In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Hani Anis, founder of Anis Collections and the marketing company Kahani Digital. She started her first company in 2017 while she was still in college at the age of 21. She was doing marketing in corporate investment banking and decided to take 6 months off and work on Anis Collections. Fast forward to 2020, when she got a VC job in corporate marketing. She was approached during Covid by her friends in the freelancing spaces. In Sept/Oct of 2020, the world started working again and she had a corporate job, a company and freelance projects. She knew she didn’t have that much time on her hands. She sat down during the holidays with her family and expressed her struggles and she decided she liked the freelance, small business route. She decided to resign from her corporate job. With Kahani, she had all the work coming in but no name, no branding, no employees. She knew this wasn’t what she planned for. It goes to show that starting a business can go an untraditional route. She was able to get traction by word of mouth.
In today’s episode, Brooke speaks with Hani Anis, founder of Anis Collections and the marketing company Kahani Digital. She started her first company in 2017 while she was still in college at the age of 21. She was doing marketing in corporate investment banking and decided to take 6 months off and work on Anis Collections. Fast forward to 2020, when she got a VC job in corporate marketing. She was approached during Covid by her friends in the freelancing spaces. In Sept/Oct of 2020, the world started working again and she had a corporate job, a company and freelance projects. She knew she didn’t have that much time on her hands. She sat down during the holidays with her family and expressed her struggles and she decided she liked the freelance, small business route. She decided to resign from her corporate job. With Kahani, she had all the work coming in but no name, no branding, no employees. She knew this wasn’t what she planned for. It goes to show that starting a business can go an untraditional route. She was able to get traction by word of mouth.
With her digital marketing company, she didn’t have a business plan like with her fashion company. Her promise to herself was to say yes to opportunity and that will lead to momentum. When hiring, you are investing in your company but in the beginning, that person adds a load initially until they start to take the load off. Her first hire came from a friend who knew someone who needed a job in the industry and as she moved forward, she used interns and contract people found by posting in her networking group. She found that people can be trained in marketing and it wasn’t technical. She wanted to find someone who was a good fit to the team and the client. Relationship building is important and without that, it can hurt you.
The major hurdle she had was internal struggle to maintain clients so it didn’t affect her employees. Her retention rate has been great but it’s something she still thinks about. Work life balance has also been a struggle. She has very clear boundaries for her employees about not working outside of their working hours and balancing their own lives with vacation time. As a founder, she felt like she could never take a break. That didn’t work well. She was working 7 days a week and she realized that she had a team that she could let go things to her team. She gradually got to the point of taking weekends off and making time for vacations.
Hani encourages other people to take on entrepreneurship where they love what they do on a daily basis. Know you can have fun with it and not have an insane amount of pressure to make it a multi-million dollar thing. Don’t scale it so much that quality is affected. It’s ok if it’s just your passion. Looking back she wishes she would have looked at the moment and savored it a little more. Now she’s at a point where she appreciates the small wins more because those moments are important. When you struggle with impostor syndrome, fake it til you make it. When she started out, she had to fake confidence in public until she built her confidence.
She hopes to wrap up 2022 but slowing down more personally and giving her team more time to focus on the creative aspects of the business.
I started out as most South Asian kids do - aspiring to be a doctor. I did all the AP classes, internships, research, and hospital volunteer work but then eventually got to Organic Chemistry in college and decided that medicine was definitely not for me. Distraught, I came home to my dad and said, " Now what do I do"? We decided that business - particularly finance - would be a good fit and turned out, it was. Fast forward to my senior year of college and with the help of my friends and family, I founded Anis Collections, a luxury South Asian bridal boutique that helps brides, grooms, bridesmaids, and groomsmen find their dream outfit for their big day. This business is truly my passion project and my favorite part is doing fittings with clients and watching them react to my custom creation.
I still went off and got a full-time position in Investment Banking, where most recently I was working on digital strategy for a Venture Capital firm. Through the pandemic, I was also freelancing and working for Natalie Barbu's agency. I learned that I loved working on small businesses through my agency work and found that being a South Asian founder myself, there was no agency that really catered to that niche. The more I worked freelancing for South Asian-owned and founded brands, the more I realized that this is the market I wanted to help. In February 2021, I quit my full-time position in VC and went freelance full time. Through word of mouth and my network, I was able to book more clients and the business doubled in less than a month of me leaving my job. I then worked to establish a name, branding and hiring out my team.
Kahani means to tell a story and that is exactly what we believe in doing for your brand through social media and digital marketing.
Links:
Instagram:
https://instagram.com/kahani.digital?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Kahani Digital: https://www.kahanidigital.com/about-kahani
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Brooke Markevicius 0:02
Welcome to Allobee Radio, where we support you and your business and life. Listen in each week for episodes on how to grow your business tips from successful business owners, answers to your burning business questions and much more. Join our al beehive and we will help you and your business grow. I'm your host Brooke Markevicius, founder and CEO of Allobee a SaaS solution for freelancers to manage their business and get work brought to them. We are the solution for stress free freelancing and the hub of the best vetted workforce around I took my years of freelance startup and brick and mortar experience and merged it with my technical background and skills to create Allobee. My hope is that this podcast will bring you actionable tips, tricks and tools to help you gain momentum and your business and life. Let's get in to the buzzer.
Okay, welcome back to Allobee Radio, I'm so excited to be here. Today, we are going to have a great episode. And the fun fact about this episode is actually we were going through all of the applications for people that wanted to be on the podcast this season. And very few people got like a yes, five star let's roll. Let's get this person on. But the guest today did. So I'm really excited, you definitely have an amazing story to share with us. So we're gonna dive in right away so we can spend some time talking today. So here at Allobee, we know that we all come from different backgrounds that lead us to where we are today. And each of us carry our own pivot story to learn how to shake up the traditional view of entrepreneurship. And we're excited to have on our podcast today. Hani Anis, founder of a nice collections a luxury South Asian Bridal Boutique and founder of the incredible marketing company Kahani Digital, which in Hindi Kahani means story. And so without further ado, I want to hear your story today. So I would love for you to share a little bit about your story and how you got started. Yeah, thank you so much for that intro. Oh my gosh, I didn't not know it was five stars. I
Hani Anis 2:13
just know we went you wrote a great, you have a great bio and a great story. And I'm a sucker for stories. And apparently my whole team is because we were like we have to have her on. So I'm going to shout and I will probably talk about this later. But I do hire people that play to my weaknesses. So I will shout out my publicist Amber for that one. Thank you. So
Brooke Markevicius 2:33
I know isn't it great when you have a good publicist, and someone that didn't write the copy?
Hani Anis 2:39
All I do is give her a bullet points. And I'm okay with admitting that.
That's good. Yeah, I started my first company in 2017, while I was still in college, so at a young age of 21, is when I started a nice collections. And
I never really did it full time I kind of was I was in the finance world, I did investment banking, I was in corporate VC doing marketing and really when the pandemic hit, I right before, so the 2019, I had left investment banking.
And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take six months off, I'm just going to work on these collections for a little bit and just kind of like figure it out, because it had been like two years at that point, we've made some changes. So just figure it out, get it together. And then I in my head, I was like, either in 2020, I'm gonna apply to business school and I'm gonna go get my next corporate gig, whatever that may be something in finance, I guess.
Fast forward to 2020 and literally March 15 That is when I got the VC like corporate job for a role that they had created for me, which was marketing and like managing deal flow at the same time because having my own business I had learned how to do the marketing side and so they really liked that creative background because it's rare in the finance world. So they literally created a role for me, which was really cool.
And then I was lucky to have that because then the wedding industry completely shut down like two days later. So I had this job and I got approached during COVID by all of my freelance or or like business owner friends in different spaces of the South Asian world saying like, Hey, you you have experience in marketing you're doing this with corporate Can you help us because you know, with COVID digital marketing really blew up.
So I was just like, yeah, sure, I'll do it freelance because I had more time on my hands I guess without a new store.
So I did freelance for a while and then we get to like September October of that year 2020. And the world starts slowly opening back up, weddings start slowly coming back, my production team
slowly started working again. And now I'm like, Oh, I have a corporate job. I have a company. And I have freelance projects. And this isn't looking good.
And I don't have that much time on my hands anymore. So I, during the holidays, that year, I sat down with my parents and my parents have been very supportive throughout my first company too. And I was just like, listen, like I'm struggling mentally. And like, I just don't have time for all of this. What do I do? And my dad was pretty straightforward about it. He was like, What are your finances look like? And I was like, I literally am making the same amount of money freelancing that I'm making up my corporate job.
So like, I feel pretty comfortable leaving it when it when you talk about logistics. And he was like, What do you like doing more, and I was like, the freelance Small Business Route. And so my answer was pretty clear. I went in after New Years and resigned. And I did give them a month because I was planning a very large marketing conference. But during that month, I like really figured out I told all my clients that I went full time. And during that month, they told their friends and so by the time I actually left my job, I had a whole influx of work coming in that I didn't anticipate. So great problem to have. But my first company, I always say, I really did it, like, strategically, in the sense of I filed the company, I did the branding, I did all of that, that I went to lunch with Kahani, I quit my job, and had all this work coming in. And I didn't even have a name at that point. There was no name. There was no branding. There was no employees, that was just me. And I was just like, oh, no, this is not what I planned for. So I really had to like, get all of that together and hire my first full time employee like literally a month after I quit my job.
We don't have a name or the branding done till probably last July, our website didn't go live till this January,
which goes to show that like starting a business can be really untraditional, you can go roundabout if you want to. It like kind of just happened. And it was great, I
was able to get a lot of traction by word of mouth really quickly. And then from there, we really focused on the South Asian owned and founded niche because To my knowledge, we are the only agency that specializes in South Asian owned and founded businesses in the US. And there's a ton of businesses out there that like are in that niche that nobody's catered to before. So
Brooke Markevicius 7:30
that's kind of, in a nutshell how we got here. Yeah, I love your story. I think that entrepreneurship just evolved, like everything that you started even back in college just was like a step stone to kind of bring you to where you're at. But I think what's really cool about your story is that niche continued throughout that it just like it always stayed, which obviously, it's a huge part of your life and your journey as a person. But I think that's one of the cool things similar and my story to every business I've created when I left my corporate job as well was everything has been about helping with flexible work in some capacity. And so I think that it's a lot of that happens for entrepreneurs, it might look completely different, maybe a you know, a fashion business, and then it completely pivots into, you know, freelancing and but I think the best freelancing and agencies that get created are ones that just the work was coming at you it was just continuing to come at you. I know when I freelance too, that's how it was, I was like, I barely had to market myself because I just I niched down specifically enough. And I think that's the key is that you just that people are coming to you because you become the one known for it.
Hani Anis 8:49
Which it's very, it's very rare to have that but it's so special, and it can create a whole company and more jobs for other people. So I'd love to know a little bit of how and you talk to talk show briefly about okay, I have all this work coming in. And I needed to hire other people. So how have you started to handle that scaling of this now digital media company? Yeah, last year, as I mentioned, it was a little crazy because I A didn't had never, like starting an agency and being in marketing was like, not what I planned on starting. So like, with a fashion company, again, it was very strategic, and I kind of like had a business plan. But with this, I just I didn't even have that. So it was kind of like I was I made a promise to myself like I'll say yes to opportunity and then enough yeses like will lead to momentum in that sense. And that's really how it kind of happened. But with hiring it's like you are investing in it in a way it is when you're starting out hiring even though it takes a load off your plate it initially what people don't realize is hiring someone full time adds a huge load to your plate.
They initially until they start to take that load off. And so it's really important to hire good people, which can be really daunting when you've never hired someone full time ever.
And, and also, the demographic you're looking at is probably the same age as you, if not, sometimes a little bit older and sometimes a little bit younger. So, for me, I think
on like, unintentionally references really played and well, it was a coincidence, the way that my first hire works were, I think, two weeks before I made the decision to bring someone on full time, one of my best friends had texted me saying, Hey, I know you just started this marketing thing. And like you've been in marketing for a while. My cousin is graduating in May in from Michigan. And she really needs like, she's looking for a full time job in marketing. She's willing to even do part time, but like, Are you hiring? Or do you know anyone who is and I responded to that I remember this was like, early March. And I was like, I don't know if I have the bandwidth to but I'll keep my eye out. And then literally two weeks later, I was like, did she find something because I think I am.
So really like it was my friend texting me. And that's what put the word in for my first full time hire. And she stayed on with us till the following from May to May. So last night to this May is when she was here for a year,
which was great. And then as I moved forward, I think my next hires were in July and August and August was interns, July was,
I think, more contract people at that point. With those two, I posted in my networking groups and got referenced people and then interviewed them. What I really looked for when it was hiring was, I find that like technical skills, when it comes to marketing, you can train people in those they're not really like, it's not as intense as engineering, or coding or things like that. And marketing is always growing and evolving. So if someone knows a different skill than you do, it's almost great because they bring a different perspective. So it wasn't really like technical skills besides my graphic designer who really needed to know certain programs, besides her like nobody else really came in with specific things that I was looking for. But mainly, I wanted to know if they were a good fit to the team and a good fit for the clients. Because in our business, it is really about relationship building. And if you're not good at that, then it really hurts you. So that was like I think my main criteria when it came to interviewing people, and getting people know that that makes so much sense. I think that that culture fit it because people are coming to you because they're interested in your business because of your niche, as well as how you've run business before and what referrals have brought people. So you need to make sure that those people are going to show up with that same credibility authority, but then also just the same relationship skills and mindset that you have. I think that's really important. And something that a lot of people miss during initial hiring processes. I know that I've turned people down from hiring them because they weren't a culture fit. Maybe they were like the best like everything else. But but like, I wasn't going to jive with them, and either was the rest of my team. And sometimes I brought people on that, you know, I thought were going to be a good fit, but maybe I didn't push enough and that that part of the interview and I wish I had Yeah, yeah, it's definitely, definitely can bring up some some problems and hurdles that you might have to address. Which speaking of that, how did you overcome any, like major hurdles that you talked a little bit about? Obviously, the pandemic came and kind of completely changed your, your business initially. So that you could talk about that we've been some more but also, is there been another hurdle that you've really, you know, hit up against that you've overcome so far? So with I mean, yes, the pandemic with a nice collections out was a complete game changer, that business still exists to this day, but we really, I mean, there was nothing we could do about it. We just kind of lost revenue and just had to hit pause like, because my teams are overseas in India and India had it worse than we did like there were more people dying more people getting sick, like it just was really bad. So I know a lot of companies who had manufacturing in India opened a lot earlier than we did but we like really made it a point to ask our like team leads like is it safe? Are you comfortable? Is is it good enough for people to come even come in or is like we can wait? It's okay, so with that business, we basically took a year off because we just and it was worth that long run. It was worth it. We didn't like deal with people like like people were already dealing with so much hardship.
And last, we don't want to add that at all. So that was nice. And luckily our brides were super understanding. And quite frankly, I didn't have anyone even having a wedding during that time. So people's orders that were paused, were just like, yeah, don't worry about it. Our weddings not happening until 2022. Yeah, everybody had to push that one out. Yeah. Yeah. So that one was was a little bit easier.
I think with Kahani,
the only major hurdles I've really been like, once I did have employees, it's been like more of an internal struggle of like, maintaining that because in client facing businesses, you're always anxious and stressed about like, what if I lose a client and then on top of that, then it's like, not really my pay, like, of course, my paycheck gets affected, but it's like, I don't want to lose one and then have my employees get affected. We've been really lucky where we have in our retention rates been great. A lot of my clients I've had for years and years since I was freelancing. So we've been lucky in that sense. But it's not that I still, like, stop myself from thinking about that every day. So I think that was a major hurdle. And it was work life balance. For me as a founder. I've had very clear boundaries for my employees, I've, I've been through a lot of terrible like, boss employee relationships in my past work life. So I know like exactly what not to do.
And so I've been clear about like, these are your working hours do not work outside them. Like unless, like I specifically tell you don't, don't do it. Yeah. And then just balancing their own lives and vacation time and all of that. But with me, as the founder, I think when I first got started, it was kind of like, okay, I have two businesses, one's already taken a hit from COVID. I can never take a break. And that really did not work. Well. For me. I think last year, a lot of the year, I was working seven days a week. And it wasn't until like September when I think I had a team of like 10. At that point, my like, friends and family would be like you have a team of 10 Why are you working seven days a week. And then at one point, I like sat down and thought about it. And I was like, yeah, why am I doing this, this doesn't make any sense. And so slowly, it was a slow, gradual, like, let go. But it was like you can like, oh, as a founder, you do need a break, you're allowed our break that I really had to, like transition my brain into and it took like, Okay, I'll start with taking Saturday off. Then it went to Okay, now I can take Sunday off. And then finally it was like, okay, like the summer we have summer Fridays too.
Or, like, I went on a vacation and didn't check my computer for a weekend. And then this year, last month, I went on a 10 day National Park trip and did not have cell service. So I couldn't check anything. And it was great. Everything got done. Everyone was on top of everything was trusting my team and me just like letting go a little bit that I had to get over. Yeah, no, it's it's you're not alone. I definitely experienced all of that too. And I I'm pretty good about making sure Saturdays are completely off like and I that has definitely saved me. And I try not to do anything too much on Sunday, except for like, make sure I'm all set up for Monday. And I usually
just prepare for making sure we're good for that day. But I also took some time off this summer to I think that you know, pandemic hits. We're all running a million miles an hour for two years to make sure that we survive. And I think that summer was kind of that pause for a lot of a lot of founders just like hey, we need we need a moment like we need a minute to take or and the ones that didn't. I mean, it was detrimental for people because it's just it's too much when we're going a million miles an hour and I think you brought up something about you know, wanting to make sure that you keep the clients and because we want to make sure we keep our team on and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as founders to make sure that we can show up as much as we can and I think one thing I've had to do this year and I'm sure this has probably happened for you or will happen for you at some point in running a business is just going okay what it worst case scenario if this is what happens. What do I feel like ethically okay with doing that, I'll just have to make that decision. So if plan ABCDEFG happens that I'm okay with that. And that's helped a lot for me like stress level of like handling a company as Okay, well if we get to that point, that's what we have to do. i Oh, okay with that and we'll just cross that bridge. But kind of setting ourselves up for potentials of whatever hoping that everything's good and
Brooke Markevicius 20:00
And that we're going in the right direction. But I know it's so hard to not work yourself all the L into the ground in many different ways for sure. Allobee is your ticket to stress free freelancing. Our goal is to save you time so you can make more money. We are built by freelancers for freelancers. And we want to make onboarding your clients tracking work, invoicing, scheduling, meetings, sub contracting, work, everything you need to run a business simple, I will be plus is all of your business management tools consolidated into one simple to use platform, we don't want to just stop at helping you manage your current clients, we also want to give you the ability to get match for work and bring clients to you, or short on demand jobs that you can pick up in your dashboard. Ready to simplify your life and business and snag a tax write off before the year ends, head over to alibaba.com/plus. To sweeten the deal. As a listener, you can now get one month free of our standard level and get started right? Just use code ALLOBEERADIO all caps ALLOBEERADIO today and join the lb family. Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's also like about giving yourself a little bit of grace. I think we as founders feel very guilty about a lot of things all at once. And like you're at the end of the day, we're people too, we get sick. Like we get sick days, we vacation die, like I started to transition myself as like, Yes, I am the founder. But I also need to look at myself as an employee of this company if and more so like as the CEO, if I'm not well, and I can't like take care of the company, then like I'm not doing my job. And so that means giving myself a day off or giving myself like a vacation, then that is what it requires for me to run this business like, yeah, yeah. Not burning myself down to the ground. Exactly. And I think that our employees want us to take that time and make sure that we do that. And they're ready to support. And I think it's just, you know, giving away that control. I joke that I run a company about outsourcing. And I'm the worst person to outsource things. But it just it's our nature as founders. But I do know that I can trust my team. And I think it's it's more
oftentimes, and we're very client facing company, too, as far as you want to disappoint anybody. And so just making sure that we're balancing that, but also knowing, neither does my team. And I have to remind myself of that, too. Like they, they want it to be successful, too. And I think that's the power of building a really great team is that you're like, okay, they want the same thing as me. We're all in a line that lets you know, we can get to the finish line without me burning out. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, I love that you have had this niche on South Asian brands, and that that's really been your focus and helped you obviously scale and grow, for sure. But what's the impact and legacy that you want to leave on the world? I know that you're just starting out, you're younger than me. But you are doing awesome things. You've already started multiple businesses. But where where do you want to go with this? And what impact and legacy Do you want to leave? I think I just want to, like, encourage other people to maybe take on entrepreneurship in a way where it like, where they're doing what they love on a daily basis. I, I guess like I know, that sounds cliche, but and there's a few things that I feel like I approach a little bit differently when it comes to entrepreneurship. And so like, I don't mean that in the way of like, I'm over here, glamorizing that angle, because truly, it's not they it's maybe glamorous, like 5% of the time when that like, when you when I tell people that I work in Marketing, and PR what they think too, is like, all the big fancy events and the packages and all of that, and I'm like, that is 5% of their job, not even. And so I don't mean like glamorizing the field of quitting your corporate job and going into your passion. But I mean, just kind of like letting people know that they can have fun with it and not feel this, like insane amount of pressure to make it this like, multimillion dollar thing. I think, with a nice collections of questions I always got was like, why am I boxing myself in like, in terms of only taking a certain number of custom orders? Why am I not scaling as fast? Why am I not doing it that way of the traditional, like, when you start a business, the goal is to scale it to this huge thing. And I would always tell people, and I'm like, I don't want to use collections to get bigger than me like balancing it with other stuff. And they'd be like, That's a disservice to the company. And it's like, no, it's not that's just as
Hani Anis 25:00
Much as I like, with like to keep it to, so that my quality stays the same so that ultimately at the end of the day, I still love doing it. Because I know, the second I put pressure on this to like, make this insane amount of amount of money, my creative energy is going out the window. And that is what this job requires. When I say in design, when I sit and sketch, I cannot be in writer's block. And the only way I can't do that is if I don't put this insane amount of pressure on it. So like, I just want people to kind of remember that it doesn't have to be this multimillion dollar idea. It could just be your passion. And that's it. But you should enjoy doing it at the end of the day, or at least 90% of the time. Not every day is a perfect day. Right? Well, you were very smart. Keep that remember that and hold that very tight to you. Because everybody will push you to try to scale and go faster and bigger. And it's not the best thing.
I think that I look at a lot of small business owners, and how much they love what they do. And they love showing up every day for their customers. And they will never be making millions and millions of dollars. And they don't care too. And they're very smart for that. And I think that it's we, we've raised money, and we've gone in that direction as a company. And that was my intent for this company. And so I think when you're starting and you know that, but it's still still trying to tell people Yes, and maybe we're not going to grow as fast in one year. But in three years, we're going to have more revenue than the people that now are not even in business anymore, because we sustainably did it. But that's a push back especially, you know, you come from the finance world to like I mean, that's a push back to tell somebody that they that you're not going to go at all cost and
Brooke Markevicius 26:53
you know, mess up the quality mess up the relationships mess up all of those things by going in a massively fast direction. So everybody listen to what he just said, because it's really important because a lot of people I mean, everybody's pushing that whether you're in like a more of the just like online business space. It's like solo entrepreneurship versus like, you know, even you know, startups and all kinds of companies. That's the thing, go fast, go hard, hustle, hustle, hustle. But that isn't what people ultimately want. In the end, and I think that's starting to come out more and more. I know, there was a article in Elle magazine, I think it was yesterday, that was talking a lot about like the ambition of women and how it's shifting and changing, that we're still a very ambitious, you're obviously very ambitious, you've started multiple companies and, and everything. But the ambition needs to feel like something we love in the end and not something that we hate. And I think that that's so important. So thank you for bringing that up. Of course, yeah, I just looking back, I wish I slowed down a little bit even with Kahani stuff like I wish I not even slow down because it was really like in like, like, it was really unintentional the way things kind of came about, but I wish I like looked at the moment and maybe savor the moment a little bit longer instead of being like, okay, Chuck, let's go on to the next like I've, I feel like because now I'm at a point where I like, am like with having a team, right, you feel like you appreciate the small wins a little bit more, because they bring it up and they pointed out and now I have ingrained that in my head, we're on a weekly basis to we will celebrate the small wins. And I think that helps in the grand scheme of the journey. And when you're talking about it to just anyone a friend or family member, you can really pinpoint like, this is when this happened. And it really changed my mindset.
Those moments aren't those big, like press moments or those big revenue moments, but they are really important. And I think people miss it in in that, I guess. And again, coming from the finance world, that rat race of climbing the corporate ladder, it works the same way in entrepreneurship, where people are trying to grow and scale. They're just like going a million miles an hour and you miss those moments. And those are the best ones honestly. Yeah, for sure. It's so true. They really are those those really great moments that you get to remember and I I know that even with our team, like I can remember some of our big, Pivotal pivotal times, but a lot of times I wouldn't have paused to think about that. And I'm really glad that my team has brought it up. Well, I have two last questions for you today. One is what is your favorite quote that inspires you?
Hani Anis 29:51
Um, I say this one a lot. I would say fake it till you make it is really been
Pretty big part of my journey. I'm not saying in a way of like actually tricking people, but I think it's in the way of tricking my mindset of like struggling with impostor syndrome with competition around me, just with feeling like maybe I'm not doing enough. And in terms of with clients, I always presented a very clear manner of confidence whether I had it or not, I think building a business has actually helped my confidence in a big way. But when I started out, it was me just kind of like faking that and in public,
Brooke Markevicius 30:36
internally, just being like, Oh, my God, can I do this? First or No, I totally, totally feel you one. That it, it is just showing up with that confidence, which really is just faking your mind or tricking your mind to show up and go, Well, I have nothing to lose, really, I need to just do this and make sure that happens. And hopefully it will. But no, I love that I'm, I feel the exact same way. And how we kind of have to just go at it first, without Elmas going scared into the moment. But just showing up and doing it. I think that's a huge part of entrepreneurship, if we're going to be successful, for sure. Yeah. Awesome. Well, and then the last question, I asked this to all of our guests, but how are you going to create momentum and the rest of 2022. So this could be both personal or professional, we obviously have already talked about the fact we're not going to be crazy hustlers over here. But what do you play? I'm sure you still have lots of awesome goals for the rest of the year. Yeah, um, I think I want to wrapped the rest of 2022 up by maybe just slowing down a little bit more, both personally, and not professionally in the way of not taking on projects or anything like that. But I think giving me and my team just more time, and just really focusing on the creative aspects of the internal business, whether that's like building up our blogs, or our social media, or just taking more time for those creative projects. And maybe like, well, I guess less cold pitching and like trying to get more business in the door, because at this point, it's q4. And we've been very fortunate to have done that throughout the earlier half of the year. So we are at a place where we can like take a little bit of a step back, enjoy the holidays more enjoy time with family and enjoy the first holiday season back from COVID, essentially,
and work on those more creative and aspirational things instead of the hustle. Yes, I love that. I love that. It sounds like it's going to be a great rest of the year for you. And I'm excited to see your business thrive and grow as it needs to throughout the rest of time. And also I feel like I just really excited about what you've been doing and what you've been growing. It's really awesome to see another entrepreneur that is your age and smart and has this like great insight into how to grow a business and how to do it in a really great way. So thank you so much. I'm really glad our team all thought it was five stars. We can have you here. Have it thank you for being on the episode and you can find out more about honey and everything that she does. In the show notes. We'll link to everything as well as you definitely should go and follow her on social media and make sure that you connect with her if her story resonates with you. Thank you so much everybody for listening today. Thank you, Hani, thank you.
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