From Farm Boy to Fintech Founder Fighting for Small Business Owners with Levi King
Episode
25 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Health & Wellness, Relationships
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Farm Work Ethic Foundation: Growing up on a farm with five siblings instilled a mindset where failure was not an option. Daily responsibilities like feeding livestock and managing crops regardless of weather or equipment failures built problem-solving skills and determination. This environment created the foundation for entrepreneurial resilience without initially recognizing the farm itself as a small business.
- ✓Money Solves Business Problems: Early in his first business installing and manufacturing electric signs, King discovered that adequate capital resolves most business challenges. Despite being an introvert with severe cold-calling anxiety that caused sweat rings down to his waist, he forced himself to read sales books and network at Chamber of Commerce events because securing revenue was the only path forward for business survival.
- ✓Business Credit Navigation System: Nav integrates with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus, and cash flow platforms like Finicity and Plaid to provide free comprehensive financial health assessments. The platform identifies specific problems like unknown tax liens, chronic late vendor payments damaging commercial credit, or excessive revolving debt, then guides owners through concrete steps to refinance subprime loans and improve future financing options.
- ✓Mental Health Breaking Point: After Goldman Sachs led Nav's forty-five million dollar Series C round in 2018, King experienced his first panic attacks despite having no prior mental health history. He spent two years in therapy developing new habits including meditation and psilocybin treatment before becoming panic-attack free in May 2020 and anxiety-free by 2021, learning he should have prioritized self-care before reaching a breaking point.
- ✓Success Requires Happiness: Building a profitable company with enough money to live comfortably does not equal success if personal fulfillment is absent. King emphasizes that professional achievement without daily contentment in work, team relationships, and customer impact creates a hollow victory that others cannot understand because they focus only on external financial markers rather than internal satisfaction and purpose alignment.
What It Covers
Levi King, CEO and cofounder of Nav, shares his journey from growing up in poverty on a farm to building multiple businesses across manufacturing, hospitality, and fintech. He explains how Nav helps small business owners understand and improve their credit and financial health to access better financing options.
Key Questions Answered
- •Farm Work Ethic Foundation: Growing up on a farm with five siblings instilled a mindset where failure was not an option. Daily responsibilities like feeding livestock and managing crops regardless of weather or equipment failures built problem-solving skills and determination. This environment created the foundation for entrepreneurial resilience without initially recognizing the farm itself as a small business.
- •Money Solves Business Problems: Early in his first business installing and manufacturing electric signs, King discovered that adequate capital resolves most business challenges. Despite being an introvert with severe cold-calling anxiety that caused sweat rings down to his waist, he forced himself to read sales books and network at Chamber of Commerce events because securing revenue was the only path forward for business survival.
- •Business Credit Navigation System: Nav integrates with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus, and cash flow platforms like Finicity and Plaid to provide free comprehensive financial health assessments. The platform identifies specific problems like unknown tax liens, chronic late vendor payments damaging commercial credit, or excessive revolving debt, then guides owners through concrete steps to refinance subprime loans and improve future financing options.
- •Mental Health Breaking Point: After Goldman Sachs led Nav's forty-five million dollar Series C round in 2018, King experienced his first panic attacks despite having no prior mental health history. He spent two years in therapy developing new habits including meditation and psilocybin treatment before becoming panic-attack free in May 2020 and anxiety-free by 2021, learning he should have prioritized self-care before reaching a breaking point.
- •Success Requires Happiness: Building a profitable company with enough money to live comfortably does not equal success if personal fulfillment is absent. King emphasizes that professional achievement without daily contentment in work, team relationships, and customer impact creates a hollow victory that others cannot understand because they focus only on external financial markers rather than internal satisfaction and purpose alignment.
Notable Moment
King reveals that at age twenty-five, after building a three million dollar revenue manufacturing business, he sold it despite his father-in-law calling him crazy. His decision stemmed from curiosity about new challenges rather than satisfaction with early success, demonstrating how entrepreneurial drive often conflicts with conventional wisdom about security and stability.
Episode Transcript
Boom. Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by HighLevel, the all in one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down from farm boy to fintech founder fighting for small business owners. To drop these value bombs, I'm about to Levi King and the EOFire Studios. Levi is a self taught entrepreneur with more than twenty years of experience starting, owning, and operating small businesses. He's the CEO and cofounder of Nav, a credit health platform for small businesses. And today, we're gonna talk about farm roots to entrepreneurial grit, building through adversity, serial entrepreneur across industries, lessons, regrets, and do overs, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Levi and our sponsors. Here's something most of us don't think about until it's a problem, our phone service. Kape is a privacy first mobile carrier built from the ground up with security as the priority. If you care about protecting your digital life without giving up your smartphone, Kape makes that possible. Visit cape.co to sign up today. Are you ready for the ultimate all in one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, HighLevel, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Levi, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, thanks Fire Nation for having me, and, hope you get some utility out of this conversation. When I started off for me growing up in American poverty, success meant building a company and finding a lifestyle that that frankly, enough money to live the life that I didn't get to live growing up. And it was a pretty narrow view of what success is, but that it just seems so unimaginable to have money that that was the only way you could think about it. And so as I got older and wiser, everyone around you, if you build a successful business is profitable and you get that lifestyle and probably yourself, you think I'm successful. I'd I accomplished what I set out to. I've made it. Obviously, you gotta make sure it doesn't go off the rails, but, you're successful. You made it. You got after it. You built a company. You're profitable. You do what you want in life outside of work. You have enough money inside the business to continue to build the business. And what I missed from that equation is if you're not happy, once you get there, you're not successful. Doesn't matter how much money you're making. But everyone around you will just will can't imagine that. They can't imagine why would you not be happy Right. You built a successful company and you've got money. And it's entirely possible to not be happy once you you think …
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Tools
- NavBy guest
“Nav integrates with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus, and cash flow platforms like Finicity and Plaid to provide free comprehensive financial health assessments.”
“Nav integrates with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus, and cash flow platforms like Finicity and Plaid to provide free comprehensive financial health assessments.”
“Nav integrates with two consumer credit bureaus, all three commercial bureaus, and cash flow platforms like Finicity and Plaid to provide free comprehensive financial health assessments.”
company
“After Goldman Sachs led Nav's forty-five million dollar Series C round in 2018, King experienced his first panic attacks despite having no prior mental health history.”
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