WTC : 015 -How to fall in love with overcoming fear through entrepreneurship. .

In this episode of the Wartime CEO, our special guest is Aleem Afzal. A first-generation immigrant, native New Yorker who has made his home in the DC metro area. He’s a young technology professional who has pursued his passion for empowering people to become the best version of themselves through his apparel and lifestyle brand.

About the guest

[03:56] Aleem Afzal’s family’s originally from Pakistan. He was born in Kuwait, in the Middle East. His father had created a pretty good life for himself in terms of his job and career and what he’s been able to do. They had a nice house, a nice car, and they were living pretty well, and all of that just went up in flames when the invasion happened. They were forced to flee the country.

[06:01] They busted through the security and made their way into Saudi Arabia, where they could get to safety. They were there for several months before they found an opportunity to come to the United States. That’s where his story started as an immigrant coming to America.

Making it to the DMV

[8:36] Because Aleem grew up tinkering with computers and playing video games, he was into technology. It made sense for him to go into engineering jobs. He went into engineering only because of family expectations and some of his interests were growing up. He studied electrical engineering at the City College of New York. He found his first job opportunity in the DMV in Ruston when he graduated.

Negative thinking and limiting beliefs

[12:54] Since they grew up in an inner city neighborhood in Queens, there were many not-so-cool things around, like drugs, violence, and things that were not so pleasant. Because of that, he didn’t have a lot of opportunities to spend time in the world. For his parents, it was a lien to go to school, get an education, do your homework, and come home. He doesn’t spend too much time outside, hanging out with too many people, and returns home. He didn’t allow himself to be able to experience things. It protected him, but at the same time, it didn’t give him a lot of self-confidence. He developed a lot of social anxiety as a result. He had a lot of limiting beliefs. Aleem had a lot of views about the world that wasn’t positive. He always had that family love, but his perspective and view of the world and himself weren’t necessarily the most healthy.

Overcoming fear

[18:31] Aleem always had a growth mindset. He was bullied, afraid of people, and was not comfortable in his skin, and he cared too much about what people thought. He didn’t like that about himself and strongly desired to change that. College allowed him to open up a bit because he felt he had a fresh start. That’s where he started getting into personal development, to come across books that taught him to be more confident.

[19:49] The biggest thing that helped Aleem overcome a lot of those confidence and self-image issues was that he had a real problem with talking to girls. He and his friend would go downtown in New York City, visit the local parks, and try to talk to girls. They’re trying to boost each other up.

[21:15] Through that kind of journey, he got into the business and entrepreneurship world. He got into some entrepreneurship communities and the E-commerce business and started learning from other successful entrepreneurs. Working in industries like direct sales, you have to talk to strangers, learn how to talk to people, build rapport, and get business. A lot of his people skills, self-confidence, and self-image development came from that arena in the business world of having to learn to talk to strangers and befriend them so he could sell them something.

Professional career

[25:00] Aleem has a full-time job where he works in professional services for a cloud software company, Medallia, and he’s a program manager. He helps run managed services for customers who want to use their software to enhance their customer and employee experience programs. He’s been doing that for over two years now and has had project management and business analyst-related roles in the past. Outside of that, he’s building Limitless Living, where the apparel brand is focused on empowering people with an abundance and growth mindset.

Professional Career to Entrepreneurial One

[26:01] Aleem’s corporate world experiences have taught him that you have to learn to collaborate and work with people. Project management is a big piece. You have to know how to organize yourself and manage multiple projects, multiple tasks, budgets, resources, and things like that. You have to track your numbers, track your KPIs, and you have to know where you stand on those things. Understanding that and how to communicate that understandably, how to take data and numbers and communicate it through a story can help people make business decisions and take a company in certain directions. Those are some things that Aleem carried over from the corporate world into the business world.

Starting a brand

[27:47] According to Aleem, it wasn’t one single moment but a culmination of experiences that compounded each other. Investing in growing yourself in multiple areas in your life, not just with yourself, your self-confidence, and self-image development. But your wealth, health, relationships, being able to develop a mindset and a purpose for life, Aleem has found so many fruits of being able to invest in those areas with himself. He had seen how that has radically transformed his life and witnessed it transform other people’s lives. That’s what created the seed for what Limitless Living became. Aleem wanted to impact people most during his time here on earth.

Limitless Living

[34:15] Limitless Living is Aleem’s first business, and he’s starting completely from scratch. There are websites, Shopify, carts, all these different email marketing tools, and things like that. So there are just a lot of foundational pieces that need to be set up. Aleem’s just a one-person show, and he started around this year. One of his biggest challenges is figuring out what he needs to do right now for himself. And what are the things he can start looking to outsource and have other people do.

[42:07] Aleem wants to build a community where you can make connections with individual people. The more connections you make with individual people, and the more those people connect with you, you start to form a community, and you start to build people who will become ambassadors of what you stand for and do. The money is just going to be a byproduct of that.

Support Aleem and limitless living by checking out his website limitelessliving.co .