A story about Priya, a passionate woman with a job that didn’t exist before she started doing it.
Priya, you have founded a successful business that’s selling educational tools for parents to raise their kids to holistic, confident and friendly humans. What archetypes do you feel connected with?
I’ve gone through your archetypes and there are a few I feel connected to. I think the one that feels closest to me is the Giver. I love to give away my knowledge of parenting, emotions building & child development to others, and I’m happy to spread my knowledge. Sometimes we’re getting messages on Instagram where people are asking us questions regarding the same. I have been happy to answer them and that made me think of starting some sort of classes for parents, where I can teach them how a child’s mind operates. That’s something I would love to start in the future. Other than the Giver I feel also connected to the Guru, not in a spiritual way but because I’m teaching parents to teach their kids. Also the adventurer feels close to me, as I love experiencing adventures and to travel. In my free time I like painting, not on a regular basis but sometimes I just feel like I need to do it for myself, so the Artist is another one of your archetypes I feel connected with. And I read a lot, especially in my specific field, but that might connect me to the Intellectual as well.
That’s awesome, you are a person with many skills and interests! What did you do before you ended up starting your wonderful business?
I was very unsure what would fill my life with purpose when I was younger, so I started my career with studying mass media and after that I did an Internship into media planning and an advertising agency. After my graduation I got a job at a production house for movie making where I was into marketing. I did try out all these things but I did not feel happy at the end of it so I ended up not working in this space anymore. I started doing image consulting, but also here I couldn’t see that I’m giving a great impact. By then I got married and my husband runs a company called Holistry, where I started working. His work was very influential for me, because he is working with teenagers, accompanying one student for one to one and a half years, talking about everything from childhood to their journey in life and helping them bring a reference to their lives. That was something that really caught my attention. I really wanted to work there.
It made me feel like there is a big impact we could make.
I’ve worked with teens for five years and came to the conclusion that it would be much easier for children to grasp emotions and mindfulness than it is for teenagers. My work here also made me think clearer about my own childhood. I am an introverted person in general and this is misunderstood very often in public. People assume an introverted child is weak and make them feel weak also. This needs to change, and that’s why I founded TOTcircle two years ago.
Ok, so you saw an existing problem and decided to do something about it. Amazing. It seems like you found the perfect job for you right?
Yes, definitely! I’m very passionate about my topic and I love to spread my thoughts on it, because there is definitely much we could do better when it comes to raising our children. Every child needs to be treated differently, as every child is different as well. In my family my brother and I are opposites in fact. He is an extrovert, happy-go-lucky, chilled about life, entertainer personality. I’m just the other way round. So, of course us two needed different treatment, that sounds logical right?
All the parents that I am in touch with want to raise their children in the best possible way but sometimes they just struggle doing it due to the lack of knowledge and tools.
Parenting can either get too authoritative or it can be too flexible. Whereas the right path is in between those two. A parent needs to be firm and kind at the same time. There need to be borders, not flexible ones, but stable ones. And there needs to be lots of love, understanding and connection to the child.
I totally agree with you. It’s sometimes difficult for a parent to stay on this track. How do you exactly help the parents?
We have various products for the same. Our main focus is to provide various tools to parents to talk to their child about values, emotions & form deeper connections with their kids. For example we have a product called “expression manners cards”, “positive affirmation cards” or “understanding emotions activity kit”. These products are great conversation starters, good habit building materials and tools to raise emotionally resilient children. Our latest product is called “snakes, ladders and values”. It’s a game that will teach kids about values, in a fun way.
A child can learn much faster while playing.
It’s a very subtle way of teaching that good values take you up in life and poor values take us down. With the physical product comes another very valuable part. We’re doing free sessions for parents to teach them how to use our product, the intention behind each product so they can use it in the most effective way. Right now these are free one on one sessions. I have thoughts about starting classes for parents and children to teach these topics in a much more effective way. That’s a topic that comes deeply from the heart for me and I really want to make an impact by helping kids to grow up as confident, self aware persons.
That’s amazing. Maybe there’s people out there reading this article right now and thinking “Wow, I also want to start a business like this, how can I be as successful as Priya?” What would you tell them?
*laughs* Well, at the beginning I didn’t think of making a business out of this. I saw this big problem out there, as I struggled with, for example, negative self-talk for a long time. I thought “every child deserves to feel self-love, or feel confident about themselves, or be mindful and self-aware of how they operate.” So I simply started with existing knowledge which I had.
Honestly I just had fun doing it. Still have. I am passionate about it and it lightens my days.
Finding a real purpose in life while earning your living is hard, I also had to try many things before I ended up here, but this settled me. And knowledge never goes to waste. Every job that I spent my time in, helped me put my company together. Having a marketing background helped me grow my audience on Instagram, my blogging days helped me put my content in a creative way, working at Holistree helped me to understand who my audience is and what I need to offer them. It’s important to be a pro at the topic while starting out a business like this one. You will be a teacher for parents who will then eventually teach their kids in the way you showed them, so that is the responsibility you will have! It has to be done out of passion. TOTcircle is a fulfilling part of my life & I love it.
