Sophia K. Choudry straddles a corporate career and simultaneously invented and successfully launched Rotibox! Sophia defines the necessity of flexibility to be able to put her family first. This fuels Sophia to give energy and vigour to every area of her life. She is a powerhouse and I’m loving her journey.

Sophia will return for an in-depth conversation sharing how being a misfit and a ‘third parent’ became her superpower! Sophia is a leader amongst leaders. Her entrepreneurial journey is filled with trials and victories that will have you at the edge of your seat. She is one to watch!

You can find Sophia at:

W: https://www.rotibox.co.uk/blog-dream-hope-230120

FB: www.facebook.com/rotiboxfficial

Insta: www.instagram.com/rotiboxofficial

[Roksana] My guest today has undergone the most extraordinary personal transformation. Just like me, my guest is from a British Pakistani family, and like many of us born into immigrant families, encountered the many challenges of straddling two cultures, two identities, and the daily challenges of feeling like an outsider. Today she has 1 foot in the corporate world holding down a successful career, and over the past four years she has invented, developed and launched a product successfully. She’s a mother to two young children, originally from the North East of England and now living in the South. Welcome Sophia!

[Sophia] Thank you for that wonderful introduction.

[Roksana] I just wanted to make sure that we capture every element of you.

[Sophia] Thank you very much.

[Roksana] Sophia I ask all of my guests one big question, and I’m just really interested. Now, for you, how have you defined success and satisfaction in your work and personal life?

[Sophia] For me, success and satisfaction it’s um… I think it’s actually a combination and let me explain that. With work, after you’ve had children everything changes you know so as you’ve mentioned before, I’m from the corporate world. I think I liked to see myself as a bit of a hot shot in the early days, but you know when you have a family everything changes… and for me now, satisfaction and success at work is actually mirrored through my family life. So let me explain what I mean by that.

[Roksana] Please do.

[Sophia] The number one thing for me work-related, whether you know it’s when I’m doing my corporate stuff or even when I’m doing my own business that you’ve just mentioned, is flexibility. I need to have flexibility in my life to be able to put my family first. That’s me personally. I know there’s a lot of women out there who are still doing amazingly in their careers and good on them, but like I said when I started my family everything changed… and you know early on I did suffer a lot of that you know mum guilt, especially when I had to go back to work after nine months, but I’ve been very, very fortunate that where I work, because I have been there a long time, that they are incredibly flexible and that obviously means I have a balanced life. So things like being able to drop the children off to school in the morning, picking them up on time, being able to even attend assemblies, all of that I don’t take for granted because I know there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t got flexible jobs. So for me, the flexibility, the work-life balance means that I can put my family first. Because of that, I’m satisfied and happy to do my work and I’m also satisfied and happy in my personal life as well, so I guess well, I guess what I’m trying to say is that success in my personal life that overtakes everything. Priorities have changed. Am I the most successful person at work? Probably not. Am I giving it 110% like I used to 10 years ago? I can definitely say no, but like I said things change and you’ve just got to make the best of what you’ve gotten and decide what priorities are important to you.

[Roksana] I think so many women are gonna hear what you’re saying and completely draw a parallel there because being in position to be able to have a choice to re-prioritise your life I think is a big measure of success for many women, especially working women- especially women who have a corporate career where they have a boss to answer to. Sophie I’d love to know a little bit more about how you define personal satisfaction.

[Sophia] January the 17th I finally launched my own business which was the product that I created that you’ve mentioned before, which was RotiBox, and ever since then you know my life has changed. When I’m working on that project which is my passion, you know sometimes I’ll be up til 3 in the morning, and it’s amazing because you know if you’ve gotta write a report for work gets to 10:00 PM and you can’t open your eyes or even if you sit and watching a movie, you know I’ll probably get through the first 20 minutes and then sometimes I fall asleep on the sofa… but working on this project, on my passion, honestly I could work around the clock because I absolutely love it. And I was trying to figure out you know what is it about this that keeps you going, and I had to like break it down. You know, first of all I love what I’m doing, you know my mission was to kind of make the lives of women easier and also to you know inspire other women that you know, anything is possible you know you can do whatever you set your mind to… so now when I’m going to sleep at night I’m just honestly, I’m having trouble sleeping because I’m so buzzing. And it doesn’t mean I had some particular achievement on the day, or you know some amazing success happened, I’m just very, very content and happy with the work that I’m doing now and I’m hoping eventually I’ll be able to invest all my time in this full time and so yeah… just feeling very content and to be honest little bit of disbelief, you know I can’t believe that I actually got here… you know cos it’s taken such a long time but I don’t know… does that answer your question?

[Roksana] It does, it really does, yeah. Absolutely. I think what I’m hearing from you is that you found something that you’re super passionate about, it’s making a difference to other people’s lives and because you’re growing as you’re establishing your business, that passion is intrinsic, it’s inside you and it’s keeping you excited and enthusiastic, and I think that is amazing and that is that sort of intri- so I always think of satisfaction as an intrinsic feeling, like only you know when you feel satisfied, no one else can define that for you. Whereas success is more of a metric that you can measure, like you can compare your income to other people, or you can compare your social circle or your professional network to other people and kind of see where you are, and gauge where you are… whereas this feeling of satisfaction is intrinsic, it’s within you, and it’s- it comes from this deep sense of knowing that you’re doing what you want to be doing. Your heart and your mind are collaborating and you’re not like- there’s no pull or push, it’s just a beautiful flow.

[Sophia] Absolutely, absolutely, and obviously you know that that affects you personally as well. You know the kids have noticed mum is always a bit more energetic and excited, and so yeah I mean it definitely has a knock on effect in every area of your life.

[Roksana] That’s amazing, thank you so much, that’s a brilliant answer, Sophia, thank you.

[Sophia] Welcome.