We recently connected with Nida Haque and have shared our conversation below.

Nida, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Every person may have a different opinion on this subject. Personally, I believe honesty, staying true to what one believes in and perseverance can take you a long way. Showing up on days you feel like quitting, standing up for the truth even if the world is against you and believing in yourself no matter how many times you fail is a challenging but sure shot pathway to success.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

This may or may not be a favorite question haha I have said before as well, I consider myself a simple, humble girl next door who has a passion to spread happiness through chocolate!

I have been living in the US since 16 years now, originally from Pakistan. Back home, I had completed medical school and internship and was aspiring to become a surgeon. While we plan many things in life, God has His own plans and they have always proven to be better.
I moved to Atlanta, became mom to two beautiful children and life just revolved around raising them.
The fire within never died. The urge to do something, be creative and use my imagination. Now that my children were not babies anymore, I just started playing around in my kitchen and JustChocol8 was born.
I work mainly with chocolate and started out making hot cocoa bombs but as trends changed, I added more treats and learned more techniques. I offer chocolate dipped sweets and treats, cake pops, cupcakes etc for all major holidays as well offer custom themes for birthdays, showers and other events. My special area of interest is creating luxe style gifts so packaging plays an important role. Around the holidays, I offer a wide variety of gift options for friends, family, co workers, teachers, neighbors, even corporate gifts.
My work ethics is very simple, I do not complicate things. I communicate with my customers directly and in details and do my best to bring their ideas to life.

I take pride in my dedication to providing quality products. All my ingredients are carefully sourced, are kosher and halal and purchased from the best places. My customers definitely notice the quality and finesse of my work. I spend careful time decorating each piece by hand.
I most certainly believe in quality over quantity and pretty much all my customers are repeat customers and so many have become friends too!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

This is a lesson I am still unlearning. My advice to others just starting out will also be the same. Please believe in yourself first and then present your work to the audience. My biggest challenge has been and still remains customers who would try to bring your price down. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight this issue today. When you purchase a product or a service from any artist, you are not paying for the value of that particular product or service. You are paying for the value of their art, their talent, their expertise! They have taken the time to perfect their craft, they have shed tears and wiped sweat off their brows, their families have made sacrifices when they were struggling in their learning phases. So what you see today, hides behind itself a long journey of learning.
I humbly request everyone to respect your artist/creator, their talent and time.

In the quest to be “successful” , many of us overlook the above and set our prices so low just to earn more sales. It hurts other small businesses around as well.
So, know your worth and then present your work. Every customer is not for you.

How did you build your audience on social media?

This is a fun story! When starting out, I reached out to a few influencers both local and on national level. The ones on national level never bothered to respond but a few very sweet local ones replied. Two of them became dear friends and posted my work on their stories and that’s how I gained more followers and more business. I will always be grateful for their support and kindness.
Megan from @all_things_alpharetta on Instagram as well as Ikela @foodie_sob

Here’s another interesting story.
I had a customer who ordered kashmiri chai bombs and gifted to her sister who was visiting Atlanta. I was vacationing in Florida with my children and didn’t see my phone all day. Later that night, I saw my Instagram page had nearly 700 new followers and hundreds of messages. I realized a very famous Instagram and tiktok influencer with millions of followers who happens to be a dermatologist has posted on his stories when he made a kashmiri chai bomb and tagged me. I messaged him and asked that I don’t remember him ordering from me to which he replied saying his wife’s sister lives near my home and they tried one of my chai bombs and loved it!
It’s amazing when you want to do something in life, the entire universe will conspire to help you achieve that! I read that in a book and it’s so true.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/justchocol8
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090110073701&mibextid=LQQJ4d

Image Credits
All photos were taken by me on my iphone