Meet Ruba Zahid | Business owner and Designer at The Dream Team Events USA

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ruba Zahid and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ruba, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
After facing some very challenging times during the pandemic in regards to my mental health, getting back to studying and seeing mental health patients started taking a big toll on me. But because i had gone through years of med school, medical licensing procedures and didn’t realize i had any other talents that i could turn into a business, I was adament in pursuing psychiatry as a career. It became very difficult to keep my calm and i broke down very often. I was in the process of discussing with my colleagues and superiors about taking a break and seeking medical help for my depression and anxiety when I threw a welcome home party for my dad after his near death experience with covid. It was a small picnic in a park. my family helped me plan it and clean it up. My sisters also encouraged me to just go ahead and make an account on instagram and start posting pictures. I followed their advice, desperate to get a break from my current circumstances, thinking nobody would ever notice, that it would make no difference.
But it blew up within a month. People actually wanted to pay for my services and believed I had some special talent. We (me and my sister) got our first paid event in a loss of $600 but we did it because we wanted to try our boundaries. That day while being nervous and not knowing what we were doing, we created magic. We couldn’t believe what we saw in front of us was actually real.
From then on, with the support of my family, friends and my husband, I decided to give this a try. I decided to use the name my sister already has back home for an event planning business, and add “USA” to it.
My brother did a logo for me with a “lotus flower” which is actually a “kanwal ka phool” in our language and is also the name of our eldest sister. It just sowly took off from there.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Oh boy! Thats a tough one. Like I told you earlier, i knew i wanted to do something creative. Even in med school I organized very big events for my school like medical conferences and stuff. I have always been a decent artist so I made a page where i could write and paint and share that joy with the world on instagram. I always thought I’ll be an atchitect or a marketing proffessonal if not a doctor. But it never occured to me how i would be an event planner/designer one day and would love it so much. untill ofcourse, it happened. it felt like fate. Like every single thing I had learned in life up to this point was to get me here. All the patience and tolerance and human understanding I learned in psych, helps me understand my clients needs better. my art allows me to visualize an event from the moment it’s explained to me and i can sketch it out for my clients and share my vision with them. etc etc.
But despite having all these skills I still lacked a business background and all I had was my hard work and motivation to keep me going further. It took a hell lot of hardwork, heat strokes, weeping spells, stressful days to finally get to where I now have a vague idea of what I am doing.
I am still learning. I learn every single day. I go through my feed on instagram, pinterest, etsy and get inspired by all the amazing people in the world. The event planning community has secretly/ unknowingly played such a vital part in my journey. I would research for hours if I had to prepare a prop or do an arrangement. and all these social media platforms became such a driving force for me. No wonder those reels that teach you something get you all these brownie points!

I am still in the very iitial stages of knowing what i am doing, still learning and still tryig my best to do something extraordinary. I am no where even close to where I want to be, but I know for a fact that all I have to do is believe in the process and work so hard that my amount of hard work eventually makes up for my years of inexperience or lack of a degree or lack of knowledge.

I don’t really have a brand story (as you can see) but I do now know anything is possible if you put some effort into it. Even if you fail, you will still get somewhere. And I guess I am a living proof of that. And because of that, i will never give up. Even if the road becomes hard and I get lost fpr a bit, I will never stop learning and working hard.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Haha My best friend did visit for a week the past month and here’s where I would definitely want every single person to go:

activities:
Andretti’s at grandscape
The ferris wheel at grandscape
The boardwalk
Kayaking/ paddle boarding at white rock paddle lake. we also did a picnic there.
The japanese tea gardens at Fortworth botanical gardens
The Dallas world Aquarium
We went to Rocky Ridge drive thru safari and had the best experience ever
There is a little pond at legacy in front of marriott. that iis a perfect spot for a walk
Watters creek in Allen is also a really good mall

Food:
The original pancake house next to the boardwalk. Do try their coffee maple banana creppe!
Legacy food hall: Whisk and eggs has the best brioche ice cream sandwich
Shawarma bar has an excellent collection of Mediterranean food

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My family and friends have been my support and cheerleaders since day one. My parents were aware that I never wanted to do medicine and always wanted something creative, but their better instincts told them to get me a legit MBBS degree first, which I completed and worked as a psychiatrist back home with, all while still secretely jumping at every creative outlet I could get. Nobody ever thought any of my talents was good enough to pursue. Ofcourse, we were comparing the most highly paid proffession Medicine, to every thing else in the world.
But once my parents saw the joy and happiness organizing events brought to me and slowly realized how good I was at it, they started supporting and defending me to others on my choices. That made a big difference in whatever little success I have so far.
my husband has been my rock in my entire journey though. He had believed in me and taken care of me in my low moments and encouraged me to never give up without trying. I owe it all to him! He always encouraged me to do whatever makes me happy and never put me under the pressure of continuing with medicine. I owe my life to him for that. He had been the only light in the darkest of times for me.

Website: www.dteventsusa.com

Instagram: _dtevents.usa

Facebook: The Dream Team Events USA

Yelp: The Dream Team Events USA