Why My First Brand Decision Was to Choose Authenticity Over Comfort Every entrepreneur faces a crucial pivot point. Mine came when I realized that building an author brand meant deciding who I was writing for.

For five years, my book lived only in my journals. Raw, unfiltered, and entirely private. The idea of becoming an author and publishing my work didn't begin with a marketing plan or a target demographic. It began with a simple, terrifying question: What if my silence is costing someone else their healing?

When I lost my mother, I inherited two competing narratives. My Pakistani heritage taught me that grief should be endured quietly, that discussing emotions signaled weakness, and that "moving on" was an unspoken expectation. But my inner voice, the one drowning in anxiety and depression refused to stay silent. That tension between cultural conditioning and personal truth became the foundation of both my book, Healing in the Shadow of Loss, and my author brand.

Every entrepreneur faces a crucial pivot point. Mine came when I realized that building an author brand meant deciding who I was writing for.

The safe choice would have been to write something palatable, something that didn't challenge cultural taboos around mental health and therapy. But the market I needed to serve was the one suffering in silence across South Asian communities and beyond. It required radical honesty.

So my first brand decision was this: I would be the author who said what others couldn't and be honest about it. I identified a gap: readers needed something deeply personal yet practically applicable and relatable. They needed permission to hurt while being shown a path forward. More importantly, they needed someone who understood the cultural weight of staying silent about pain and societal expectations.

I also made a decision to write for two audiences simultaneously: those grieving and those supporting grievers. This doubled my potential market while filling another gap. Most grief books ignore the desperate supporters who want to help but fear saying the wrong thing. By addressing both, I created a book that could be gifted, recommended by therapists, and used in support groups, expanding distribution channels organically.

Location as Business Asset:

One of the most underestimated aspects is the environment. Dubai became my unexpected business partner.

As an expatriate in this multicultural hub, I had access to resources unavailable in more culturally homogeneous settings: diverse perspectives, mental health services without stigma, speaking events featuring global thought leaders, and a community that celebrated rather than silenced personal transformation. This city's culture of opportunity allowed me to test my message in real-time. I could gauge reactions across cultures and understand which aspects of my story had universal resonance versus which were specifically culturally rooted. Your location shapes your brand. For authors writing about culturally sensitive topics, being in an environment that embraces diverse narratives isn't just helpful, it's essential!

Turning Pain into Platform:

Building an author brand in the self-help space means your product is your pain. Your brand is built on the worst moments of your life, carefully packaged for public consumption.

This creates a unique challenge. How do you build a platform on vulnerability without becoming performatively broken?

My answer was "healing with intent", both as a philosophy in my book and as a business practice. I positioned myself not as someone still drowning in grief, but as someone who had done the work, carrying it forward and was now extending a hand to others.

Creation as Healing: The Unexpected Business Laboratory

Before I ever wrote a word of my book, I discovered another path through grief: creation itself.

During my darkest days, I launched a luxury candle venture, her in the UAE – called Glam Accents.

It wasn't a calculated business move, it was survival. Working with my hands, experimenting with scents, building something tangible from raw materials became deeply therapeutic. Creation offered an outlet. The process of transforming simple ingredients into something beautiful mirrored what I was trying to do with my own pain.

This venture taught me invaluable lessons that later shaped my author brand. I learned that healing doesn't have to look one way. It can be journaling, connections, therapy, or melting wax at 2 AM. I discovered that building something entrepreneurial while grieving wasn't distraction; it was integration. Most importantly, I understood viscerally that creation itself is healing.

This experience became foundational to my book's philosophy. When I write about "healing with intent" and taking active steps toward wholeness, I'm not speaking theoretically. I'm speaking from the experience of building something while rebuilding myself. The therapeutic effect of creation, whether crafting candles or crafting sentences, showed me that we heal by making, by doing, by transforming our pain into something that exists beyond ourselves.