Ep.12 Zamiha Desai | Building communities & being authentic

In this episode, I’m with Zamiha Desai, Director of RecommendAsian Ltd. Zamiha is the founder of The Facebook group RecommendAsian and Professional Asian. Today the group stands at 70,000 people on the ladies RecommendAsian group and 75,000 people on the ProfessionalAsian group. In 2016 Zamiha was working for the Argos Head Office and living a very ordinary life. A new management structure and subsequent redundancies left her miserable and dreading going to work. In April of that year Zamiha had started a Facebook group called RecommendAsian - it was 219 of her friends and she had been recommended a sari pleater that she thought was amazing and she wanted to share it with her friends. Not knowing how to do this, she created a group, Recommend Asian, which quickly grew. In this episode, we talk about how the group grew, starting as women only. We speak about losing passion and enjoyment in her work and how creating communities allowed her to regain it, the challenges of working from home (even before COVID) and staying productive and learning to charge for her time/business. Zamiha has some pillars when it comes to building communities online which she shares with me. With a real focus on authenticity which leads us onto the topic of her newer, more humorous group on Facebook which is also quickly gaining traction. To connect with Zamiha online, find her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/zam.des.3 And learn about Recommend Asian and Professional Asian here: https://www.facebook.com/recommendasian https://www.facebook.com/groups/ProfessionalAsian

Om Podcasten

Relight Your Fire; to fuel your passions and purpose and rejuvenate your fire for life. While this may sound like a mountain of a task, in reality, it takes a few actions and new ways of thinking compounded over days, weeks and years. In this series, we explore the minds, values and habits of high performing individuals to find what they do to relight their fire. We dive into their stories, how they got to where they are and most importantly, how they’ve stayed motivated, inspired and passionate. I hope you enjoy the podcasts. To get in touch with Anita about the show or any other queries, you can e-mail: [email protected] Relight your fire is hosted by Anita Goyal. Anita is the CEO and trustee of The Hemraj Goyal Foundation and the Hallmark Care homes foundation. Also serving as the Vice President of Barnardo’s, Patron of Binti International and an Ambassador of the Alzheimer’s Society. She is an award-winning philanthropist, community champion and author of Voices from Punjab and Voices from Gujarat. Anita’s passion for teaching led her to become a teacher in science and an Assistant Headteacher. She has completed her MA in Special and Inclusive Education in London and is pioneering personal development workshops in schools across the UK. She is passionate about making a difference and believes in doing everything with passion and purpose.