How did you create your brand and what was the reason behind it?

As a mother of two, I am constantly trying to juggle daily routines whilst managing my family. Many people don’t know that I went through two challenging pregnancies due to a rare condition called Familial Chylomicronaemia Syndrome (FCS).

FCS is an ultra-rare genetic condition that affects around 1 in a million people. Those with familial chylomicronaemia syndrome have difficulty metabolizing or absorbing fat. This is usually because of a shortage in the enzyme lipoprotein lipase. When someone with FCS eats fat, it travels around within the blood. These then clump together causing symptoms of ‘milky white’ blood.*

*https://www.actionfcs.org/about-fcs/the-facts-about-fcs/

I nearly lost my life because of it and it caused me to develop psychological issues that lead to further demise in my mental health. This is where the concept of ‘SoniyaFit’ started. Sharing my experiences and speaking transparently has allowed me to overcome these hurdles and my objective with this brand is to help women who may be experiencing similar life-challenging events.

How does your brand work?

Coming from a South Asian background, my main aim is to encourage women to look after their mental health as well as their physical health, to break the stigma and talk about things that people are scared to talk about including illnesses, divorce, fertility issues, sexuality, etc. I strongly believe in chasing dreams irrespective of whether you have drawbacks. Life was never intended to be easy and what makes one win in life is based on how you get up after being knocked down.

What are the challenges you go through on an everyday basis?

I faced a number of challenges whilst building this brand. I started working on this in 2013 shortly after the birth of my son. Shortly after I faced postnatal depression during a period when I was attempting to manage a rare medical condition and not stay in employment due to recurrent hospital admissions. This is when I decided that I needed to do something for myself and at the same time help others.

Being a woman of South Asian descent, it’s not always normal to talk about and be open about personal issues nor is the family positioned to know what to do. I have always been aware of the problems I may face but I would rather start a business and fail than to not try at all. Learning to accept, grow and become stronger is part of evolving as a human being and I believe in tackling my issues head-on.

How do you manage your finances through the services you offer?

I have self-funded this business through savings and built momentum by remaining thrifty in all my decision-making processes. Self-discipline and financial acumen are paramount to running any successful business.

How far do you want to take SoniyaFit? What is your dream about taking it to the next level?

My goal is to help as many women as possible, if I can help even one woman I will be very happy. Of course my aim to provide guidance and support to as many people as possible and if I can branch my business overseas and build my team that would be a dream come true.

What message would you like to give to anybody who has a plan of creating something of their own and making a living through it?

Never think you can’t do anything. Never feel you’re not good enough. I firmly believe that you can do whatever you want but you need to put the time and energy in to create the luck needed for business success.

Currently, Soniya is in the process of writing her first book, which will be published in the near future.

“A lot of my posts on Instagram are quotes and small parts from my book, almost like a teaser”.

SoniyaFit

Email Address : soniyafit@gmail.com

Website URL : www.soniyafit.com

Instagram URL : www.instagram.com/soniyafit

The post I am My Brand: Soniya Vadher-Patel on Turning Her Suffering into Her Passion appeared first on CEO Medium.

“I’ve always had the mindset to run a business, and combined with my passion for wedding planning – I am the perfect person to scale a business in my field.” 

The planners at Wildflower Wedding Planning benefit from the seven years of experience Khloe has had in planning events and the mindset she teaches to find overall fulfillment in your career. They are trained with both hands-on experiences in addition to hearing knowledge from more experienced planners on the team. Khloe has a trusted and proven method for running successful weddings that she shares with the mentees. 

“Having passion is not something I can train, but for those that hold a drive to be a wedding planner can be quickly involved in weddings rather than working their way up the ladder the traditional way.” 

Most wedding planners that start their own business start off by charging next to nothing for their services to gain a clientele and gain exposure with other vendors. Typically clients that are accepting these services are what we can “budget brides” in the industry and have expectations that far surpass the capabilities of any one person. If you can make it out of this phase without a bad rap, planners can enter into getting contracted help for wedding days. Slowly they are able to charge more and pay for the help that is needed. 

“It took me about a year of wedding planning being my side hustle to get to a point of working in my business full time. Six months after that I brought on help full-time to assist in the momentum we quickly gained.” 

With signing on with Wildflower Wedding Planning, planners are able to skip all of that and dive into executing quality weddings with quality brides. They receive template wedding documents, one on one mentoring, a pipeline of leads, and guidance on how to build their book of business. Khloe built this structure based on all the things she was looking for when she was researching wedding planner positions in the area. It is a perfect platform for aspiring wedding planners that have an entrepreneurial spirit, but want to “skip pass go.” 

“My hope for all the wedding planners is to continue to be hungry in growing their book of business in a way that allows them to earn more money and satisfaction in their role of helping clients with such an important day in their lives” 

Today, Wildflower Wedding Planning has expanded its services from its home base in Chattanooga, TN to all brides in the Southeast area. Khloe’s role in the company is now focused on her true love of growing a business while the Wildflower Wedding Planners maintain what has already been built. In 2021, her team is driven to take the company to the next level by pursuing more luxury weddings, adding honeymoon coordinating services, and offering decor options to their clients. 

“The pandemic of 2020 was quite the shock, but I like to say we were lucky that our couples were determined to find a way to unify their love and move forward with a celebration without canceling.” 

There were so many different plan B’s they thought up for their clients during Covid-19. During the stay-at-home order, they worked with their couples to reschedule the wedding and all its vendors to a later date. Not knowing how long it would last, they saw couples either choose a 6 month or 12-month delay. In June, the company began executing what is now coined today as “micro-weddings.” A micro wedding is a wedding that includes all the aspects of a wedding you know of today but scaled down to accommodate 50 guests or less. These weddings would include the closest friends and family to the couple and portray all the necessary safety precautions outlined by the CDC. They planned for hand sanitizer at every table, monogrammed mask favors, plated meals, and socially distanced tables to make it through the Summer. 

“Now that the vaccine is more readily available for all, we are seeing the wedding world slowly go back to normal. People are optimistic and ready to celebrate what life was like pre-pandemic. It’s an understatement to say that 2020 was a challenging year, but I never gave up on my clients or my team. I didn’t know when the pandemic would be over, but I kept a level head in knowing that eventually, it would.” 

For more information visit: www.wildflowerweddingplanning.com

The post Meet the Founder & Director of Wildflower Weddings Planning: Khloe Jackson appeared first on CEO Medium.

Karla is a mother of two children, Tatum and Gunnar, and married to her husband Mike for 16 years.

Originally from Lima, Peru, Karla put her roots in Arizona in2006. She came with 500 dollars in her pocket and a luggage full of dreams. 

In 2010, she started to day trade during her free time and she also started to invest in real estate and as a private investor in startup companies.

In 2017, Karla and her husband opened a nursery decor business, The Polymath Mom. It started as a hobby but it quickly turned into a successful business. She started painting nursery signs to clear her head from work and escape the stress of day trading. With the music up, she would paint for hours late into the night. Today, The Polymath Mom shop has over 200,000 followers on Instagram.

Little after opening her home décor business. She decided to turn her private Instagram account into a lifestyle, family, and travel page. She now is a full-time content creator and has also founded a marketing company with her husband and provides services to businesses and other content creators.

Karla has over 300,000 followers on Instagram and over 400,000 followers on TikTok. She loves coaching and helping people become financially free. She shares her day trading tips on her stories and she also provides one on one coaching to businesses and influencers.

She mentions she had a hard time sharing a lot of her private life but then she soon realized so many moms and people need help and positivity so she got out of her comfort zone and decided to share her knowledge with others. Karla talks a lot about her struggles as an entrepreneur and being a full-time mother.

Her life-changing moment was one day when she was taking her kids to school and she almost falls asleep and crashed. She has dealt with insomnia since college and she would get little sleep due to all of her side gigs. So when that happened, she knew it was time to quit her job as a civil engineer and be more present for her kids.

Her family is so much happier now that she is more around and she has so much flexibility and can work from home and spend more time with her loved ones.

Karla has worked with a variety of brands, from clothes, beauty products to resorts. She loves the variety and different projects she gets with her job as a content creator.

Karla is currently partnering with a friend to expand her business and offer other products on her website. She is working on a ‘mommy and me’ apparel collection and helping small businesses by giving them exposure to their products on her platform.

Karla’s advice for success is to be disciplined and be consistent. She says she doesn’t watch TV except when she is looking for news on the stock market. She doesn’t take no for an answer and when a door closes you find or make another door or window.

Karla’s ultimate dream is to open a non-profit organization to help kids struggling from poverty or distressed homes and ultimately help families in her native Peru just like her parents did as she grew up.

Polymath Mom LLC

Website: www.thepolymathmom.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/polymathmom

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