someone comes to me and they're like, how can I build my brand? I'm like, just share your story. And from that, you'll start creating your brand message and your brand image.
Absolutely. Yeah. Story is number one. And kind of like Gary V talks about, like documenting over creating. So meaning like, you know, the behind the scenes, just kind of like tell your story and stop trying to like almost like perfect all your posts so much, but rather just like tell your story, the behind the scenes, the authentic parts of it. And people seem to be attracted to that. So yeah, sure.
Yeah, for sure. And I actually, I just graduated this past May, but what I did is I actually documented my entire senior year of college. Doing daily Facebook Lives. So I think I did like 265 days of consecutive Facebook Lives. And let me tell you, that like blew up my brand like no other. So definitely document.
I'm sure it did, right? And another thing, right, like consistency is key. I think like a lot of people when they first start out, it's not I think, I know, like when you first start out, it's difficult. But then once you like get, I don't know when it was for you when you realized you were going to go 260 in a row. But like there is a thing, you know, momentum. Right? Like once you hit like 20 in a row, you kind of think to yourself like, all right, I've come this far. I'm not backing down. I'm going to 200, you know, like, let's go.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And especially when you're sharing with your audience, you know, they're going to hold you accountable for it too, because I'm just like, I'm going to do it every single day. So they were like waiting for me.
Absolutely. So next one for you could tie in, but what's your best piece of overall business advice? Not necessarily industry specific.
Just start. There were so many times where I like sat and just like overthink about like setting a plan and like getting my website together and like small bits of pieces of information. I did that a lot when I first got into entrepreneurship because I didn't know actually the exact strategy of like how to even build a business or like start a brand or like do podcasting, which I used to do also. But I feel like a lot of people get stuck in this place because they don't know the exact steps to get there. But in all honesty, nobody knows the exact perfect way to do anything. So just starting will eventually get the momentum going. And yes, you'll fail. Yes, you'll succeed. But eventually you'll find a fine line and a balance between what it is that you do like to do and whether it is you're doing a startup, doing coaching, consulting, whatever within your industry, but just start, just do something.
Absolutely, I agree. And I know, so you just graduated recently, so I know you're probably fairly young, but if you could give even your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Hmm, if I could give myself, I think I would give myself, like my 19-year-old self, is to be more confident in the things that you do. For me, when I was in high school, actually, when I was a lot younger, I was an extremely shy person. So I didn't think I'd be able to do all the things I've done up until now. But everything you do, especially in entrepreneurship, you need to be confident about what it is that you're doing, even if you don't know how you're going to get there. Because I think that inner self, that inner doubt that people have within themselves is why they can't ever succeed. So just be confident, which is what the name of my book is, Enroll Like in Confidence.
And then kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Ooh, it kind of goes back to what I kind of just said, is being like content with yourself. I see this happen to a lot of people, and it also did happen to myself. We constantly feel like we're comparing our successes with other people's successes. So we never feel like we're good enough. But if we're content with ourselves, we're grateful for what we have every single day. I think that's truly like the key to happiness when you wake up feeling like you're full of energy.
And then speaking of books, what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Best book. The first book that my mentor suggested to me and the number one thing is whatever the mind conceives and believes, the mind achieves. That's my favorite quote of all time. And I put it to test. It actually does work. Whatever you think about most, that's truly like what you become in any single part of your life.
Couldn't agree more. And I have to emphasize that even more. Like, my— that was actually the second book that I read when I really like started reading books. The first one was The 4-Hour Workweek, which just like changed my mindset. And then Think and Grow Rich was the second one. So for like any— and I think that book is good for anyone, but especially if you're starting out, Think and Grow Rich is like, I think, a great foundation. Like, that is the book. It is just awesome.
Yeah, for sure. Until this day, I like read it every day. I was just reading it last night.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, and you can— that's the cool thing about it too. You can pick it up and just like read a chapter because like, although yes, it flows great and it is a full book, like each chapter in itself like teaches you something like very, like very large. So you can read little bits here and there and it doesn't have to be in order. It's just an amazing book.
For sure.
So my next one for you is, what is your favorite quote and why?
Oh, so I just said it. But it's, "Whatever the mind conceives and believes, the mind achieves," by Napoleon Hill. Because I just, I think that's just so true. Because like, positive or negative, if you're thinking that you can't do something, odds are it's not going to work out. But if like constantly you're in that position where like, you know what, I can actually do it, even though I might not know like the exact plans and steps to get there. If you constantly think about how that desire, like eventually you're gonna get there.
Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. The last one I got for you is where can our listeners find and connect with you online?
Definitely. So my favorite platform is Instagram. So you can find me at @thesabaali.
@thesabaali. Okay. And also just for everybody listening, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And thank you again for coming on. Really appreciate it.
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