We recently connected with Keida Dervishi and have shared our conversation below.
Keida, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
It’s not always easy to be creative. Especially when the job you do requires to bring ideas from scratch daily. As a business owner, it is my duty to come up with content first and foremost for social media. For the past two years we have been posting 5-8 times per day on 6 different social media platforms. On top of that, I manage and give creative help to other departments like new product development, graphic design, video editing, email and sms marketing, and much more, I’ve noticed that I have to have a clear and relaxed mind in order for me to create videos that end up going viral. If I am going through a rough time where I feel stressed and overworked, that will end up showing in the work I do. From personal experience I’ve learned that in order for someone to be at their best potential they have to take breaks. I am the first who always says “The more you work, the sooner you’ll get there.” Only lately I have discovered the feeling of burn out for the first time in my life, and it was not pretty. It’s a period of time where you feel extremely tired, sick, overworked, fatigue and out of motivation. It’s definitely a hard thing to go through. I’m so happy to say it is something that is possible to overcome. But in order to prevent it, breaks are more than necessary. Taking breaks will prevent you not only from burn out but will keep you creative and motivated constantly.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I started my business when I was 19 years old from my parents house and in 1 year I was able to make it a million dollar business. Going back to 2021, I was looking for a gift for my mother’s 50th birthday. I searched for weeks to find something unique that my mom would love and make her feel special. I kept on stumbling across the same boring ideas that I’d see every year like flowers, basic jewelry, basic clothing designs etc. Only until one day, I got a thought…”what if I create something myself”. So I thought of the idea to take a photo of me and my mom, draw over it to create an outline and embroider it onto a sweatshirt. Fast forward to my mom’s birthday, I give her my personalized gift and I was incredibly shocked to see her starting to cry. My mother was so surprised by this gift that she had started tearing up. She said to me words that I will never forget: “This is the most special gift i’ve received in my life.” And almost immediately after, she says “Keida, this is genius. We need to start a business out of this.” And that’s how Soulmate Customs was born.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I believe one of the most important skills you can have as an entrepreneur is being a fast learner. Since I was little, I always had the do-it-yourself attitude and always knew that learning something new was only a click away. We are so incredibly lucky to have platforms like Google, Youtube and now Tik Tok where you can gain valuable information in just a search. Another huge quality is being adaptable. In business, in order to succeed you have to fail…millions of times. Failures happen on the daily for me and now I look forward to them more than ever. Because once you fail, you know you overcame that mistake and you’re just 1 step closer to finding success. My mom explained to me the “30 degree rule”. If something doesn’t work out shift your plan “30 degrees”. Make small changes until you find the perfect “degree” that you will find success. And the last quality I’ll talk about is perseverance which I find is one of the most difficult. You have to have so much patience and persistence when growing your business. There’s going to be huge ups and there’s going to be huge downs. Stressful is the nice way to call it but my God is it challenging. You have to have a heart made out of stone and incredible patience to get through the scary challenging times that you will face while scaling your company. We are all going to face huge challenges in our business journey, it is the mere fact that if you overcome each challenge that’s when you will be guided to the next step until you find success at the top of the “mountain of challenges”.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
First and foremost, my parents. As many people know because I talk about this all the time, I owe my success to my parents. They have been a huge support for me. Not only when I started Soulmate Customs but way before that. I grew up with parents in business and watched them grow their own successful business every step of the way. From attending many of their business meetings they’d take place in, trade shows, trainings etc. My playground as a kid was their factory. I would hang out with the clothing designers and learn how to draw clothing sketches while also learning how to cut textiles and trace the clothing patterns with chalk so they could go into the sewing department. My mom also at times would challenge me, a 12 year old, to sell to customers in their clothing stores. As you can imagine, no one took me seriously but I would do everything I possibly could so that I can gain my reward ($50 that basically in my mind = to me being a rich kid).
Other than my parents, I learned that who I surround myself has had a huge impact on my life. It is so true that who you surround yourself with is who you become. So I’ve always strived to hang out with people who I’d want to be like. It’s very important in a friendship to bring value to each other. The best thing that made me learn how to attract the “ideal” friends is to become the ideal friend. Be that person that once you approach someone you’d like to form a friendship with, they immediately want to because they see that you have your life together. In order to gain value, you have to provide value.
And lastly, I owe so much of my knowledge to Google, Youtube, books and podcasts. It has been fairly challenging to find friends who are the same age as me and are advanced in the career they’re pursuing. So these are the things that have kept me constantly learning new very valuable things every day. At the end of the day, it’s all about what you know that will get you to succeed.
Contact Info:
- Website: soulmatecustoms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keida02/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keida-dervishi-b344731a0/
- Other: Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@soulmatecustoms?lang=en
Image Credits
Erik Pel
