Ali Hemyari: The Discipline Behind Extraordinary Success

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio Beyond the Uniform Series. Wait till you get to meet my guest today, Ali Hemyari  , entrepreneur Ted Ex Editor’s pick speaker, best selling author, pilot, Swat operator, canine behavior expert, and someone who has dedicated his life to the relentless pursuit of excellence. Ali is the CEO of Nashville Canine and Hemyari   Family Companies and has founded and scaled multiple successful businesses across several industries. But what makes his story especially interesting isn’t simply what he’s built, it’s how he’s chosen to define success along the way. Throughout his career, Ali has worked with elite performers from Olympians to public officials to business leaders and entrepreneurs. He’s seen firsthand that people who achieve the most are often driven by something deeper than money, titles or even recognition. Beyond business, he serves as a second lieutenant with the US Air Force Auxiliary. Civil Air Patrol commands Nashville Search and Rescue canine team volunteers extensively with law enforcement agencies and supports charitable organizations through fundraising and community service. He is also preparing to launch two new podcasts focused on highlighting extraordinary people doing meaningful work and exploring what success truly means beyond traditional measures. Ali, welcome to the show.

Ali Hemyari: Oh, it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: So excited that we had the opportunity to have a conversation just a few weeks ago and really excited to get you on the show today. Tell us a little bit more about who you are.

Ali Hemyari: You know, for starters, I am a God fearer and God lover. I have a great family with an amazing wife. I got two children, a boy and a girl. Uh, also high achievers in their own, uh, their own ranks there. And, um, I’m just a guy who wants to give back to his community. And so that’s the, the snapshot of it. But what that takes is, uh, just a relentless pursuit of perfection in many different ways, almost to the point of obsessiveness.

Trisha Stetzel: So how does that talk to me a little bit more about that? How does that serve you today, that relentless pursuit of excellence?

Ali Hemyari: I think what happens is you condition yourself to focus in on the signal and tune out the noise. Mhm. And so that ratio is very powerful that while you have all the other things going on in your life and you have the normal business adversity, you have competitors, uh, hating on you, all those kind of things. You tune all of that out and you keep going. And what I’ve seen is people in various industries that are successful, uh, have whatever it takes mentality. And so does it matter if it’s difficult? It doesn’t matter if it’s easy. It doesn’t matter if they have to wake up at 130 in the morning. And maybe the things that most people would complain about, these people don’t complain. They just do. And so I’m, I’m attuned to that same mindset.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. So that whatever it takes mindset. Do you think people were just born with that raised around it? It came with time. Where does that come from?

Ali Hemyari: I think that’s the million dollar question. Right. And so in my upbringing, a lot of it was attributed to scarcity. And and so there was this drive to not have to live like that anymore as I got older. Um, but, you know, I see it with wealthy people as well. They wealth begets wealth in a lot of ways. And I think some of it’s principles, most of it is conditioning yourself. I don’t think that people really examine Olympic athletes. For example, let’s take Michael Phelps. You know, even when he’s sick, he’s still out there swimming. And that was the mark of a true winner. That’s why he was a gold medalist so many times over was that it was just relentless.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Do you find because you’ve worked across other Olympians, business leaders, public officials and other high performers, what do they all have in common besides this just relentless pursuit of excellence? What are the traits that they have in common?

Ali Hemyari: They’re disciplined first and foremost. They’re disciplined. And their discipline allows them to build habits. And they don’t shake those habits. They continue with them unless they need to tweak something, they keep on with it. Uh, by and large, most of the people that I’ve interacted with have a very good moral compass. They realize that they are gifted in a certain way, and they need to steward that gift for God, and they take that responsibility very seriously. And, uh, I would say, uh, they also all do a really good job of building relationships. Probably the number one thing that college doesn’t focus on teaching organically. You may understand that when you’re in school and you’re trying to balance your social life with your studies. Um, but one of the most important things I’ve noticed of all of them is, is they build relationships. And, uh, those three things are, I would say are the, the main drivers of ultra successful people.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I love that. All right, so let’s take a little bit deeper dive then into building networks, building relationships. How important is it to have the right people supporting you and being in the right rooms as you gain success?

Ali Hemyari: Well, there’s a passage in Scripture that says the eyes are the light of the body, and you need to do everything you can to protect that light of the body. And so I would say it’s immensely important of who you build relationships with, who’s going to suck that energy out of you, who’s going to feed the energy into you. And sometimes if you’re a young professional, you don’t know who that is because you’re trying to find your own way. You’re going to a million different networking, uh, you know, workshops or functions and, but being mature enough to identify who’s there to pour into you and you reciprocate, obviously at the same time and making that relationship authentic. Probably one of the best books that’s ever been written was Dale Carnegie’s, uh, you know, how to, how to Win Friends and Influence People. And so I would tell everybody to, you know, read that book and read it again and read it again. But, but, you know, even our relationship, Trisha, it’s, it’s a, it’s a building a business relationship. Right. And, and so it all matters. It’s all important.

Trisha Stetzel: It is absolutely. What would you say to those people who have, um, people that are in their room that, that maybe they realized over time are not reciprocating and maybe they don’t want them in their room anymore. What would you say to them?

Ali Hemyari: The faster you move on, the more successful you’ll be, right? It’s almost like you’re swimming and then somebody’s attached to your leg and you’re dragging them along. Why? Because you’re comfortable with that drag. Imagine how much faster you could be swimming. Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. Get rid of them as fast as you can. It’s hard sometimes, especially when you’ve been dragging them around for so long. Yeah. Sometimes you don’t realize. Right.

Ali Hemyari: What’s that old adage in business? It’s higher, slow fire fast. Right. And I think the same thing goes with relationships. If if you know that somebody is just constantly negative and, and that eats at you and and you’re getting tired of it, what are you doing? It’s, it’s, it’s you who’s not stopping it. They’re going to keep doing what they do. It’s up to you.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s holding you back. So how do you feel about you kind of alluded to like if you have this feeling about somebody, I like to call it my gut feeling. How often do you use that in making business decisions? Your gut.

Ali Hemyari: Oh, I use it all the time. The, the two times I did not listen to my gut, it got me into a lot of trouble, memorable trouble. And so I use it all the time. And, uh, you know, being a Southerner, we’re in Tennessee and you guys are in Texas. And so being a Southerner, Southerners tend to sugarcoat Relationships sometimes, and I think it can end up becoming dishonest where you are limping along a relationship that you don’t find that reciprocity or value to. It’s dishonest to that person. It’s dishonest to yourself.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely, I absolutely agree. Um, all right. I want to take just a little bit of a shift when we’re talking about business. Now tell me a little more about Nashville Canine and the work that you’re doing there.

Ali Hemyari: Yeah. So Nashville Canine is one of the largest dog training facilities in the nation. We train several hundreds of dogs a year from consumer pets all the way up to federal level law enforcement dogs, inclusive of service animals. Our facility is located right outside of Nashville in a town called Franklin, in and out. Just moved here, by the way, and, uh, into our little town here. And, um, we our specialty is working dogs, but primarily we train consumer pets. And so there are more consumer pets that need help, people getting their arm ripped out of their socket, falling down, having their dogs jump on people. That is frustrating them. That’s far more prevalent than police departments needing police dogs, because those cycles of sale are 8 to 10 years, roughly. And so our facility, the way we built it out, it’s look, it looks like a small town on the inside. And that way we can imprint dogs to different textures akin to them walking through like a downtown Nashville, for example. So there’s all these different storefronts set up. And some are guys, there’s a manager’s offices, some are, uh, like shops. We have our own city hall. We have a complete mock home with a living room, bedroom and kitchen. And then we have these two giant training fields because similar to Texas weather, it’s really hot and humid here as well. And so we can train indoors and be immune to the environment, uh, all year long. And, uh, so it’s a really, really neat outfit. Um, under this brand, we have a lot of verticals. One of them is doing commercial video shoots. So if you’ve seen a lot of country music videos with dogs in them, that was probably us. A lot of the tractor supply print ads or commercial video shoots, that was probably us, like the hunting dog or the German Shepherd. It’s probably us or at commercials, things like that. It’s pretty neat.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. That’s very cool. How how did you find yourself in this industry? What led to dog training for you?

Ali Hemyari: I loved it in college, I was a part of a working dog club and, um, we were doing a German sport called Schutzhund, and I had a Doberman named Micah. And once I left that, I moved up to New England. I was there for a couple of years, brought my dog with me, answered working dog clubs up there when I moved back to Nashville. I realized that there were really no working dog organizations in Nashville. There were some trainers that I went to to try to take me to that next level, but they were reluctant to teach me just because they thought I was going to become their competition. And at the time, I was a suit, I was in banking and I wasn’t thinking about being anybody’s competition. So I created a working dog club called Nashville Working Dogs that attracted a lot of Nashville police officers to it. And after club, we’d all go grab a bite to eat. So breakfast or dinner most times. And after a while, some of the police officers would say, hey, Ali, if you stay after for ten minutes, I will buy you dinner. I just need help with this one thing. And a few dinners later, the light bulb went off and I was like, oh, I have something that people need and I could sell this.

Ali Hemyari: So we launched Nashville Canine initially for law enforcement, search and rescue and personal protection dogs. Then 2007 2008 hit, which I was in banking at the time as well. And municipalities, believe it or not, lost budgets as well. And so I thought to myself, well, what do I do? I need to open this up to the general public. And that’s what kind of gave birth to a much bigger brand where we could capture more consumer pets as well and go in that direction. So it’s been an amazing ride. Um, lots of really interesting people I’ve met along the way. Um, famous ones too, Kelly Clarkson, Keith Urban, Hayley Williams, people like that as well. And, uh, it’s been a good journey, but it’s opened a lot of doors for me. And because of that, Trisha is why I became a police officer. Mhm. Okay. So most people think it’s the other way around, but I became a police officer to benefit the business. Because if I’m going to train you a police dog and you’re a police department, how else am I going to legally have access to narcotics or explosives or cadaver material?

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Ali Hemyari: Legally, I know there’s people that do it. The other way.

Trisha Stetzel: So on the up and up.

Ali Hemyari: That’s right. So that’s how I got into law enforcement. And I loved it. And now I’ve been in law enforcement ever since, which is close to 17 years at this point. And, uh, it’s been very beneficial to the business as well.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I bet. Okay. I know people are already interested, Ali, in connecting with you. So where or what is the best way for folks to get in touch with you?

Ali Hemyari: Yes. Visit us on the web at Nashville, the letter K, the number 9.com. Visit Nashville 9.com. You can find all the information you need. You can give us a call. I’m in the office almost every day. If you want to speak to me, please, please do.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. Okay this is so much fun. I want to take a little bit deeper dive into your entrepreneurship journey because you were in banking, and then you started a business because you saw there was a need, and then you decided to go into law enforcement. But you also are, uh, have a holding company in your family name, right? Uh, and so I’d love to hear more about your entrepreneurial journey and the types of businesses that you’ve, um, found are beneficial to be able to serve your community.

Ali Hemyari: Yeah. Well, you know, organically, a lot of ideas are inspired through business. And so once you find a need and then there’s demand for that need. You gotta fulfill that. So one of the first branches we had, we started a business called Nashville Canine University, which was an online dog training website. And this is back in 2014, 2015, well before Masterclass had even been thought of. Uh, you know, YouTube was obviously around, but none of the videos were curated in a way where somebody could go online and be able to train their dogs from start to finish. So we launched this university website locally as a test mechanism to see if there was an appetite. And then we saw that there was an appetite. So we rebranded it and we built out what’s called Coach Fido. So Coach fido.com is an online dog training website, has over 600 videos from pet dog to sport dog. You can learn everything. And that’s not just our trainers here. It’s trainers from around the world, including Germany, are on this website, which took off during Covid naturally, because everybody was at home and they had just adopted a dog.

Ali Hemyari: And then I generally make trips to Europe several times a year to procure working dogs for municipalities or for people wanting an executive protection dog. And then Nashville’s airport is not large enough to accommodate big airplanes like Lufthansa, KLM, Air France, uh, and such. So when I would procure these dogs and bring them back to the States, I would land in places like Charlotte, New York, Detroit, Chicago. And I needed a way to bring those dogs back to Nashville. So I bought a plane. So I bought a hawker, 800 XP. Okay. And so when I would then connect to those airports, we would transfer all the dogs to our own plane. And then we would bring it back to Nashville. And this is prior to Covid. And I was like, okay, I went to my wife and I said, I, I did something cool. I bought an airplane. It’s got our logo on it. We can never fly it because we can’t afford it. We can only use it for dogs.

Speaker 6: It’s only for dogs.

Ali Hemyari: And she was like, wait, what? What? And so, uh, what I learned was we better stick it in a charter fleet because it’s got to be making some money instead of sitting around. Obviously, planes shouldn’t sit for a long time. And so we, uh, put it in a charter fleet with a local company called Secure Air Charter. And, um, that’s how I got into aviation. And then after that, uh, one of the newest softwares that we’re launching is a program called Pod Entity. We’ve been working on it since, uh, 2020 to 2021. It’s now finished. Um, we teamed up with a great software development company out of San Antonio. So any closer to your neck of the woods? That’s right. And so pod entity was it’s a kennel management software for veterinary offices, pet resorts, dog trainers, groomers. But it’s made by people like us that are actually in the industry. What was happening was I was dealing with all these softwares of people that were geeks outside of the industry making them, and we had all these frustrations. So I said, well, you know, we could do this ourselves. And we created this, this software, we built it, we’ve tested it. Now we’re going to launch it soon. And the best part about it, Trisha, is it’s doesn’t cost people anything. We make our money on the software when they process their credit card transactions. And so we take a little piece of that, but there’s no subscription fee. And oftentimes those fees are less than what they’re even paying now to some of the bigger processors. And so, you know, another organic business grown out of necessity and frustration, which will be on market soon.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my gosh. And they, they all connect to each other. You see that there’s a gap in the market. And so you create something or you take something that’s already there and you make it better. I love that, and it all serves the people that you’re already serving or the industry around it. It’s fantastic. So I do want to talk about being a servant. And you’re a servant in so many ways. I would love to know where that comes from. What is it or how it. Was it something growing up or was it something you discovered as an adult that not only serving being a public servant, but also serving other people in your community? Where does that come from?

Ali Hemyari: My mom and dad did a really good job of instilling that into us as kids. Um, As I grew older, what I realized was every successful business or business owner has an obligation to give back to their community. Some do a really good job of it. A lot of them fall short of that responsibility. And I think that it’s our civic duty to give back. And doesn’t mean you have to be a public servant. You could go serve soup in the soup kitchen or build houses for habitat. But you you need to give back. And it’s your responsibility also as a model to your community and or to your spouse or children to be a part of that as well. And that then keeps that cycle going.

Trisha Stetzel: Yes. Uh, you and I are connected on so many different levels. And I, I love that you said that about business owners in the community need to be giving back to the community that they’re asking for business from. It’s so important for us to do that. And thank you for bringing that up here while we’re together. Um, when we spoke last I heard through the grapevine, not the grapevine. I heard from you that you might be starting a podcast. Is that still in the works? And I’d love to hear more about it.

Ali Hemyari: We, uh, I was hoping to have launched by now, but two more weeks. Our build out is almost complete. We gotta decorate some shelves. And then I would love to, you know, repay you and have you as my guest on the podcast. Oh.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Talk to me about who’s going to be a guest on your show, what the show is about.

Ali Hemyari: So one of the books I have written, it’s called discipline and Discipline, obviously has a picture of our of a great German Shepherd on here. But thank you. And every chapter in discipline is what I’m going to feature on the show, the main show. And so one of the chapters, for example, is being a servant. And so I’m going to have different philanthropists come on the show. One of them is going to be about habits, and I’m going to bring on a couple Olympians to talk about how habits really change their life. And so each chapter is going to have a group of 10 to 12 individuals coming on and speaking about, uh, what has made them successful. And success doesn’t have to be financial, although you’re right, that’s what most of society in America equates to it today. But it can be as simple as launching, uh, a very great nonprofit that gives back. And so having those kind of people and then connecting the dots to show the consistent traits that high achievers or as Nick Saban says winners have, and then being able to demonstrate that, that everybody has that light inside of them. You just got to get over that fear of failure and cross over that hump to become successful, because our minds are wired to be self-preservation, right? That we got to be able to step out of that comfort zone into the uncomfortable, to be able to be successful.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So for someone who’s listening today and they hear about all of the successes that you’ve had, which has come with lots of work, with grit, with creating habits and maybe letting go of some bad habits, but they’re really trying to define their success by others terms. So how do they begin defining success in their own terms rather than someone else’s?

Ali Hemyari: I would say the first step is to turn off the voice in your head that is telling you you can’t do it. Right. So that voice is the same voice that if you take off your shirt, it’s like you need to lose weight or you need to eat better. You got to turn that voice off and start doing some daily affirmations. I share one with my kids multiple times a day. I’m smart, I am strong. I’m confident I can do hard things. I’m a winner. I’m powerful. I’m a champion, and I’m blessed and I’m thankful for God. If you say that to yourself multiple times a day, you’re already going down the right track. You have to also turn off this whole if you’re young. Work life balance stuff. You need to grind now so that when you are in the position to be married and or have a family, you don’t have to grind so much anymore. But if you don’t want to grind out, if you want to trade short term gain for long term pain, you’re on that right track. If you want long term gain, you got to inverse that, right.

Ali Hemyari: You gotta work hard now. And so there’s so many young people that come up to me are like, how did you do it? Instantly in their head, thinking based on social media, everything was an overnight success, right? And I know we all share this as entrepreneurs, but there was a moment for four years I spent walking up and down Music Row in Nashville while people were handing out CDs to get discovered. I was demonstrating dogs just so I can break into the music industry. Four years in the ice in the 95 degree days with 100% humidity just to penetrate that industry. Right? And so you got to think of it more of whatever it takes. You sleep four hours, you sleep four hours, you do that seven days a week. You get used to it. You know, life can’t be comfortable. People are not successful without failure. You’re going to lose. Just think of it as a numbers game. But the more you lose, the better you’re going to get and the better you’re going to get, the more successful you’re going to become. And that’s what creates the unstoppable force.

Trisha Stetzel: Yes. Grit. Determination. The unstoppable force. And dang it, get out there and take action. That’s what I heard you say. Just get out.

Ali Hemyari: There.

Trisha Stetzel: Just take action.

Speaker 7: Just do it.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my goodness. Yes! This has been so much fun for me. Thank you for spending the time. I have one last question for you as we wrap up today. You have a lot going on. You’ve built a lot of things. You’re doing a lot of things. We talked about your podcast that is coming out and a and the software and a few other things that that you’ve got in the hopper. What’s next for you as we look into the future?

Ali Hemyari: Well, time will tell on that part, but the brain doesn’t ever stop. And so one of the things that I could say is consistent with high achievers, they’re constantly looking for the next, uh, Um, next thing to get involved in. And it doesn’t have to necessarily be business, but something to give you purpose and work on that purpose with passion. And so I can see, you know, the next short vacation, I take the next inspiration coming along and maybe that becomes something amazing. Maybe that becomes something that I, I fail on. Either way, it’ll come to me. It’ll be worth a try.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, I love that. Did you guys hear that? This busy man just said he might be taking a short vacation. We all deserve one of those. And if you can’t take a vacation, then you need to find people on your team and get them moved into leadership positions.

Speaker 7: So that you can take some time.

Trisha Stetzel: Off. Because that really is, I believe, where the ideas come from, when we can take a step back and allow those ideas to come up. I love that.

Speaker 7: That’s right.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s been so much fun. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I would love for you to come back because I want to talk more about your podcast and your book and all of the other things that we didn’t get to dig into today.

Ali Hemyari: Let’s do it. I love it. I love thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely.

Speaker 7: Holly.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much for being with me today, you guys. That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that we had, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. And of course, we need you to review, like and rate this show. It helps us build more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.