Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alli Privitt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alli, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I’ve always been a bite the apple, take the risk type of person. However, that realm and area in my life has only gotten bigger as I’ve gotten older. From growing up climbing all tallest trees, to bareback horseback riding, to water skiing, to rollercoaster riding, to trick downhill mountain skiing, to rock climbing, to cliff jumping, to glacier water snorkeling, to deep cave spelunking, to swimming with sharks, to canyoning down waterfalls, to marathon running, to starting a business, and to leaving a teaching career after 10 years, nothing compares to the risk I took when I decided to become a licensed skydiver.

I did my first tandem skydive in 2014 and I absolutely loved every second of it. I remember the freeing feeling of falling through the skies and just letting gravity do its gravity thing until we pulled the parachute canopy. Knowing how much I enjoyed the thrill of that tandem jump, I was eager at some point to do it again and this time with my mom who is also an adrenaline seeker but had never gone skydiving. Then the stars aligned back in the summer of 2019 for us to make skydiving happen together at Skydive Wissota in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. I got to experience my 2nd jump and take in more this time since my heart wasn’t beating quite as hard out of my chest, while my mom got to experience her first tandem skydive. After completing that jump, I learned that Skydive Wissota had a static line skydiving course where you could learn how to jump out of the plane by yourself! I figured there had to be places where one could learn but had never really considered it until they mentioned it to me back in 2019.

I then made plans to do the course and work towards getting my skydiving license in the summer of 2020 and well the world kind of flipped upside down that spring so my plans to skydive solo were put on pause. Summer of 2021, I started my learning design coaching and consulting business so my focus was elsewhere that summer on getting business up and running. But as the summer of 2021 came and went, I could not stop thinking about flying in the skies. So, I made sure to prioritize getting my skydiving license in the summer of 2022 and put myself on the schedule for July 9th, 2022 to begin that journey.

I had talked to my mom about it and while she loved the tandem jump, she was way too scared to jump out of the plane by herself…or so she thought. After hearing me talk about the course for months and months, she finally signed up with me and so we were going to get to do our first solo jumps together! Let’s just say my dad wasn’t too happy about our plans for this summer.

Morning of the 9th, I am just one big ball of nerves and so is my mom. I can’t remember much other than the constant sweaty palms I had, constant dry mouth, and heart racing the entire day. The static line course is 6+ hours long where you essentially learn all of the things that could go wrong and how to deal with them. The entire course all that was running through my head was I am going to die jumping out of that plane.

Despite dealing with fears of dying, I knew I had to jump out of that plane. It was the risk I needed to take. Having done so many other risky things in my life, this seemed like the next step in my progression of conquering fears – literally taking the leap of faith, which is actually my middle name. In fact, when I told my dad if he was surprised when I signed myself up to go skydiving, he smirked and said, “not at all, I’m just wondering what’s next.”

So after 7 hours of training and learning, my mom and I got harnessed up in our parachute rigs, got on the Cessna 192 airplane, climbed up to 3,500 ft, had our instructor open the airplane door while we covered our reserve handles, yelling at us to standby, then climb out to the edge of the airplane strut, to look back over at our instructor to let go and fly free.

Which I did. And my mom immediately followed me. Oh and once we landed, we almost immediately went back up to do it again, which didn’t give me any time to really process what I had just done.

But after the second jump, my mom and I did have time to process and what a rush that came out. Being terrified the entire day but holding it in is a long time be scared. My body did not know what I was doing to it. And that feeling didn’t go away for days. I couldn’t sleep at all and to get your skydiving license you have to do 25 jumps. After that first day I had only done 3!

I questioned everything. This was the first experience of risk where I did not think I could go back and do it again. All the other stuff, easy – no problem – not even a question of doing it over and over again. But skydiving? I was an internal wreck for days. Not to mention on my 3rd jump I had a less than ideal landing on my tailbone and well let’s just say sitting hurt for a couple weeks.

I ended up getting back to the drop zone the next week and did more jumps – and was still terrified each and every time. I talked to everyone there ad nauseum to try to understand how they enjoyed it and weren’t so scared. And THAT is what honestly kept me coming back.

I had to understand the calm others felt. I had to get to a point where this event wasn’t airway closing type fear inducing. And so, I kept showing up, and learning and well yes jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. The more I learned about the equipment and the more jumps I successfully did where my parachute opened and I landed on target, the more the fear started to subside.

It took me just over a month of pretty constant fear to get my A License on August 12th, 2022. And I don’t know if it was the stamp of approval by a world record holder of skydiving or the fact that I had learned enough to understand my equipment is designed to get me safely to the ground or just the mere exposure effect of putting myself through the 25 skydives over the course of a month, but I started to find the peace in the skies I had been looking for since doing my first tandem jump.

You see, doing a tandem skydive and doing it solo are total opposite experiences. When you tandem skydive, all of the safety concerns are for the most part on the tandem instructor. But when you solo skydive, you have to learn and carry all of those concerns yourself. And the weight of them was heavy, even for my risk-taking spirit.

But the risk is almost always worth it. Based on 30+ years of taking risks, this one has only opened my eyes, heart, and mind to releasing so much fear that I didn’t even know I was holding on to. There is something indescribable when you are flying high in the skies and that freedom carries over into every other area in your life.

Conquering fears allows you to see beyond issues you are currently facing and place them in the appropriate box they need to lie in – when you let go of fear, you open up a whole new world to explore and jump out of, quite literally.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My road into business and where I am now is nonlinear and constantly evolving, but that is the best part of being an entrepreneur and pursuing your dreams!

My business started as My Friend Alli, LLC – a health and wellness coaching space where I was doing work that was tangential to my teaching career at the time. I started my business as a space for me to help others outside of teaching high school chemistry – so I leaned into my main passion outside of teaching which was strength training and healthy living. I have run multiple marathons and gotten exceptionally strong in weight training over the years and wanted to help others gain confidence in the gym and getting stronger. I was especially passionate in helping men and women who had a fear of the gym and helping them feel comfortable and confident in taking up space in the gym! But as the year went on with teaching and running a business, I realized that I didn’t want my hobby of weight training and healthy living to be my new full-time job.

So at the start of 2022, I pivoted my business back into my expertise of teaching and learning. Having gotten my master’s in teaching and instructing, along with a decade of classroom time for creating meaningful learning experiences, I realized that doing learning design, course creation, along with personal growth speaking was where I wanted to go. My favorite parts of educating others were crafting up the best ways to get complex ideas across – which was everyday while teaching chemistry, designing events that got students minds open and curious, and also getting people to take risks they wouldn’t normally take by creating a safe space for people to learn and grow.

The business is still My Friend Alli, LLC, but the business helps coaches, leaders, academics, trainers who want to elevate learning experiences and create their own grade A program or course. This service is for someone who has already created a program or course and they want to refine it, or it is for someone who wants to create one from scratch. It is also for employers or business that want to elevate their professional development, in house trainings, or design better workflows for training and learning.

In addition to working creatively on project builds, my business is here to inspire and help others grow personally. Having spent over a decade motivating and inspiring youth to learn a very complicated topic in chemistry, I realized my true passion is using the vehicle of chemistry to get students to learn and grow in every area of their life. Having been a lifelong learner and risk taker, I love sharing stories of failure, exploration, and risk taking to help move others forward. And so, I am also a motivational and inspirational speaker on personal growth, academic success, and risk taking.

Whether you want to do your first skydive, swim with sharks, travel the world, or just apply for the job – I want to help you get out of your head and into the adventure called life.

I am most proud of taking the risk of starting my business because it was something my students told me to do for YEARS – they were always telling me how much they loved my motivational teacher talks and well, I decided to take the leap into the unknown as I told my students to do each year and well, I haven’t looked back. The other side of fear is freedom and I want that for everyone I come across and help.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to unlearn since starting my own company is thinking that everyone knows what they are doing and what they present to the world is equally as good as what is behind the scenes.

When starting my business, I would see all these online coaches, marketers, sales people, product makers, service providers, selling their perfectly curated programs, products, and services. They all looked so good and each one was going to get me and my business to the next level just as they promised.

Well, after investing tens of thousands of dollars into various programs, coaches, and services, I learned that not everyone has a matching behind the scenes to what they showcase out in public. I learned to better vet potential people to work with and invest in and to wait longer before investing. Meaning, do not get caught up in crafty sales techniques, false scarcity, or beautiful branding without substance.

I also had to unlearn that I had to do business a certain way – as in the way I saw others doing it. Being an entrepreneur and CEO means paving the road you want to take, not the one someone else has made. But it takes time to learn the business world and also to realize that most people are making it up as they go. I’m a better business owner because of investments that didn’t go as planned and learning from those programs in ways I didn’t expect.

Coming to a place where if I make an investment now, it is because I know I am going to learn and grow from it no matter what, even if it isn’t what I initially had planned.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have done all of the pivoting in my life, but this past year has been particularly full of pivots.

At the start of 2022, I was a business owner who was doing health and wellness coaching helping people become the strongest versions of themselves. I was also still teaching high school chemistry, and living in St. Louis, Missouri with my significant other at the time that I had plans to marry someday. I have lived in St. Louis, Missouri since college in 2011.

Enter in late spring of 2022. I pivoted my business into learning design and motivational speaking which was planned. I also was wrapping up the school year and had already told my school district that I was taking a year sabbatical to pursue entrepreneurship full time. This was also planned.

What I did not plan was an unexpected break up that left me untethered from everything I knew about my life. For the first time in my life, I had no place I needed to be. My business could operate from anywhere, I was no longer teaching at a school in St. Louis, Missouri, and I already had plans to spend the summer with my family in northern Wisconsin to pursue getting my skydiving license.

So instead of making plans to spend the summer in Wisconsin only to come back to Missouri, I did the bigger pivot and put 90% of the my stuff in storage, the rest of it up to my parents place in Wisconsin, deemed them my home base location, and since moving in June of 2022, have been living out of suitcases taking me to places such as Portugal, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Texas, back to Missouri, Italy, and skydiving every weekend I haven’t been traveling.

Pivoting my life to living far more nomadically than ever before and letting go of the fear of being landlocked has been the most freeing thing I have ever done in my life. I didn’t realize how many shackles I had tied myself up with by thinking I had to do life a certain way, in a certain place, for a certain amount of time.

By having the trifecta of no job, no house, no relationship keeping me anywhere, I have been able to go everywhere. And I’m just getting started. The pivot has only brought in new experiences and adventures, and I very much look forward to where else I’ll be heading in the next year and beyond!

So the year of 2022 was me pivoting in business, career, and life!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myfriendalli.com/
• Instagram: myfriendalli
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alliprivitt/

Image Credits
Britta Blanksi Joe Reichling Barry Shehadeh Ryan Egesdal