Naazish Yarkhan

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[00:00:06] Imam Tariq: May the peace that only God can give be upon you. Welcome to the American Muslim Podcast. I'm your host. Imam Tariq El-Amin. And today I am fortunate enough to have joining me, sister Naazish YarKhan. She is the founder of the Writer Studio Us. , She runs a high touch coaching practice where students build both writing skills and confidence.

[00:00:32] Imam Tariq: Her students have won writing awards, become published writers in high school, and have been accepted to Ivy League and Top STEM programs. And she's also worked with brands like Discover, GE and Craft, and LED communications at non-profits like Ivanka and ICNA Relief. And she's contributed writing to 50 plus outlets, including NPR, HuffPost, public Radio International, and Saudi Aramco World.

[00:00:55] Imam Tariq: Her writing has been translated into six languages. [00:01:00] Wow. That's a lot. That is a lot. My dear sister. Thank you for joining us

[00:01:07] Naazish YarKhan: and thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

[00:01:09] Imam Tariq: Yes, indeed. Indeed. Before we get into the work that you do, can you tell me. Is there a formative event? Is there an experience, a mentor, something that you read at any point in your life that has contributed to where you are today?

[00:01:28] Naazish YarKhan: I think it would be the way we were raised. My parents were not very afraid of us doing different things, new things. There wasn't very much pressure on. Following a certain career trajectory. You know, in the South Asian community, there's a lot of focus on the career trajectory you choose. I liked writing and I thought journalism would be my go-to, and I did it.

[00:01:51] Naazish YarKhan: My, there was no pressure that, oh, you don't have to, you have to make more money or you have to sort follow a certain pathway. And then even my family [00:02:00] itself, my extended family, my aunts were my aunt at that time. She was living in Palestine, although we're Indian. And um, her whole goal was to work with the children and do drama therapy.

[00:02:13] Naazish YarKhan: And she didn't have a background as a drama therapist. She happened to live there and found herself helping the children. And she used drama and it worked, right? So she found herself, quote unquote, a drama therapist. When she didn't have a background in therapy or in drama, but whatever she was doing was working.

[00:02:39] Naazish YarKhan: And at a different point in her life, she was working on a documentary about bonded laborers in India where year, generation after generation, she'd work on someone else's farm to pay off debts and get nothing for it. Right? Because you're now a bonded laborer because your father [00:03:00] owned. Some owed someone a debt, the landlord, obviously.

[00:03:04] Imam Tariq: Hmm.

[00:03:04] Imam Tariq: So I think it was their mix of social justice and put your first foot forward and keep going. That really influenced me without me recognizing it. So when I did journalism and began, I began, I was published first at 14. And I was writing columns for the team scene column. And then that expanded by the time I was in college to quarter page ads, or not ads, sorry, articles, and it was one foot in front of the other and doing what I was good at and the steps, just the more steps I took, the more things fell in place.

[00:03:45] Imam Tariq: So when I moved to the US, I offered to freelance for the Dekal Chronicle, which was at. Where we lived. My husband was an undergrad at NIU and I became a freelance writer and then I pitched a story to the [00:04:00] Chicago Tribune and uh, they said, we'll send a reporter out to cover it. And I said, I'll write it for you.

[00:04:06] Imam Tariq: If you don't like it, then you send a reporter out. And that included an interview with the FBI and Sotheby's because it was a local NIU professor who'd found a. Statue, which was on sale at Sotheby's, which he knew was from an Asian country. And he'd seen it in the original temple. And years later, when he went there, again, it wasn't there.

[00:04:35] Imam Tariq: So he knew when he saw the catalog that this was the piece. And I saw that in the local, you know, the local student newspaper. And that's the story I pitched. So a lot of my trajectory was, I. Put one foot in front of the other. I didn't know that Chicago Tribune was the biggest newspaper, the hardest newspaper to get into, and I think that helped me a lot [00:05:00] because I pitched them.

[00:05:01] Imam Tariq: I never had any fear of rejection or disappointment because I didn't know better. Mm-hmm. I didn't know that this was the most premier paper in the area. And yes, sometimes was also, that was one of the most. Premier Papers at that time. And same thing with NPR. When I did a interview, uh, I used to intern at uh, WBEZ, which is Chicago Public Radio, and all these things were one step in front of the other.

[00:05:31] Imam Tariq: I did not know NPR was the biggest thing when I pitched them. So there was no fear. There was no. Scare, uh, like fear of disappointment, fear of not measuring up. And within a year of being in the United States, I was in the Chicago Tribune as a freelance writer. Within a year and a half I was on NPR and nobody would've predicted it.

[00:05:55] Imam Tariq: And when I look at that now, I feel [00:06:00] so many of my steps. I'm held back by so many fears now, so many years later. And I have to remind myself I was that person I. I didn't know and I just did it. So even as adults now, I hesitate so much more. And I don't just do it, you know, just to steal Nike's slogan, right.

[00:06:24] Imam Tariq: But if I did, I'd be in more places, you know? And my whole life's trajectory is a reflection of just do it. So I don't know. Now, as an older. American 30 years into the United States, why? I have more affairs than when I did as a 20-year-old who knew nothing, you know?

[00:06:47] Imam Tariq: Mm. You said you didn't have parents who felt like you had to be in a particular career path that they were accepting of, I guess, whatever was in you to come out and for and for you to pursue that.[00:07:00]

[00:07:00] Imam Tariq: And you said you have to remember that about yourself. How do you get back to that now?

[00:07:05] Naazish YarKhan: I think because I work with children on their college essays, and so much of it is aha moments. And I wrote about it recently on LinkedIn where I was working with a student who had applied to the Quest Bridge Scholarship and their family income had gone just a little bit above the cutoff, and his mom had said, apply anyway, right?

[00:07:27] Naazish YarKhan: And he got it while he was working with me. He qualified for the QuestBridge and he qualified for the. He got acceptances at various very prestigious schools. And when I work with students and we're unraveling their ahas, uh, which is basically the crux for their college essays, I think that is a shot in the arm.

[00:07:48] Naazish YarKhan: Those are constant reminders. And then you have to, I think, also surround yourself with people doing things that are difficult or. [00:08:00] Even if they're not doing things that are difficult, they're doing things right because you feed off of each other's energy and you are in constant conversation with those people.

[00:08:11] Naazish YarKhan: So you learn something or the other from someone who's taking a chance, who's doing something differently. And I think that is very important because it's very easy to fall into our comfort zone, be with friends who we know for years who are just like us. To, you know, get out of your comfort zone and just meet people and do things that are different.

[00:08:36] Naazish YarKhan: I think that helps you hear how other people are doing things. You know, it's not like I am because I'm a small business owner, and so much is changing now, especially with ai. You're constantly having to hustle and you're constantly having to try new things. As opposed to if you are a physician, maybe you are always on a track, you have a secure track and you [00:09:00] have a secure vision that you're working towards.

[00:09:03] Naazish YarKhan: As a small business owner, you don't have that. You're constantly trying to figure out what marketing works better, what, uh, conference you should be speaking at, how you should be promoting yourself, because it's a hustle. And I think that's the difference if you are surrounding yourself with people. Who are on a trajectory where they are trying new things and they're having conversations where they are being vulnerable and not just floating the idea of yes, everything's wonderful.

[00:09:31] Naazish YarKhan: Mm. I think you learn so much more by that and you feel like, well, you know, some such and such as doing it, I can do it too. And I'll give you a very, you know, example, which is not a big aha moment, but I was recently setting mouse traps. With a friend's mom, she'd been recently widowed. Mm-hmm. I have never set a mouse trap before, and this was the one with the, you know, the little prong that goes in and I was [00:10:00] so afraid it was snap on my finger and she and I were holding it down and we are being so careful because we didn't want to snap on our finger.

[00:10:06] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. While we are setting it up. And the first one was second one, it took time. By the fourth one, by the sixth one more likely. I think she and I were like, look, we are pros. We're doing it so much faster. And in that moment, holding this mousetrap, I realized that anything new becomes easier by repetition.

[00:10:31] Naazish YarKhan: So by doing, we become better. And in the beginning it's going to be difficult. So I'm taking a class in Google Analytics now and Google AdWords. And yes, it doesn't make sense, but the more I do it, of course. But of course it's going to become easy and I think being able to look at the ahas in the very prosaic stuff in life is where we're going to get the [00:11:00] inspiration to move on,

[00:11:01] Imam Tariq: if

[00:11:01] Naazish YarKhan: that makes sense.

[00:11:03] Imam Tariq: It makes perfect sense. It's easier to go to the gym. For a lot of people when you work out and you see other people also struggling, you also, you see other people working out and there are varying stages along their journey. Some are, maybe they're newbies and then some they look like they could be in a contest, and that gives you motivation.

[00:11:25] Imam Tariq: So I think those a great way that, that you put that.

[00:11:28] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. And that's exactly how it is. And I think when we are in isolation or we're working remotely or as a slow solopreneur, I work a lot on my own. Mm-hmm. You can feel like you are up against huge odds. Mm-hmm. When in reality it's just a matter of putting one step in front of the other and getting out of our heads.

[00:11:47] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. Because a lot of the inhibitions, the fears, the worries, they're in our head. And when you are pounding the pavement, when you are out with people, you're just [00:12:00] listening to different people's stories. For example, even last weekend we went with the Northwestern alumni had a like a at a top gulf, like a reunion of sorts.

[00:12:11] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. And people were talking about the struggles they're having with their careers or their transition and you know, you realize that. Your issues are nothing compared to somebody else's or that it's not all sunshine and roses for everyone and it's just you who's working hard at something or have so much uncertainty.

[00:12:36] Naazish YarKhan: So I, I, I think that component as a business owner, actually being with other people makes a very big difference. People who are striving or. Even youngsters now. It took somebody a year. She's a recent college grad computer science degree, and her mother said, you know, it took my daughter a year to get hired.

[00:12:57] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. So those [00:13:00] conversations don't happen unless you are mingling or meeting, and I think we don't realize just how critical that is

[00:13:11] Imam Tariq: to have the conversation so that you don't feel. Like it's just happening to you, like you are the only person who is struggling or feeling a particular kind of way? Is that what you're saying?

[00:13:24] Naazish YarKhan: I think it's not so much to know that you're struggling, it's just learning moments. Right. It's um, oh aha. Oh really? It's those, and you don't go into a conversation hoping to learn something. Mm-hmm. Or you don't go into a conversation just to say, well, today I'm gonna feel better because someone's doing worse.

[00:13:44] Naazish YarKhan: It's the idea of having those conversations. Right. And per chance there'll be something that you really need to hear that day. Mm. You know, I think that's what it is, and I often relate it to my experience with Hudge. [00:14:00] Mm-hmm. I learned so many things that I really, really needed to learn. Yeah. And I felt that the Hudge is very much a microcosm of our real big picture world.

[00:14:12] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. That all the things we go through in the hudge really are things we need to learn to live our big picture world, you know?

[00:14:21] Imam Tariq: Hmm hmm. Since you brought that up, this is probably something I would've asked you later on, but what was the lesson that you learned? From Hutch

[00:14:32] Naazish YarKhan: that there'd always be someone to support you.

[00:14:35] Naazish YarKhan: I went when I turned 45, which meant that I could go without my husband. Mm-hmm. You know, at 45 you can get a visa. I went with a group and the hutch is difficult, but there was someone, and you know, there I'm just five feet tall, so my pace of walking is not as much as somebody else with who's a bit taller.

[00:14:54] Naazish YarKhan: But there was someone who said, okay, well you just hang onto my hand and. [00:15:00] Someone offered that somebody offered an umbrella because I had forgotten the, my umbrella and I needed it for the jamara. It was so hot. Yeah. Yeah. And then in my hijab, somebody had given me ice because it was so hot, I had to put the ice on my head and I tied it under, you know, under my hijab so it wouldn't fall.

[00:15:16] Naazish YarKhan: And then when I wanted to go and touch the kaba. And anything in HUDs that you wished for seemed to be coming true. It was in my mind, I was thinking, oh, I wanna touch the kaba and my roommate. You know, they, we stay with the four set of women. That's how I had stayed that day. She was, and her husband were gonna make the, and this was after the hj, I think, or some portion of it.

[00:15:38] Naazish YarKhan: I can't remember exactly when, but she's like, do you wanna come along? And then when we went the, um, the crowd just parted, even though there was so many people. And I just went along with them and we touched the kaba. So my big takeaway was there will always be someone [00:16:00] to be our companion, our guide to be our support system.

[00:16:05] Naazish YarKhan: We don't have to fear, we don't have to fear that we're in this alone, even though it feels like it. And you know, there's a say in the Quran, there's a verse that Allah does not put on a soul more than it can bear. That's right. The big, but is the community cannot think that everyone's just gonna figure it out and manage it.

[00:16:24] Naazish YarKhan: No. Our religion teaches us that it's a community that we are our fullest, Islamic self. We need to be helping each other. Allah doesn't put anything more than a soul can bear, but the duty is for the rest of the community to rally around this person and be there for this person and lend a hand. So I often see people quoting that words that Allah does not put more on a soul than it can bear.

[00:16:52] Naazish YarKhan: They leave out the aspect of the communal obligation. Mm-hmm. To each other, which is very much a [00:17:00] facet of our religion as supposed to be your brother's keeper. And I think that's been a philosophy that's guided most of my life. And, um, you know, it fits into this whole idea of community. Whether as a small business owner, I'm just going out and talking to people, and it doesn't have to be a networking event.

[00:17:20] Naazish YarKhan: It could be talking to my neighbor. Mm-hmm. And picking up things that Allah needs me to know, not just in terms of a religious perspective, but just have faith that okay, the economy is not where it used to be, so maybe I have to work three times harder, you know? Mm-hmm. To rustle up the same amount of business I might have.

[00:17:42] Naazish YarKhan: Easily picked up last year or whatever the situation is, whatever you need to be listening to and hearing. And I think the awareness comes from just being attuned to, oh, what is Allah showing me in this moment? Like that mouse trap thing. Mm-hmm. I didn't [00:18:00] go into it thinking I'm gonna come out of it listening to learning something, right?

[00:18:05] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. That I really needed to know, but I did. Or even the situation with the student who had applied for QuestBridge when he and I were talking, we were just talking, and I think just tying that back to the college essays. Mm-hmm. Those are those moments we are distilling in our conversations with the students that they're writing about.

[00:18:24] Naazish YarKhan: And when you're working with kids, you come across this over and over because you're helping them distill their learning moments. And the prompts are such that what's one obstacle you, you know, that defined you? Or what's one realization that sparked a period of growth? And because I'm in the business of uncovering those aha moments, I think I've just become attuned to that.

[00:18:47] Naazish YarKhan: That I'm like, even in normal instances I be like, ah, oh really? And I'm putting two and two together just because that's. A lot of what I'm doing with my [00:19:00] students.

[00:19:00] Imam Tariq: Hmm. I always consider myself to be extremely blessed, to be able to have conversations with so many different people with, with just different insights and uh, I'm absolutely loving what I'm hearing.

[00:19:13] Imam Tariq: There's something that you mentioned earlier that's stuck in my head and I'm, it's not going away, so I have to go back to it. Okay. Um, and that is, you said it was your aunt that was, uh, doing a documentary. Was it drawn? Yeah. Okay. And I could not help but make this connection between the Jim Crow South Sharecropping, you know, you said basically they are in servitude.

[00:19:37] Imam Tariq: Mm-hmm. Uh, and in the very same conditions existed here, and your aunt being able to shed light on it, and then you mm-hmm. As a journalist. Mm-hmm. How formative was that? Not just that she was able to do it, but the fact that there's a justice element there, is that something that stays with you?

[00:19:56] Naazish YarKhan: You know, I think because that's part and parcel [00:20:00] of your upbringing.

[00:20:00] Imam Tariq: Yeah.

[00:20:01] Naazish YarKhan: And you just think that's the right thing to do, that there is rights and there are wrongs. And you need to do something about the wrongs because if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Right? And I remember my own mom, very, very, very strong woman. And once there was a drunk driver and he had an accident, and in India, sometimes if you help somebody who's had an accident, they might think you hit the driver.

[00:20:28] Naazish YarKhan: When you take the go and register a police case and people will shy away from that. So they might just leave the guy there because they're like, we don't wanna be involved. We're gonna be implicated of hitting him, and so on. But we were driving down, I don't, I think it was a highway where it was very dark.

[00:20:45] Naazish YarKhan: And this guy on a scooter, scooter is like a bi bike, not like a bicycle, but a motorbike. Yeah. And uh, like a westpa for people who are familiar with that. And he, he'd fallen on the wayside. And my mother had [00:21:00] this guy picked up. She must have called some people. You know who were walking passerby and put him in our car and took him to a hospital.

[00:21:09] Naazish YarKhan: And it was just us girls, my cousin and my mom. My dad wasn't with us, and she did that. And I remember being scared because I was just like, we don't know this guy. He's smelling so bad, he's injured, and my mother was helping him, and that's my mother. She will do what needs to be done. Right. So if you are growing up with these instances, you just, and you hear the conversations about not just, oh, the situation is so rotten, but you see the action, right?

[00:21:45] Naazish YarKhan: You consistently see people taking action. Like my father, he went and met the president of India because he felt he was just didn't know him, not a politician. He just felt very strongly [00:22:00] about the direction the country was going in. So he decided he will go and meet the president of India and he did it.

[00:22:08] Naazish YarKhan: So when you're surrounded by people who just do it and who don't have these inhibitions about, oh, you're just an average Joe, but they just make choices repeatedly, which talk about. Doing what needs to be done, right. You see that and you just think that's normal. So you just do those things because you think that's what you have to do.

[00:22:37] Naazish YarKhan: You don't know any better, right?

[00:22:40] Imam Tariq: Sister? Now, so

[00:22:40] Naazish YarKhan: even, yeah, go ahead. I'm

[00:22:43] Imam Tariq: sorry. Your dad just met the president of India as a regular citizen.

[00:22:51] Naazish YarKhan: Yes.

[00:22:52] Imam Tariq: That's really impressive. So I

[00:22:53] Naazish YarKhan: think he wrote him a letter and he said, I would like to have a meeting with you. And he did [00:23:00] that.

[00:23:00] Imam Tariq: That's really impressive.

[00:23:02] Naazish YarKhan: Yes. And even if I think about this, I think, how crazy is that?

[00:23:06] Naazish YarKhan: Like who says, I'm coming to meet you and these are the issues and meeting him.

[00:23:12] Imam Tariq: Yeah. Right. Wow. So.

[00:23:18] Imam Tariq: Wow. Wow. Well,

[00:23:20] Naazish YarKhan: I, I think, um, if you raised a family like that who just feel like they have no inhibitions, and my mom and dad recently built a house and they are in their seventies. They have never constructed anything before. Like they're not from a construction background, and they chose every window they.

[00:23:41] Naazish YarKhan: Chose the contractor. The contractor went bankrupt in the middle. So then they had to find every other bit of it together on their own. And they're in their sixties, seventies, at the time. I can't renovate a bathroom, you know? And here are two people who, they moved back to India. They [00:24:00] used to live in Muscat.

[00:24:00] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. And didn't have contacts and figured it out. So I think when you have people like that in your life who are just figuring things out all the time and putting one foot in front of the other. Mm-hmm. You can't help but think that's normal. Right. So even when I have hesitations or I have doubts, or I have whatever these things are in my brain, I know that it's just chatter.

[00:24:29] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. That I have to just say, well, you know what, Mr. Chatter just, you're just chatter.

[00:24:35] Imam Tariq: Right. Right when you founded the writer studio.

[00:24:40] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:41] Imam Tariq: And this endeavor to help young people formulate their ideas, to speak to these prompts. From everything that you have mentioned about this amazing upbringing and examples, this dynamic you have in your family, are you able to pull on that [00:25:00] and helping to direct the vision of the young people that you work with?

[00:25:06] Naazish YarKhan: I think so because so much that they're doing, uh, they might gloss over. Like I said, you know, these small things that we do, which we think, oh, we are just doing. Mm-hmm. Sometimes it takes a lot of muscle to do that, and a lot of my kids write about anxiety. A lot of my kids write about not having a great freshman year, sophomore year and then pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

[00:25:29] Naazish YarKhan: They don't think they did a big thing. You know? Mm-hmm. And having a conversation where like, oh my goodness, that's a lot. And then they'll write that down that, oh my goodness, I really did this. So I think people tend to minimize and not even see the strides they're making. Mm-hmm. And the mountains, they're climbing.

[00:25:57] Naazish YarKhan: And I think that's why we have anxiety is because [00:26:00] we don't recognize just all the rahs and the ahas and the, oh my, I really did something. Mm-hmm. Especially my students who have anxiety or depression and that might not have been diagnosed. The fact that you need an appointment. And saw a therapist, even when everyone around you was like, oh, it's a passing phase.

[00:26:24] Naazish YarKhan: Yes. We also had hard times when we were kids, you know, and a lot of parents will say that. Yeah, it was hard for us to, but today we have a therapist available. Mm-hmm. Who can help us sort through that, who can break it down for us, so why not use that therapist maybe 40, 50 years ago, therapists weren't a thing.

[00:26:46] Naazish YarKhan: So, you know it's okay to say, well, in my time I also struggle. This is nothing you'll pass. It'll pass. But today the therapist is available for you, right? To help you. Right? So why not use the [00:27:00] tools like we saw readily use the internet, which was not available some years ago. We saw readily use our phones, which was smart phones, which are not part and parcel of our life 20 years ago.

[00:27:10] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. So go and use a therapist and. Helping the kids see that these things which they have lived through and been through, are in fact worthy of an essay. Mm-hmm. I think that's part of my job. And then a lot of times kids will feel like, well, I haven't had any, uh, struggles in my life. You know, what is there to write about?

[00:27:35] Naazish YarKhan: And we'll talk about things. And even something like learning to drive. It's, it's getting out of your comfort zone. Mm-hmm. You know, it's learning a few new things. It's being afraid of, uh, being hit while you are merging. So it really is a gamut of conversations. And then we distill what would be the strongest essay and what things can merge from different things we've talked about [00:28:00] to present who you are.

[00:28:00] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. So that's what I do. And then year round I teach writing workshops. You know, the college essay season. And the pre-med application season is for a certain amount of weeks in the year. But the rest of the time I'm doing, um, I teach writing.

[00:28:18] Imam Tariq: Okay. Which

[00:28:18] Naazish YarKhan: I absolutely love also.

[00:28:21] Imam Tariq: Now, how did you get into teaching?

[00:28:22] Imam Tariq: You went from journalism to teaching writing.

[00:28:26] Naazish YarKhan: I started teaching writing workshops when my children were young and um, you know, as a journalist. Everything I would've earned would've gone to be the babysitter. So there was no point in. And that's when I started consulting. And, uh, I worked with Ivanka as, and, you know, helped rebrand Halal Consumer Magazine and now it's a leading publication in its niche.

[00:28:52] Naazish YarKhan: And then, uh, later on I worked with the C-I-O-G-C, with its inaugural newspaper, Chicago Crescent. Yes. [00:29:00] And. You know, all those experiences, brother Malik Muja had never said, oh, you're just 25, you won't know how to do this, you know? Mm. He trusted me a lot. And I think that the fact that someone has placed their trust in you, that's big too.

[00:29:18] Naazish YarKhan: You know?

[00:29:20] Imam Tariq: How do you approach, uh, I'm thinking about branding work with Ivanka. You took them from basically nascency to, to maturity. You said they've carved out. A leading position in their particular industry,

[00:29:33] Naazish YarKhan: just with Halal. I think there was, you know, it was leading in its niche. Mm-hmm. It still is. The work it does, it's phenomenal because it's global.

[00:29:43] Naazish YarKhan: Right. And it works with Fortune 100 companies as well as small mom and pops. But the connection we wanted was to show these brands, which created products for. Export, right? Mm-hmm. That there was a [00:30:00] multi-billion, the B market in the United States. So you want to let consumers then know that there are several products on your shelves right now in the United States that are Halal certified.

[00:30:16] Naazish YarKhan: And you also want your local companies to know that there's a Muslim market. Please cater to them. Don't just. Focus on exporting everything. So we rebranded what they had. Halal consumer used to be completely B2B, and we used to have on the cover of vitamin bottles and US factory making vitamins or what have you.

[00:30:41] Naazish YarKhan: And I was telling Dr. Chari that, you know, let's change this up. Let's change this up. And one of the, his pushbacks was like, and I was veering towards food for the rebrand. Mm-hmm. And he was like, we don't produce food. So what I did is I laid out, and this was because I was at Northwestern and I [00:31:00] was learning all these things in communication.

[00:31:02] Naazish YarKhan: So I laid out trade magazines and had everyone take sticky notes and vote for the most alluring covers and these, and he was, he said, we're a trade, we're B2B. And. I said, okay, if we trade, put these trade magazines, maybe 20 trade magazines out there and had people choose the best covers and people, the top three were all food, like good looking food.

[00:31:31] Naazish YarKhan: And that's how we veered to having like cupcakes on the cover. Or you know, like Saffron Roads was one of their clients and they had delicious photos of. Spinach and meat like Palak pani or pal go and things like that. So that helped him see without, you know, it being like, why should I listen to what you have to say kind of thing, right?

[00:31:54] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. It was anonymous voting, top three trade. But because you [00:32:00] want to get the consumers aware, it had to become a B two, B2C magazine, not just a B2B. Right. So then the articles shifted from just talking about food science to also expanding the Halal brand, to showcase that it was finance, it was pharmaceuticals, it was ingredients.

[00:32:20] Naazish YarKhan: Yes, it was all these things. So we would do an article on maybe organic food. And then we would showcase some of the clients. At that time it was Organic Valley who was one of their clients. So we talked about organic food versus something that might not have an organic food and might just, you know, be sustainable or sustainably produced.

[00:32:42] Naazish YarKhan: And what is the difference? So we did feature style articles, but we also showcased what their clients had to say on the topic. So it became a landscape article. I remember one of the clients was Halal Healthy and the owner was Med Diet and they produced whey [00:33:00] protein. So then we did an article on whey protein, which included a comment by Med Diet, which was an I Panka client.

[00:33:08] Naazish YarKhan: But we talked about whey protein and how great it was for lactating mothers, how great it was for people recovering from surgery and how great it was for athletes. So when you take something completely out of its food science niche and talk about its general application, it's suddenly valuable to so many more people than just B2B.

[00:33:30] Naazish YarKhan: Right, right, right. And that's how it really became a niche and a leader in its niche. So Kamara, we talked about going to the farm and slaughtering your own goat, which was becoming more of a trend, which wasn't the case maybe some years ago. And then other things we talked about was in the th you know, in the 1960s when immigrant Muslims started coming, how hard it was for them to find halal.

[00:33:59] Naazish YarKhan: They [00:34:00] literally had to go to a farm, right? To do the Zaha. We made Halal an all encompassing thing, which it is. It's a lifestyle, right? And we packed it into the magazine. So it was a look and feel as well as the content. And that's how I find has become a household name versus just making it a well established entity for businesses and companies because they have clients which are outta this world.

[00:34:32] Naazish YarKhan: They have Fortune 100 companies, you know. Who are their clients? So that's just, um, my journey with Ivanka. Hmm.

[00:34:41] Imam Tariq: So I am inferring 'cause I'm not in the industry. B2B is business to business and then Yes, business to business to consumer. The B two. B2C? Yes. Okay. That's right. Yes. Yeah, and I'm, I'm sure, I'm sure our listeners are astute enough to figure that out as well.

[00:34:55] Imam Tariq: But figured I would say it, there's something that you [00:35:00] did in there that, uh, I guess is a reflection of what seems to be part of the mission, which is this idea of human connection. So getting the average everyday person to feel a sense of connection. What are some of the things that. Get in the way of that connection that you've seen.

[00:35:21] Imam Tariq: What are some of the challenges that you've had to tackle?

[00:35:24] Naazish YarKhan: You know, what made it easy is what I'll say first is that the mission of how ICA was about connecting with consumers. Mm-hmm. Right. So once you sold what you, I had the what I, I had the original buy-in because I was doing what the company's mission was.

[00:35:44] Naazish YarKhan: Correct, which was to grow, grow halal, make it more of a staple. I think the difficulty was in literally, I don't think it was difficult in real life, but finding partners [00:36:00] who would, uh, take it further. Right? So one of the things we did is, yes, you have the magazine. They used to drop it off at the maji and then hope people would pick it up.

[00:36:11] Naazish YarKhan: At the ji, that was their distribution model, and we built the data of the DA a database of just having people sign up for it and subscribe for it instead, it's a free publication. Mm-hmm. But one of the ways I proposed we did it is there used to be a meet vendor called, and they used to do home delivery of meat.

[00:36:33] Naazish YarKhan: It was a fledgling business coming up, up and coming. Very, very, very popular. And I had a, I created a partnership with them that with every box of meat you deliver a magazine. So then people have the option to subscribe to it. You know, it reaches them in their house. So rather than waiting for people to pick it up at the maji, sometimes it gets wet in the rain or the snow, or whatever it might be.

[00:36:59] Naazish YarKhan: You just brought [00:37:00] it to their homes. So we grew the subscriptions by, you know, multifold by. Doing it completely differently. And even in the magazine we. Had a section, which still is there all these years later, where you subscribe to it, you know, so that's just one. But when I look at Icra Relief, the, that was another company, my organization where I helped with the branding and you know, helping grow into the top three revenue generators out of 56 offices.

[00:37:35] Naazish YarKhan: And we did that in three and a half years. I wouldn't say difficulty, but. The way we branded that was that we want to make this a household name. And we did it not just by saying we are doing our work. We are doing our work, we are doing our work, but we decided to bring children into the mix. When you bring children into the mix, you bring their parents into the mix when [00:38:00] you do activities together, and I used to do that for my own organization, refugee assistance programs.

[00:38:05] Naazish YarKhan: I did it for 10 years and I folded some of the programs into relief because. My husband had had enough of me doing 10 years worth of work when I'm just disappearing all hours, hours of the day and all hours of the night. And he just was like, please just stop now. So we folded it into e can relief, but they, they hired me to work with them.

[00:38:26] Naazish YarKhan: So we did maybe like a backpack drive. We didn't have people just send a check. We didn't have people just drop off a backpack. We had an assembly line. Because the more you are engaged with a brand, the more ownership you have of it. Right? Right. So people bring their children, they do assembly line, they fill the backpacks, they feel really good.

[00:38:48] Naazish YarKhan: Parents feel really good about having their children learn about helping their neighbors. And you make that family part and parcel of the organization. So we did [00:39:00] a, then we did a e toy drive. You know, you wrap the toys, you come and sort the toys. Again, the more you're engaged with the brand, the more ownership you feel with it.

[00:39:14] Naazish YarKhan: And you bring the children in, you'll bring the parents in, right? Mm-hmm. Parents are always looking for activities, and this is the guy I run my own business. I've always run writer studio, at least for the last 20, 25 years, 20 years. So I know that parents are willing to spend on their children. Parents are looking for opportunities for their children, that people, they wanna have their children learn empathy.

[00:39:36] Naazish YarKhan: Because in America, you don't see it all around you, depending on where you live. It's not like India and Pakistan, and I'm from India, where you see it everywhere. So you innately feel empathy because you see it. And that's what we did. Where you are involving people, where you're involving volunteers. 80% of our work at Economic Relief was through volunteers.

[00:39:59] Naazish YarKhan: Mm-hmm. [00:40:00] They also become your donors. They also become your staffers. Mm. Right. You do the, when the transitional shelter was set up, we were able to pay that off on the day that we purchased it, you know? Wow. 350,000. It must have been. I think if I remember correctly, it was 350,000. And you do that by also having tours at the shelter because people don't realize that every single day a maji will receive a phone call from a sister and her children who've been abandoned, or a mother who's been thrown out by her children.

[00:40:36] Naazish YarKhan: There is such a disconnect, at least in suburban America, between. Recognizing the deep need in the Muslim community, such a deep need. Majid will get a call once a day on average. Can you imagine that in your wildest dreams? Oh yeah. No, you not gonna know [00:41:00] that, right? Yeah. So and then the whole idea was storytelling, like you said, the human connection.

[00:41:06] Naazish YarKhan: So we talked about a mother and her toddler and her newborn who stayed in their car in the winter for two weeks. Wow. Before they learned about ignorant relief. We talked about a refugee family and everyone's here is refugee. Refugee or what does it mean? This woman, and when you arrive in America, your benefits don't just kick in because you're a refugee.

[00:41:26] Naazish YarKhan: Right. This woman for three days was just boiling onions and feeding it to her children because she had no food. Hmm. You need to hear those stories to realize while you are having your parties and you are going on your vacations, somebody can't feed their child food. Right? And then she went door to door.

[00:41:48] Naazish YarKhan: She lived in Devon, door to door to all the grocery stores, and it turned her away. Imagine that is someone's reality. So to talk to people about you, like I [00:42:00] said, the human connection, like you said, the human connection. Is pivotal. It's really, really pivotal and I, I can't emphasize that enough because we're so happy to talk about or look at Facebook and say, oh, this one's having a good time.

[00:42:17] Naazish YarKhan: But you know what? At their house, things are very different. I've delivered meals to a pregnant mother, a wife of a physician, and they were not giving her food. She was eight months pregnant. They were giving her tomatoes and onions, and that was the state, and she's married to a physician, so the abuse is in every single socioeconomic group.

[00:42:46] Naazish YarKhan: Race, religion. Don't think that someone who goes to the mosque five times a day is the best of people. I'm sorry. You could be the turning up five times a day and then mistreating the people who live in your [00:43:00] house.

[00:43:00] Imam Tariq: Absolutely.

[00:43:01] Naazish YarKhan: It's, uh, and, and our community doesn't see that, right? Yeah. So I think the work I did at icna Relief for the four and a half years was, uh, very, very critical.

[00:43:13] Naazish YarKhan: It really established icna relief as something, not a, not something that is far removed behind the sky. Yes. Good. Cut your check. Send it off. But no, no, no. These you feel like you own it. Once you start volunteering, once you start. Participating in their events. Mm-hmm. You really, that moves the needle a lot.

[00:43:37] Naazish YarKhan: So it helps build the brand. Long story. I know

[00:43:40] Imam Tariq: a wonderful story and I'm shaking my head. You, you, you're saying, well, you know, can you imagine that kind of need? Unfortunately, I can. I serve as the Ma of Es. There's a, a certain awareness that you get that other folks might not. Might not get because you get people coming in, can I give ACA for this?

[00:43:58] Imam Tariq: I need some, so Coke. [00:44:00] But what you're talking about is not just building a brand, but building a bond in the process. Do you still have those relationships that you built while helping to build those brands

[00:44:13] Naazish YarKhan: with the organizations? You mean as a donor?

[00:44:15] Imam Tariq: Well, no, on any level. When you look back at those experiences, are there relationships that you built that you would not have built otherwise?

[00:44:26] Naazish YarKhan: I would say with the staff, you know, um, to some extent yes. With some of the families, but you are also in a service provider role. Mm-hmm. You are, you also need to have boundaries. Everyone doesn't become your friend. Yeah. And I think sometimes it's hard for them to, all the families to recognize that. And when I ran refugee assistance programs, that was what I didn't have.

[00:44:54] Naazish YarKhan: It was like, if somebody phones me at nine o'clock, I'm running. If someone's calling me at 10 [00:45:00] o'clock, I'm running. I didn't have that boundary. And I think, uh, with Rad, even though they work 24 7 and they're willing to do everything and bend over backwards, I cannot commend that organization and it's people enough.

[00:45:14] Naazish YarKhan: I did learn more boundaries because I was in a marketing communications role. I was not intake. I was not working as a case manager. Later on when I began working with, and of course I had the relationships with the leadership and people I worked with, but not with the clients. It was not part and parcel of my role.

[00:45:37] Naazish YarKhan: Neither would I recommend it. I don't think you need to become the A savior for anybody. You know, you do your job, you are there, but I think that's. What I ha happened in refugee assistance programs is I was so ready to be on call that it, it also helped me get burnt out. [00:46:00] Really, you know? Yeah. 10 years is not a short amount of time and it's, but I was ready to pass the but on on, because there was a refugee family that called me for their rent and I hadn't been able to collect the money, and they were yelling at me and.

[00:46:17] Naazish YarKhan: I wasn't the politest, and that's when I knew that I need to get outta this because yes, I haven't collected the money, but it's not like I'm sitting on orders of money. I'm still grassroots. Fundra fundraising. We didn't have grants and you know, you might say, oh, why didn't you apply for grants? But that's just not how we ran.

[00:46:38] Naazish YarKhan: I just did everything grassroots and I had a board and we did everything. Like grassroots fundraising and we had a fiscal agent, but we didn't do grants and so on and so forth, because the minute you get government grants, the the bookkeeping and the details, you have to keep, oh my goodness, half your life will go just filling the paperwork.

[00:46:59] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. [00:47:00] And I wasn't about that. I was about getting the job done, helping as many people as possible. So just to answer your question, that. When you know, you just have to have a understanding that for your sanity, you can't just be on call all the time.

[00:47:20] Imam Tariq: Now, you mentioned something I think, which is really critical and a lot of folks that are listening who've been through similar situations, especially direct service providers, you know, spiritual care, whatever, where you have to address the needs of people, there is a a possibility of getting burnt out if you don't have boundaries.

[00:47:40] Imam Tariq: Absolutely. And really I think in any position, like some people are just yes, married to their work and there's no separating the line. But as a business owner, as a small business owner, what do boundaries mean for you in this role where your success is contingent upon your vision, your effort, [00:48:00] your networks?

[00:48:01] Imam Tariq: How do boundaries look as a small business owner?

[00:48:07] Naazish YarKhan: You know, you just have to be very intentional. Um,

[00:48:13] Naazish YarKhan: I I, I think as a small business owner, you, you have to work a lot. Yeah. And you have to work more than you might at a nine to five, because I must, I wanna clarify that. It's not like working nine, and I've done both, right? Mm-hmm. Um, even when I was working with economic relief, I was a consultant, so I was on contract with them.

[00:48:35] Naazish YarKhan: I was not an employee. It didn't stop me from working around the clock because that's just their culture, you know? Yeah. Their culture is very much around the clock. I think the difference is being older now, I also recognize that there are things like my health that have to be a priority. You know, if I'm not gonna take [00:49:00] care of my health now, I'm gonna pay a very big price.

[00:49:04] Naazish YarKhan: By the time I. I'm in my sixties or seventies. Mm-hmm. Because I'm seeing it happen. Right. I'm seeing it with my parents, I'm seeing it with my friends' parents. The you are reduced to I, I so dependent. You know, your old age robs you of so much your dignity first, your sense of purpose. So I think. Now, it's not so much that I don't think of it as a boundary as much as I think of it.

[00:49:40] Naazish YarKhan: Like, if you don't do this for yourself, you are gonna be in such bad shape and you're not going to be able to do anything that you really want. You know? And I love traveling. For example, if I don't take care of my knees and I don't take care of my health, I'm not gonna be able to travel much. Right?

[00:49:58] Naazish YarKhan: Right. So [00:50:00] it's just the reality of it. I think that's what helps with boundaries now. And that's not to say that if now I need to work round the clock, I won't do it. Mm-hmm. When I need to do it, but I cannot let it become my norm. Right, right, right. You do it when you need to do it, and you, you hustle and work hard.

[00:50:23] Naazish YarKhan: Yes, you do that, you have to do that. There's no other way around it. Mm-hmm. But you also recognize that, you know what, this is not going to. Come in handy if you just don't have the health.

[00:50:35] Imam Tariq: Right, right. You know, there's something that resonates with me, which is, uh, now in my fifties and a small business owner, I have a different perspective on my time.

[00:50:48] Imam Tariq: I love the work that I do, and so it's very easy to have a 14 hour day. It's really easy for that to happen. And I'm now thinking about [00:51:00] myself in my sixties, my seventies in Shaah, into my eighties. And I'm thinking, well, if I'm gonna go hard, I need to go hard now. Right? I need to do it while I still have the energy to do it.

[00:51:11] Imam Tariq: So for me, the boundary, like with you, it really does become more about, not necessarily the time I spend, but the state that I'm in, my physical sense, my health, and that becoming much more. To the forefront of my mind.

[00:51:28] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. Because it's catching up. Right. It's um, and I think those who have, who've had the opportunity to care for our elders.

[00:51:36] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. We see the writing on the wall. There is, and there's no avoiding it. And I know that the, the friends of mine who spend more time with the parents, those girls go to the gym more, you know, because they live that reality and they see it. Yeah. So they know, oh my goodness, if I don't go and do my five mile walk or [00:52:00] whatever it is, I'm just gonna punish myself in the future.

[00:52:04] Imam Tariq: Let me ask you this open-ended question, not really open-ended. It's a finish the prompt. And that is, uh, the one lesson I keep learning is,

[00:52:16] Naazish YarKhan: you know, to be totally honest, it'll be like I have to always be learning. Now AI is around and, uh, literally if we do not learn how to work with it and how to, and I've been taking classes, right?

[00:52:33] Naazish YarKhan: So I, I, I work with perplexity, I work with gr, I use charge GBT fairly regularly. For example, my students write stories. Mm-hmm. So I do a little animation that goes with each of the, uh. The stories that they write, which I wasn't able to do before. Now I use, you know, AI to help create that, but it [00:53:00] takes prompts that have to be very specific.

[00:53:02] Naazish YarKhan: Yeah. Otherwise, you're going to spend a lot of time and it'll keep giving you things you don't want, right? Mm-hmm. So I'm learning that, and I'm taking classes in AI basically to learn different, different, different things. And I think that's. One thing is that you always have to be open to that or you're gonna become redundant.

[00:53:25] Imam Tariq: Hmm.

[00:53:26] Naazish YarKhan: And it reminds me of my mousetrap example because sometimes it's not easy. I have to pay attention. I have to focus, like when I was learning Google Analytics, because it's part and parcel of any work that I do, I also can, you know, I also look for full-time work from time to time. And if I'm gonna do that and I'm doing branding and.

[00:53:48] Naazish YarKhan: Uh, content. I do a lot of content development. Now, someone's gonna say, well, you know, we can get content development done when half the time using chat, GPT. What else do you bring to the table? So I better [00:54:00] know Google Analytics, you know, I better know a little bit more about digital marketing, and that's what I did.

[00:54:05] Naazish YarKhan: I have, uh, just, you know, I took a class in, uh, prompt Engineering. I'm now working on my certifications for Google Analytics and Google Ads. I've done some amount of Google ads, and I think another thing I have to also say that never underestimate how much you know, because when I took those classes in Google ads, I thought I would know nothing.

[00:54:28] Naazish YarKhan: But I actually did know something. I just thought I didn't know enough. But that was also not true. I knew fairly from what I had done with it, so. I would say that is, that one thing is always be learning and then secondly, don't underestimate how much you already know. Hmm hmm. Even if you think you don't know that much, you probably know a little bit more.

[00:54:55] Naazish YarKhan: And even the class I took on, uh, ai, how to do text and [00:55:00] graphics, I knew all of that, so they actually gave me a, a credit for another class that I can take. Mm-hmm. Because what they were teaching me, I already knew. You know? So even I'm, I might not be, and I think that's what we feel like, oh, we are a blank state.

[00:55:18] Naazish YarKhan: No, we're not a blank slate. Give yourself credit. You know, give yourself credit for, it's just like the students, they think, oh, I didn't do enough, or I don't have. You know, anything to write about. No. You have a lot that you can write about. Mm-hmm. So also us just by being in the field, being in marketing, communications, I have that exposure.

[00:55:43] Naazish YarKhan: Running a small business, I know so much. Yeah. You know, so don't ever think that we are a blank state. We don't know enough. But yeah, also be willing to learn new things.

[00:55:55] Imam Tariq: Wonderful. Sister Naazish, it has been a pleasure. Talking [00:56:00] with you, please tell folks where they can find you, , whether it's at the website or social media.

[00:56:06] Naazish YarKhan: So it's writers, studio writers with s Studio do us. And, um, I, my, uh, Facebook is writer studio, USA. So you can find me on both those things. And this has been a pleasure. You know, sometimes when you talk to people, it makes us think of things we don't normally think about.

[00:56:27] Naazish YarKhan: So I think what you're doing is amazing because we learn from each other

[00:56:31] Imam Tariq: Definitely.

[00:56:31] Naazish YarKhan: And we get that shot of courage from each other. I, I can't underestimate that. You know, like I said in the beginning,

[00:56:38] Naazish YarKhan: We get our courage from doing

[00:56:39] Imam Tariq: That's right.

[00:56:40] Imam Tariq: That's right. Well, like I said, , , I always feel like I come away, you know, enriched. And this conversation has been no exception. I, I've, I'm definitely appreciative of everything that you've shared and for you taking the time to have the conversation. Family, we are at the end of our conversation today.

[00:56:58] Imam Tariq: Keep up with us [00:57:00] every week. , Make sure that you're subscribing if you are enjoying this content. you can find us on social media. , You can find me Imam Tariq El-Amin on Facebook and on, Instagram. So make sure you're subscribed to the American Muslim Podcast.

[00:57:13] Imam Tariq: Alright, I'm gonna leave you as I greeted you. Thank you again. As Salaamu Alaikum, may the peace that only God can give be with you.