Growth Through Self-Care
By Naaz Ali, Year Up Alum and Entrepreneur
When is the right time to take a chance at something new? The right time to take action on something you believe in might be now. Life is short, so why wait? Currently, the world is experiencing a pandemic, forcing us to spend extra time in our homes. Leverage this time to start planning future goals or get started on old projects you’ve put off for years! Or you might make an even bigger change. In this blog, I wanted to share my experiences with making big changes as I navigated obstacles in building my career within Corporate America.
My name is Naaz Ali and I’m a Class 14 Year Up Bay Area Alum. I’m also a full-time employee at a startup while also managing my own business as an entrepreneur. They say there are 3 stages of Year Up 1) Training in Learning & Development, 2) Putting things into practice during the Internship Phase, and the last and longest stage 3) experiencing life as an Alum. Once you’re an alum, the road to the right career for you is not always a linear path. Throughout my time I’ve learned that figuring out my career requires finding the best fit with my personality and prioritizing a healthy work/life balance by creating boundaries and making time for self-care. The experiences I’ll share truly shaped who I am today. I believe that I’m now on the right path to living my best life while creating an impact on others as they also pursue balance and wellness in their lives.
In 2015, my goal was to find the perfect career path. I was a Bank Teller at the time and I felt lost and unfulfilled by a purpose. I didn’t feel like I had a future in Banking, so I gave up my steady job and risked it all for Year Up’s training and internship program. Getting into Year Up was strenuous and time-consuming. Many applied, but there was a limited amount of spots available for the opportunity. Eventually, I got in and started my Learning & Development phase. Sacrificing working paychecks for a small stipend taught me to be frugal and ask for support when needed. Year Up also exposed me to professional networks within the Bay Area’s tech industry. I learned how to code and utilize spreadsheets to manage projects and all of these made me feel like I had walked into my new future. The program helped me realize that I had both technical strengths and interpersonal skills. I loved training within my learning community cohort (LCC), they helped me open up around new people within my age group. Being with a diverse community exposed me to new perspectives where I learned to trust more and build lasting friendships.
My work ethic during the Learning & Development phase of the program earned me an internship seat with Salesforce. At the beginning of the internship, I was relentless towards my work. Always busy on my laptop, I’d pass up friends, outings, and birthday parties to prioritize work and support our team so that we had minimal problems and backlogs. I’d spend a lot of lunches and hours at home working which created a workaholic lifestyle. There were many things that I was very proud of in my work including highlights like initiating a technical solution project that eliminated manual workflows and freed up time for more important tasks and also being a part of the team that brought equality workshops to employees. The 6 months of hard work paid off, after my internship I was offered a contract role which later turned into a full-time position where I was recruited onto a different team. During Year Up and at my internship, my heart was set on learning and building skills that would set me up to do well in fast-paced environments. At the same time, through this hands-on experience in Corporate America, I became increasingly more stressed and didn’t know how to find a balance.
As projects grew bigger and the team grew smaller, I started experiencing moments that you’d see in a cliche movie. I worked frantically to keep up with every detail from the increased work. The expectation to do more was spreading my life too thin and I felt like everything was unbalanced. One day, finally admitting to myself that I had become mentally unhealthy and unhappy, I finally told myself that I didn’t want a job that caused me so much stress and feelings of tiredness all the time. Being in a comfortable place financially was great but I grew very uncomfortable mentally. Feeling overwhelmed, I forced myself to take meditation breaks and started taking lunch by the window to look out to the city instead of my computer screen. I slowly started treating myself to therapeutic body massages and setting healthy boundaries with colleagues and I finally started to carve out my own path to wellness and my self-care had begun! Like many others, I let my job become my life, and fitting in anything else in it became a burden. After changing some habits, I began to think about how I could change my environment as well to better align with my future goals.
In 2017, I decided to take a second leap of faith to pursue my passion for wellness and leave my corporate tech job and go back to school to learn the art of client care within Cosmetology. This time I had already learned to ask for help and through the Year Up Alumni network, I found an organization called Skysthelimit.org. This organization helped me further my education in entrepreneurship, gain mentorship, and build financial support for starting a business. This all led me to take a deeper look into my wellness journey and figure out a way to support others on their wellness journeys in a holistic and educational way! Through this mission, I started Cater2me Spa & Salon with a goal to promote self-care through pampering at our Napa location and in-home services. We also offer educational workshops and promote an inspiring social community focused on encouraging people to bring more self-care into their lives. Hiring qualified professionals, we are on a mission to empower clients to prioritize their long term wellness journeys for self-care.
On this journey of entrepreneurship with Cater2me Spa & Salon, I have begun to balance another role with a startup called Phantom AI that’s aiming to help create safer roads through AI technology. Joining this startup has helped me utilize my skills while feeling free to build my business at the same time. Being back in a corporate position where I can truly feel balanced is something I wished for back in 2015. Both of my current positions allow me to help shape culture and process. It feels great to say that I’m finally in a good balance of wellness and career positions for my future. I’m in a state of constant learning and I feel passionate about the work that I am doing in both careers to truly give back.
If you’d like to learn more about my business, visit www.Cater2me.social. I believe we can live in a happier world when we start putting self-care at the forefront when times get tough and people don’t know where to turn. Owning a business has allowed me the creative freedom to build a brand that impacts people in a positive way. It was a huge learning curve when transitioning from unemployed to being a full-time employee and self-employed with employees. Business ownership isn’t easy, almost every day I’m running into new issues or needing to get things done, but I’m patient and thankful for another day towards reaching my ultimate vision. If you have a greater vision too, don’t be afraid to make big changes to get closer to your goals. Life is short, so why wait?
