It’s All About Entrepreneurship, Chat With Arlind Haliti

Yasi: Welcome to the Fast Track podcast, Arlind.

Arlind Haliti: Thank you for having me, Yasi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Yasi: It’s also my pleasure, and you are the very first guests that have on this podcast from Kosovo. And I have very little knowledge about this country and this culture, but I’m so eager to hear more from your side, also your personal story that you have worked in other countries, North America, et cetera, and to start your own company.

So, I’m very happy to have you here.

Arlind Haliti: I hope you will find the stories interesting as well as your audience.

Yasi: Yeah. Let me start with the basic question. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who are you, what do you do? Yeah, simple intro.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am Arlind. I am from Kosovo.

I’m currently 27 years old, and I studied at RIT — Rochester Institute of Technology and actually have studied in multidisciplinary studies. So I have a first concentration in economics and statistics. My second concentration is in politics and public policy, and I actually have a minor in international relations.

So I did a pretty good combination so that I would have a broader knowledge to scope of how economists work and how everything is connected in terms of trade and economics and everything throughout the world. And, yeah, that’s pretty much about my education. I believe what’s more interesting about me is the fact that I do have, at least I believe I have that entrepreneurial spirit.

An interesting thing for me is that to this day. I have never accepted a salary. Since the beginning, since I can remember, I have always either worked as a freelance or did my own business. So, that’s a unique thing for me. Actually, when I was studying at university, I was working with this international company here in Kosovo.

I had internships, so I was kind of forced to work for someone because it was required by the university. But at the end of the internship of what was mandatory, I was offered a pretty good salary. Actually, it was three or four times the average salary that was at the time in Kosovo, but I still did not accept it.

I moved on to do my own thing, my own business. And that’s the unique thing that I can think of, at least until now, about my personality and about my entrepreneurial spirit, if I can say so.

Yasi: Yeah, the way how you describe yourself, that’s full of passion and confidence in your speech. I already feel that you are a very independent and very capable individual.

But I would ask more about that later. So my first question, coming back to your study, is because I was born in China and I went to Singapore to study. Also, at that time, I was applying for universities in the US. Back then, it was really not easy and not so straightforward compared to nowadays. So I wonder, when you were in high school or in your own country, how did you come up with this idea to study in the US, and how did it go? What’s the process that you went through?

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, actually, it’s pretty interesting because, in my elementary and high school, I actually studied piano. So I was a piano player until one day during high school, I woke u,p and I realized, Hey, this is not going to make me the money that I need.

At least the money that I want actually. And, because I always have that financial independence in my mind and being, you know, fairly wealthy, so I just decided to drop the piano thing and actually pursue something completely different in university. I was lucky enough because RIT, which is based in New York, actually has an international campus here in Prishtina, in the capital city of Kosovo.

So I went to the international campus here, and I inquired for more details of all the programs and everything. And I ended up applying to the international campus over here for economics and the rest of the fields that I actually studied. So I was accepted into it, although it was a bit challenging since I did not have any prior knowledge or stuff that I should have learned in high school. I was in music school, so I didn’t know much about economics or the other fields. So I must say it was a bit of a challenge, but I managed to do it. And actually, first year and a few years, I even had a scholarship. So that’s kind of how I went about it. So it was between RIT New York and here, but it was a fairly good combination.

I even went for a semester in Ljubljana in Slovenia. So I kind of went around, you know, gathering the greatest amount of knowledge that I could.

Yasi: Yeah. That was very interesting to be able to, I think for every student, have the opportunity to study in a different country. Not only do you further your study, but also you gain more life experiences in different countries.

Arlind Haliti: Absolutely. Getting to see all the cultures really develops you personally as well.

Yasi: Yeah. And I wonder which year you first time went to the US for the RIT study?

Arlind Haliti: If I’m not mistaken, it was in 2014 for a semester. At the end of 2013, I believe I was in Ljubljana. I’m sorry. I’m not quite certain of the years anymore because quite a bit of time has passed since I’m done with university.

Yasi: What’s your first impression, though? Is there any culture shock or something that you’re not used to?

Arlind Haliti: Well, honestly, no, because in my first year when I started, here we have a lot of internationals. So in terms of that culture and at least have a fairly general idea was pretty complete since I had, you know, a lot of contact with international people in my university over here.

And even before, I actually had the opportunity to hang out with a lot of people from the US, as I will mention later. When I started, because one of the partners that I have in my company is actually a soldier that I used to hang out with when I was in high school. So yeah, it wasn’t that much of a culture shock, but it was interesting.

I can say interesting.

Yasi: I remember the first time I was spending three months working in the US because we learned in school, you say like, how are you? I’m fine. Thank you. How are you? But then I realized that, you know, the US people say, are you as if they are just saying hello, they really don’t expect an answer.

Arlind Haliti: They don’t really expect that response.

Yeah. Just expect to say, Hey fine, thanks, you know.

Yasi: Yeah. That was funny to me. I don’t know if you learned this, like the old English in our textbook. We learned to like, how do you do? Like nowadays, nobody says that.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, I think it’s more of a, I guess, British English with some grammatical rules or something. I’m not certain, though, about that.

Yasi: And then, after graduation, you didn’t accept a full-time job. What did you do then?

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, absolutely not. I didn’t accept, and I hope I will never actually come to the position where I will have to take a job and expect a paycheck month to month. As soon as I graduated, I was lucky enough because I was talking to my friend at the time, Tyler Van Landingham, who I know, as I said, since high school, because he used to be in a peacekeeping mission here in Kosovo, as a soldier, a US soldier. He finished his mission here, and he went back to the US, and in the meantime, we started talking, you know, just casually when I was actually finishing my studies.

And he mentioned to me that he wants to open a company in the United States of both political consulting and the fields that he was specialized in. And in the meantime, I was thinking of, Hey, what could I do here? And while talking to them, I had this idea of, well, let’s open a company in the US and in Kosovo, but with a clear goal of actually bringing the US level of services, the US standards, the US quality in services in Kosovo as well.

And that’s how we came up with Phalanx Strategy Group, which is my first company that I actually opened. It was opened a few years ago, like three, four years ago. We kind of opened simultaneously. It was initially registered in the US, and then we opened its branch here. Yeah. It, it grew pretty well, I must say. It kind of surprise me how much we have been able to achieve with Phalanx until now. So that’s kind of how it began Phalanx as a company. In Kosovo, we started with Forex, which is, you know, foreign exchange, the currency exchange internationally, and we’ve started doing training and some minor investment funds around Kosovo.

And actually, what I’m really proud of is that currently, Phalanx is the biggest company when it comes to Forex training and trading in Kosovo, it managed to become a leader. Another service we offered was marketing. But I must say that didn’t really go well in Kosovo, although international clients were pretty pleased.

Marketing is not generally appreciated over here.

Yasi: Yeah. It’s very interesting because you started something like international studies and other stuff. And then now the business is about Forex. How did that happen?

Arlind Haliti: Well, the idea was to bring something unique, as I said. At the time, there was no company dealing with Forex; no one was doing anything of that sort.

There were, of course, individuals doing it at the individual scale, but not like a properly structured company to give you a program to learn, you know, a clear investment path and all that. So in that exploration of the market of what is there that can be done uniquely in Kosovo, we found Forex, and I was actually quite passionate about Forex and stocks and investments. Since I was studying economics and, yeah, we decided, Hey, let’s do this thing, you know, let’s, let’s pay some attention to the Forex because it’s something that is going to be unique and its own thing in Kosovo.

Yasi: And then in the company back then when you started it till now, what would be the biggest challenge that you have overcome?

Arlind Haliti: Uh, a lot of them. To be honest, in Kosovo, the financial institutions, first of all, are not going to support it.

So if you are looking to grow and develop further, for example, loans are completely unfavorable. You have to come up with your own investments. It’s hard to find, not well educated, but a workforce and employees that are willing to go above and beyond for the company. And as I learned the hard way, I cannot expect an employee to work, especially I say for my own business.

So if you make mistakes and challenges that went along the way, things that I needed to learn as a young entrepreneur, you know, I had higher expectations than I should, for example, either in employees or potential clients or in actual clients. I learned that a lot of things are not as they look on the first look.

Yasi: Yeah, I can relate to that. If you are working for your own company,

Arlind Haliti: It’s definitely different.

Yasi: Yeah. It’s definitely different. And especially if you’re young, passionate, ambitious, you set high expectations for yourself, and then you can not mirror the same expectation to employees.

Arlind Haliti: Definitely. I have employees who would come, come at work, looking at the time, you know, how long until I can leave.

So that was sometimes a bit of a letdown, but yeah, I just had to face the fact that I’m going to have to work the hardest there and, you know, the longest hours and not expect everyone to do the same thing.

Yasi: Yeah. Let’s come back to something touch on to the personal finance and then career planning this part because as a young graduate, you have this brave, this courage to turn down a well-paid full-time job. It would be so easy, right, you just go to the office, do the work, come back home, receive the salary. What makes you feel you have the courage to, you know, just to reject it and then think, what else you can do on your own? Is there any, do you have any plan in-between, there’s a buffer, or what was the situation back then?

Arlind Haliti: Actually, no, when I rejected that job, I had absolutely nothing in my mind. I knew that I wanted to do something for my own self, you know, to start something, but it’s not like I had some plan already waiting there to be implemented or a business to be started. So at the time when I rejected that, I didn’t have anything lined up, but I just knew that I always had this thing in my mind. I will not accept the salary, and that’s it, you know, Since when I was in high school, I could have done some freelancing or something like that, but I never wanted an actual salary. In my mind, how it feels to me is like you take the paycheck, you’re doomed.

You’re going to that system, you know, where you are working salary after salary after salary, you know, just expecting the end of the month, so you can fill those holes that you open during the month on your credit cards and everything. So that’s why I always wanted to avoid it.

Yasi: Yeah. I think now we founded this company, right, and I really feel that having a full-time job is the easiest thing to make money.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah. Yeah. There is this misconception that you are a business owner, you have your own business, oh my God, you’re done in life. You know, you’re having the time of your life.

Absolutely not. People who work paycheck to paycheck have the time of their life because they literally have nothing to worry about. You go to the office at nine; you leave at five; you don’t care about anything in between. Whereas when you have your own company, you’re drowning in everything.

Yasi: Yes. Yes. Last time, I think literally the last episode I was interviewing Nenad, he also mentioned he was so stressed because he was running his own company. And then now he learned how to manage the work-life balance, which now we talk about, because this is your own company and that you have to put a stop; otherwise, you’re drawing in there, all the things. Yeah.

Arlind Haliti: Absolutely.

Yasi: After you met this friend and started this company, how did this company grow? Is it because you mentioned you identified a unique opportunity in the market, or is there something else you did people can learn from it that, you know, to fuel the growth of the company?

Arlind Haliti: To me, I’m actually a big believer in paid, precise, accurate advertising, targeted advertising. As soon as we started, especially with the Forex thing, because that was one of the first things that we launched with the company, with Phalanx. Although now we offer a broader range of services, Forex was the main one.

There were a few other companies that popped off and tried to do the same thing because they saw that we were having a pretty rapid growth in that. And it would have been a challenge, to be honest, but what we did is that we invested heavily in marketing and paid ads. And let me tell you, for Kosovo at the time, it was like 4,000 impressions of an ad.

It would be around 10–15 cents, and we spent thousands within three or four months to promote in social media. So we dedicated a significant budget to promoting, but what we made sure through that is that actually, if you said Forex, immediately you would think Phalanx, at least in Kosovo. So that’s how we kind of pushed away all the potential competition.

And once we got that brand out, you know, people automatically associate Phalanx with Forex. And it was pretty easy, if I may say so, from that point on. But, yeah, that’s why I actually believe so much in paid advertising because you can fine-tune everything to your needs.

Yasi: Yeah. And also, if your market is less competitive, you can literally occupy a space in the mind of people, as Forex and in a competitive market, I think, in London, somewhere like Singapore.

Arlind Haliti: It would be a different story.

Yasi: Yeah. It would not be 10–15 cents.

Arlind Haliti: Definitely not, definitely not. So yeah, we did have a few advantages, but we also focused on exploiting those advantages properly. Ultimately it did work out in our favor. We kind of became a monopoly on the field, so it did work out in our favor.

Yasi: Well, that’s amazing. That’s amazing.

And then, the next thing is the new company that you are funding, right? I think it’s something related to agriculture. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, absolutely. Currently, with Phalanx, we are investing in two new companies. The first one is a platform that we are doing.

It’s called AgroZona. It is specialized in the agriculture sector in Kosovo because currently, the agriculture sector in Kosovo in one year it’s estimated to be a sector worth around 1 billion euros. But it is completely decentralized. So, for example, let’s say farmers in one city have no idea how much something is being sold in another city.

And the buyers have no idea of the same thing as well. So it’s kind of decentralized. And what we’re doing is we are creating a platform where buyers are at scale or smaller buyers and farmers and agro-businesses, and actually come together, sell to each other. We’re providing different agreements that we have with agro-businesses, where farmers will have discounts.

And we are also attempting to connect the government to have those, and each farmer would have, for example, a direct connection with the department of agriculture of their own municipality. So if they needed support or something, we are facilitating that communication and everything between farmers, businesses, and municipalities.

It’s a unique thing. It’s one of its kind in Kosovo currently. So we believe it is going to turn out to be a monopoly. It’s just like Phalanx.

Yasi: Yeah. And is it something that you are starting with other founders, or it’s just your company invested in a startup?

Arlind Haliti: No, with AgroZona, actually, we joined forces with another consulting company. It’s called Bioks, and it is the largest consulting company in Kosovo for agriculture.

They are specialized in agriculture. So, they actually had this idea, and we have at Phalanx had technical expertise, let’s say so, to create such complex systems because we’re working with large amounts of data. So they have the idea of the platform, we had the technical expertise, and we joined forces to develop this unique platform.

Yasi: All right. And then from starting the company, how many years now, it’s your company till now?

Arlind Haliti: Actually, AgroZona is about to launch on September; 1st or 2nd of September. We just finished the platform literally over the past week, and we’re going to launch it. So let’s see how it goes. But Phalanx has been active for now, I believe four years.

Yasi: Okay. And how many employees do you have in Phalanx?

Arlind Haliti: Currently, due to Corona, I must admit we shrunk a bit. So currently, we are six or seven, but before Corona, considering contractors and everyone, we were around 20 people.

Yasi: And also for the company from zero to one within three, four years time, it was pretty amazing.

And as you mentioned, it’s the monopoly, this particular niche in your country. And do you have any other plans for the business in the future or for yourself? Because you mentioned early on, you had this inspiration not to have a paycheck but to accumulate more than salary wealth.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, today we just started working on another platform, which we intend to launch for Kosovo and the other Balkan states in the region, and we are also going to target Switzerland and Germany. It’s basically a platform that digitalizes the invoicing and contracts, the signatures and the stamps and everything.

It’s to the point where you would issue an invoice electronically, the other side would have the approved account, and that would be able to click on it, sign it, then it would be fully valid, fully enforceable, even by a court. It would be the same as physically signing it. The thing is that, first of all, obviously, we’re going to launch it in Kosovo since we’re a significant part of the company base here, but we’re going to continue developing it and actually launching it state-by-state around the region and, gradually within EU as well. We believe it’s a unique thing as well, since it removes a significant burden, at least in those countries where, for invoices to be valid, it has to be signed and stamped and everything, for example, such as in Kosovo, where you would literally have to chase someone with an invoice or a contract to sign it and good luck catching them sometimes.

This way, you know, you would just send it to their email, you tell them, Hey, click there, its sign is fully valid, and that’s it. We believe it’s a unique platform, one of its kind as well. So, now we have to focus on developing it and making it safe to use and in compliance with the law.

Yasi: Okay. So I see that you are building a different business and different machines, and do you plan to like retire early? Or do you plan to imagine yourself as a CEO of a big corporate? So how do you envision yourself?

Arlind Haliti: Yeah, absolutely not about the retirement. I’m the type of guy who, if you would let me without some responsibility, with something to worry about, something not being in my mind constantly, I would just completely go crazy.

So I’m definitely not going to do that. My idea is to because all of these other companies are like daughter companies of Phalanx, so the idea is to have Phalanx and to diversify. And personally, at least from my experience until now, advice that I would give to any starting entrepreneur would be to diversify as much as possible.

Definitely do not leave all of your eggs in one basket, as we say, because, when you have multiple sources, no matter what happens to one industry or to one business at some point in time during a business cycle or economic recession, at least one of them, or two of them are gonna keep the cash flow, the money running and is going to keep you floating, and it won’t let you go under, and in the best-case scenarios, when all of them pick up, you’re going to make a ton of money.

Yasi: Yeah, same as a personal investment.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah. Yeah. Just like with portfolio stocks, for example, or something.

Yasi: Yes, correct. My last question would be, I wonder when you were younger, where did you get inspiration from that you know, okay, I’m not going to be an employee, I’m going to make my own money, I’m going to make big bucks.

You see this as not an average thought of average students or young students back then. So, where did you get that inspiration from?

Arlind Haliti: Honestly, I’m not certain of where it actually came from. I just know that since I can remember, at least during my high school years, I believe it came from the thing that even when I was playing piano, whenever I had to do some appearance or some concert or to give classes to someone, I would be paid for that particular thing.

So it was kind of a freelancing style of payment. I always thought of charging the maximum that I could potentially charge, as much as, you know, that service of mine would have value. And when you get used to charging as much as you can and making more money than you see the average salary being paid out, it kind of gives you that perspective of that mentality.

It engraves it in your brain that, Hey, I should not go for a simple salary, but there is much more to be done. And I was lucky to do this at an earlier age because I have been working since I was around 16 years old; I think it’s right at that age where you actually start to develop more maturely. These things happened to me to the point that actually I became allergic to salaries, if I can say so.

Yasi: That’s funny. Okay. But if you are an employee of your current company, but it’s another thing, right? It’s a

Arlind Haliti: Well, yeah, that doesn’t count. At the end of the day. I get paid in dividends. I can pull out as much as I want.

Yasi: Yeah.

Arlind Haliti: It won’t drown the company. And it’s different because when I work in my company, for example, like with developments of AgroZona, since March, until now, until the last week I’ve been working from 9:00 AM until 2, 3:00 AM, actually is different because you know, you’re doing it for your own company, for something that you’re proud of and for something that is going to serve you and everything.

So it’s a different sensation. You don’t feel even tired when you’re working for yourself, your own business.

Yasi: Yes. And I think, on the other hand, is sometimes you have to put a break because, for an entrepreneur, it is so easy to cross the boundary because you’re so passionate and it’s your own stuff, and you just keep working on it but sometimes need a little break.

Arlind Haliti: Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, when we finished with the development of AgroZona, I took like four or five days of break, and that’s when it hit me off actually how tired I am, how much I’ve been drowning myself in work, but still, it feels good. And I don’t regret it for a second. I would do it all over again.

Yasi: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Do you have any last words for our audience?

Arlind Haliti: All I can say is if you are thinking of doing something and if you think if it’s worth it, I would tell them, Hey, nothing worth doing is easy, don’t get scared of taking that leap. Obviously, don’t go without some financial coverage, without some backup that you know you can rely on if things go south, but definitely do not be scared of a challenge.

Look forward to it, take it with as much positivity as you can. And, just go into it.

Yasi: Yeah. That’s how you achieve the breakthrough, right?

Arlind Haliti: Yeah. Yeah. Not everything is going to work out the way you plan it. I’m sure even you know this, you probably had firsthand experience with this, but in the end, with the right commitment and dedication, everything is possible to be achieved.

Yasi: Yeah. Lovely. Lovely. Thank you so much for being here.

Arlind Haliti: Thank you for having me, Yasi.