We were lucky to catch up with Nadia Alawa recently and have shared our conversation below.
Nadia, 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?
Quiet times are for recharging and keeping my mind free and open to new ideas. I love the quiet. I let my mind rest and find ideas springing forth in the quiet. I always make it a point to go to bed – turn off the light with no phone and no worries – before I am dead tired to ensure that my mind can get emptied out. That helps with keeping my stress down and my spirit open for new ideas.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am the owner of an independent bookstore, Mavey Books, located right outside of Philadelphia. It still feels surreal event after one year, but it also empowers me to walk into the store every morning and know that this store – and the community around it – became a reality after I set a goal – and went after it! Mavey Books welcomes every reader. We want every one to be able to see themselves on our shelves, come here and make friends, and walk away with new and well-known books. We aim to create readers – and sustain booklovers!
I run the bookstore together with one of my daughters. She handles social media and helps create the ambience and shares my deep love for books, community, and the deeper mission of creating change in people, through the books they read and the people they meet.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Our bookstore is new with just a year behind us, but my life experience is diverse. I come from a project management and executive background with a strong emphasis on community service and solving unexpected issues, so the bookstore business feels a lot less stressful overall and is just a lot of fun.
Some of my strengths include tenacity, drive, and a relentless optimism – all pretty good skills for an entrepreneur. I am also people-friendly and curious about others, so it is easy to make bookstore friends and create new relationships.
Before I do any new things, I tend to spend an intense time researching and speaking to people who have been there, done that. I think it is a great way to learn from others and gather hard-earned advice from others who have gone the path before you. I always try to be realistic when I consider new projects, but also follow my intuition and where it takes me. This time around it brought me to opening up a bookstore, but I was willing to walk away from the tentative project if the different check points had not worked out after all. I think that’s important – to be able to change your mind without feeling you let yourself down if things do not seem to take you in the intended direction!
Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?
We obviously never know if we are going to go to bed that night, but if I expected to die within a decade I am old enough to say that I would continue to live every day as if it were my last! The exception would be that I still have bills to pay with a new business, so I would work towards making sure the bookstore was running well within the next 1-2 year (current goals anyways!) and continue to support my daughter in the business aspect of the store, so she could decide to continue running it after I am no longer here!
Business and work aside, one of my goals at home is to create a biodiverse and relaxing backyard for our family, the birds, and all the insects, so I would want to speed up that process a bit in order to watch the beauty of nature and enjoy the ecological footprint!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.MaveyBooks.com
- Instagram: @MaveyBooks
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