Why I joined Passionfroot

Hey creators!

I’m Akta and I recently joined Passionfroot as the Founding Creator! This role is a pretty big deal for me because I completely changed career paths and as a result, my life feels so different.

Let’s rewind

Growing up, I placed a lot of importance on grades. I’m not sure if it was Middle Child Syndrome and my attempt to get more attention from my parents, but I considered myself a regular Hermione Granger. I was a straight A+ student, deputy head girl and I did everything by the book.

I went to King’s College London to study dentistry and graduated highest in my year with two first class honour degrees. I was basically every Asian parent’s dream child.

I wasn’t forced to become a dentist by pushy parents, I thought dentistry was what I wanted.

On my first day as a dentist, I realised how wrong I was. I instinctively knew that dentistry wasn’t for me.

Two questions ran through my mind:

1. What on earth do I do next? Dentistry was all I had ever known and it’s all I was qualified for.
2. How did I get here? How did I spend the better part of 10 years training to become a dentist and not realise it wasn’t for me?

That last question changed everything.

Finding myself

I realised that I had spent 10 years focused on an end goal. All I had valued was getting from A to B, because I thought that’s what success was. I was chasing the feeling of accomplishment but I didn’t slow down long enough to ask myself how I was feeling.

I knew that if I was going to change my life, I would have to change my mindset as a goal-getter. I would have to slow down and value the journey over the destination.

So, I began to slow down.

Instead of panicking about my next career move, I simply lived in the moment. I followed my feelings of joy and tried new things like digital drawings, designing wedding invites and creating videos for Youtube. I didn’t start anything with goals in mind. I was just getting to know myself.

Through that process, I realised how much I loved creating.

I fell in love with making videos for Youtube and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was doing something authentic to me. I did Ali Abdaal’s Part-time Youtuber Academy and I learned even more skills and connected with creators who were on the same journey as me. My channel started to grow and I got so many comments on my videos from people who shared similar views. I felt like I had found my community, my sense of belonging.

From then on, I knew that I had a creative calling. Career-wise though, I still didn’t know where it would lead me so I continued working part-time as a dentist whilst creating for YouTube, Twitter and my newsletter on my days off.

Passion found me

Jen, our CEO, reached out to me through Twitter DMs at the end of 2021 about the founding creator role. The job description sounded as if it was written about me- someone who loves creating content and bringing people together.

When I jumped on a call with Jen, Jens and Michelle, the 3 co-founders of Passionfroot, I immediately resonated with their vision and values. I could see how much they wanted to help creators, and they could see how much I loved being a creator.

I got offered the role, and immediately accepted.

I left dentistry in pursuit of my creative calling.

Why Passionfroot?

I’m now a firm believer in following your feelings of joy rather than doing what you think you should do. I joined Passionfroot because I followed my feelings and intuition.

The vision

Passionfroot is building a product that will help creators to feel less overwhelmed. On the outside, creators look so polished and put together, but behind the scenes, there’s often chaos and it can make the creator journey really difficult. As a creator, and someone who gets overwhelmed so easily, I understand why this product is essential. It’s a product I know I’ll need. It has the potential to protect the creative spark of creators whilst empowering them to build their platforms and businesses- who wouldn’t want to be involved with that?

Team

Being in a team where everyone shares the same vision, is amazing at what they do and values the well-being of others is seriously amazing. In my first couple of weeks, I felt so comfortable with the team that I could talk to them honestly about my feelings of impostor syndrome and it was their response which helped me to overcome it. At Passionfroot, everyone is treated like a human. They’re treated with love and support.

Diversity and inclusion

As a second-generation immigrant, seeing so much diversity amongst an early-stage start up is inspiring. Passionfroot make you feel welcome no matter what your background or experience is. This was especially important to me, because I felt valued for who I am and what I do- they didn’t ask me for a CV to judge me for my qualifications as most people have, they saw me for me. They see potential and want to unleash it.

Passion

What I love about Passionfroot is that they live and breathe their name. They truly embrace the concept of passion and doing what you love. They want everyone to do the work that matters to them and to use their own expertise to help build Passionfroot, rather than stifle people with micromanagement.

Creators

Passionfroot wants to serve creators and believes that the best way to do this, is by being creators ourselves. I love that they want to build in public and that they want to build the product with a community of creators. I feel like I’ve really found my place as a creator amongst other creators.

I had no idea that I would end up here, but whenever you follow your feelings of joy, you’ll very likely end up in a place that makes you feel good. I get to be a creator everyday and I love it.

If you want to join us on our exciting journey, look out for any opportunities here. Feel free to follow my journey on my Youtube channel and to reach out via email at [email protected] or on Twitter. You can also hear from me weekly as I share my learnings from the week in our newsletter, Filtered Fridays.