How a wellness entrepreneur paved her way to health and success
Siffat Haider started her entrepreneurial journey like many others: in the corporate world. She was working as a beauty editor at Elle Canada, but when she found herself battling a number of health issues, she decided to forge her own path to help combat them. Armed with her wellness expertise and a knack for lifestyle blogging, she set out to create a business that would help solve the health issues that she and many women experience every day. Siffat co-founded Arrae, which produces natural, targeted supplements to solve common ailments like anxiety, bloating, and lack of sleep.
As many business owners can relate to, Siffat saw a need in the industry and wanted to fill that gap—in her case, a lack of high-quality, natural products to remedy common health problems. With her business booming, she’s also expanded her reach and impact with customers through a strong Instagram presence (Arrae has more than 75,000 followers) and The Dream Bigger Podcast, which she hosts and interviews wellness experts, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders.
We caught up with Siffat to hear more about her road to success as an entrepreneur plus her tips for other small businesses.
Many entrepreneurs travel a lonely road when first starting off. What advice do you have on weathering that part of the journey?
Read and listen to as many podcasts as possible. It helped me feel less alone, and like there were other people who’d gone through the same thing. Also do your best to build a community. Spend time with friends who are entrepreneurs, reach out to other entrepreneurs through social media.
How do you stay focused and efficient when juggling multiple parts of your business?
I time batch everything so I’m not task-switching often. Task switching between meetings and head down work can be really distracting so I batch my meetings back to back and give myself a few hours at the start of my day to get my work done.
What’s one thing you wish you would’ve known when first starting your business?
That it’s never going to become perfect or suddenly less stressful. You don’t arrive at a magic revenue number where things become easier—every stage has its challenges, so it’s about enjoying the ride and knowing it comes with its bumps.
Hear more from Siffat about her day-to-day routine as an entrepreneur and how she uses Yelp to support other small businesses (hint: check out her Yelp collection of go-to spots in Los Angeles).