Leesha Agarwal is the founder and owner of Adah by Leesha. It's a zero-waste clothing brand that she started around five years ago.

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It's an online e-commerce brand, and apart from that, she also has a full-time marketing job 👩‍💻

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What is your morning routine like?

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My routine was very different a few years ago when I was a full-time founder, and that's all I did because I used to always wake up with like 100 things to do in my head. 

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It would be more like wake-up and just opening my laptop and starting my work, but I put effort into changing my morning routine since I've shifted to Bangalore. 

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I've started waking up early. I'm a 7 AM person now. I take my morning slowly 🌞

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I go and sit on my balcony, soak in the sun, chill with my cat, have breakfast, and think about what all I have to do and not just directly get into it  🐱

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What do you do in the evenings?

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I've been very interested in cooking recently, so evenings usually go, “What is something that I can cook that is healthy but also exciting and fun to eat?” 🥗

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So that is one thing that is constant throughout my evenings. Apart from that, the one thing that I try to keep constant is, do something different. 

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Just doing a different activity or meeting someone fun and just really unwinding and not doing anything related to work 🚲

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After my job gets over, I give a couple of hours to Adha, and then after that, anything I do has nothing related to work.

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How do you manage your workload?

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I think being disciplined and maintaining a schedule sounds very hustling, but that's really not what I'm about. 

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I like having a to-do list, and putting things in a calendar really helps, and it actually excites me.

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I love taking things off my To Do List 📆

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How do you Identify areas to improve?

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With Adah, it's easier because wherever I go wrong, the repercussion is felt by me. I handle all things about the brand.

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If the marketing campaign goes wrong, I can see the effect on sales. An order goes wrong, a product is not well made, there is customer feedback instantly ✍

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I don't even have to identify it. It comes very quickly to me. 

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In terms of my job areas to improve, I think it constantly comes from the fact that I realize I don't know certain things, and there are certain things that you're very confident about what you're doing.

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 So wherever I'm underconfident, that's an area of improvement  💪

What do you do for your mental health?

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A cat does help a lot. Any pet, actually 🦮

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Apart from that, I think I used to go to therapy. I haven't been very consistent. I'm not very proud of that.

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I think just really putting a hard stop to my working hours and giving time to myself and the whole morning routine that I've set for myself.

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So doing all of these smaller steps for my mental health, and I also started journaling but will start therapy soon 🥰

Any advice for entrepreneurs and team leaders?

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Nowadays, startups are being built where everyone wants to grow super fast.

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It's important to take care of your employees because if you don’t, it's going to crash and burn 🔥

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There is a clear prioritisation that has been happening in startups that I have been seeing in Bangalore, where they do prioritise mental health, and even a lot of companies pay for therapy and give you time off. 

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Founders have become more empathetic 😄

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I feel like we are shifting there, and entrepreneurs who don't believe in it will see the repercussions in the team's performance.

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It's a very non-measurable impact, but it is a very heavy impact.

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Thank you 🧡