Everybody’s dream is to have a memorable entrepreneurial journey and so was mine since I was an 18-year-old directionless young man.
I am Avi Arya, father of 2 beautiful girls, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer, turner hotelier, now a social media marketer and the founder of a 10-year-old bootstrapped digital marketing agency called “Internet MOGULS” which ranks among the top companies in its space.
After working hard for 20 years, with no funding and no support for my entrepreneurial setup, but with the support of my awesome team and my family, I was able to grow Internet MOGULS from 4 members to 225 members today.
But as I was growing the company, I realized that I was not able to spend time with my 2 daughters – Raya (age-14 years) & Avianna (age-10 years).
Things were moving great at work but I was becoming an absent father which I never thought I would be.
So every time when I am home and not traveling, I try to maximize my moments with them. I read them bedtime stories and that gave me so much peace. My wife used to say that my bedtime stories were doing a great job as kids used to sleep very peacefully after that.
But my idea was not to put kids to bed, my idea was that they listen to the entire story, but the reason they weren’t able to listen to it properly was because it was boring maybe because it was about me & my entrepreneurial journey.
Then I realized that as a storyteller I should have known that stories should always be about other people not about ourselves.
So my kids wanted to know what’s in it for them, and I ended up changing the story completely & making it about them.
So after some time, we created a fictitious factory named Ravianna (a combination of Raya & Avianna). But what was that factory selling? Definitely what the girls loved – Chocolates!
So, every time whenever I read them bedtime stories, it was about Ravianna chocolates – how these 2 girls follow their rituals, get up in the morning, have a morning prayer by thanking God for everything, go to the gym & workout and then reach office. What all challenges & barriers they face while running a chocolate factory with their mentor who was me who was always a call away. So ultimately I was also a part of the story.
And after that the story became so popular, they actually started all these rituals in their real lives and they themselves said one day that ‘Dad you know what, we should convert this story in a book format, a comic book series called the ‘Bedtime Stories For Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs”.
This idea just took off, and the book did really well when it got published, we put it on Amazon, went to different schools in Canada and India, and spoke on stages about the book and what value this book portrays.
The feeling of seeing your daughters talk to the audience about a project that belongs to them brought tears of joy every time and made me feel I’m doing my part in their life.
Bedtime Stories for Tomorrow’s entrepreneurs was called the 1st Daddy-Daughter venture which made around 550$ and the girls are hugely proud of this venture.
They are proud of it because this book contains their time with their daddy & I’m proud of it because it was my time with my girls where I was able to teach them about life and entrepreneurship.
This happened a few years ago and as time passed by, we thought that we should do the 2nd Daddy-Daughter venture, this time much bigger & better!
Someone said I have only 4 summers with Raya and then she takes off for university and a life of her own and this terrified me & still does whenever this thought came into my mind. So in between balancing things, I now ensure we make reasons to spend time together and this venture is one such effort.
So while I & my daughters were traveling around the world we thought of writing a book called the ‘INTERNET MOGULS OF THE WORLD’.
Over a cup of hot chocolate, all 3 of us decided that an INTERNET MOGUL is defined as somebody who is able to start & grow their entrepreneurial venture, follow and never give up on their dreams, and at the same never compromise the real quality time with their family.
You’ll ultimately find happiness if the above happens.
There was a time people used to say, ‘If you are building a company you have to sacrifice your family time & if you’re giving time to your family, you have to sacrifice your career to some extent. So, I pledged to prove this statement wrong.
And I did it! It’s not true anymore. I and my girls do videos & are working on this business together.
That’s how we thought to create IMOTW Book.
We started creating micro-videos, posting on DMs to awesome humans that we looked up to, even taking trips all over the world and networking with people to build this venture.
We had the fortune of meeting Gary Vaynerchuk and we also made few videos with him & his encouragement gave Raya the confidence to keep marching ahead.
We did a micro-video with Grant Cardone on zoom, we spoke to Stu Mclaren, who was so kind, Greg Smith from Thinkific who gave us an interview and is simply the most helpful entrepreneur we have met who supported IMOTW, and the process led us to reach out through a mail to our combined favorite, Arianna Huffington.
Want to know who all are already inside the “Internet Moguls of the World”.
Click here & see for yourself!
Guess what happens when you work on a passion project with your family,
MAGIC!
Arianna replied within 24 hours and she then offered an opportunity for us to become the contributors at Thrive Global. And here we are!
I believe that when there’s a mission that comes from the heart people come out and support you with full honesty.
My 2 daughters Raya & Avianna are working really hard by creating so many personalized micro-videos every single day to reach out to the busiest people on the planet. These are the people who I & my daughters really admire.
We sit down and make a list of the people who we really want should be there in the book. Then we ask them that ‘Can we have 20 precious minutes of yours over a zoom call or digital meetings’ or we sometimes travel to other countries just to interview that person for 20 minutes so that he/she can be a part of the book. The book is only half done and 25 more interviews to go.
My daughters and I are working really hard to make this venture a for-profit & a successful one and at the same time, the people who know us also know that as I and my family are dog lovers, we have a dog shelter at our home.
We run a rescue 7 days a week, we constantly have dogs coming in and going out. It’s very sad when they leave but at the same time, it gives us happiness when they come in. At any given time, we have 6-7 dogs and we fall in love with each one of them when they couldn’t be able to find a shelter for themselves. So the profit that we are gonna make, a part of it will go to the dog rescue, some animal shelters that are in Vancouver.
Raya & Avianna are firmly making sure they do justice to their School, their rituals and we will make this sure that when the book is out, it becomes a podcast, then a Youtube channel, and then it becomes an online event where all the interviews and learnings that the 14-year-old Raya & the 11-year-old Avianna & the 44-year-old Daddy (Avi Arya) have gathered by meeting such great people across the world goes out to at least 100K people when we’ll launch ‘Internet Moguls Of The World’.
For all of you people, who have supported us in this venture, we want to thank you for this post.
A special thanks to Arianna Huffington who gave us this opportunity to publish our story on this beautiful channel ‘THRIVE GLOBAL’ where more people can know about this Daddy-Daughter venture.
From this post, we are not seeking any money or funding.
It is a self-funded entrepreneurial for-profit project. The idea is for daddy to teach his daughters that if you’ll work hard enough then you’ll get the right people’s support.
If you are reading this post so far, the one asks that we have is for you to recommend us and our venture to as many people as possible so that more & more people can get inspired by our story and we’ll be able to reach all the mega influencers for our humongous project ‘IMOTW’.
We want to interview those people who have leverage the internet & would be able to spread their message to different parts of the world, who still spend time with their family while growing their business & find happiness inside.
These are the people to who we are reaching out.
I, Raya & Avianna can only promise you one thing that this is not the last thing you are hearing from us, the Daddy-Daughter venture is on its way to travel around the world, meeting more & more people.
Very soon this venture would become famous, people would read about it.
Over to Raya and Avianna.
Hello everyone, this is the first time we are writing for such a large publication. The last time we wrote on the landing page for our first book.
Thank you if you like what my younger sister Avianna and I and daddy are doing together, please share this post as widely as you can, so we can get access to meeting the busiest people who have not replied to us and your post or comment or tag will get us attention. (Daddy says it’s OK to ask if you ask respectfully).
Back to Daddy,
Ladies and Gentlemen hopefully, ‘Internet Moguls of the World’ will be a thriving business which we’ll be able to run from different parts of the world and say that this is the time that me and my daughters spent together.
It was a very emotional & private venture which has now become public with Arianna’s support.
For all those who are reading this far, thanks a lot once again.
So stay tuned for the release of the book, the podcast, a Youtube channel, the online course & the event that follows.
This is Avi Arya, Raya Arya & Avianna Raya signing off.
Raya’s Instagram @raya_arya – Click Here
Daddy’s Instagram @askaviarya – Click Here
PS. Help us share this story. Thank you.
