Entrepreneurship & Creativity

Naakai is a professional writer with a background in digital marketing and copywriting, who initially started as a food writer several years ago, and soon expanded into the world of fashion and lifestyle. As a client of MVN Intl. Group by Maritta Viola, who has reached success through the MVN business strategy, she expresses her idea for her creative work.

Raised in Southern California, she felt more introverted than her peers and always gravitated towards creative outlets like drawing, dance, theatre, music, and writing as means of self-expression. The eccentricity driven by her creative and colorful mind led Naakai to a lifelong sense of adventure.

She began to utilize her desire to travel and explore the world as fuel for her writing. Naakai is a fascinating young woman with a gift for creative writing and a dream to convey her message: Creativity is a means for connection, which we are all drawn to. Naakai expresses this goal passionately, saying: “My focus is to help people understand each other through art”.

With this in mind, Naakai continued to find herself and where she belonged, which led her to New York City, the city where dreams come true and creativity never sleeps. Naakai soon realized that New York City had so much to offer and seemingly unlimited hidden spots to explore, which continues to spark her writing.

Instead of having one spot to go to when in writing mode, she chooses different spots whenever possible. As she had learned in drawing classes back in school, for every one second that you draw, you should take 10 seconds to look and observe. Naakai has transferred this learned behavior into her writing and uses observation and travels as the main source for her work.

Naakai draws her inspiration from no other place but her internal need to write--one may call it her soul. The beauty of art is that it comes from within; an internal message let go into the world and to be interpreted by the viewer.

Naakai believes that everything she does and experiences informs her work, so she finds inspiration in many things in life. She enjoys testing the waters beyond her comfort zone and living her life “off the beaten path” to satisfy her desire to see what else life and the world have to offer. This path gives her the intellectual and creative engagement she needs to put her inner drive on paper.

With all of this writing passion engraved into Naakai’s heart and soul, she uses humor as a source of motivation. Life certainly presents many challenges, and some of them can feel insurmountable. Thus, Naakai states: “Finding the humor or even just small moments of joy in difficult times keeps me going”.

She motivates herself by focusing on this fact as she goes through sad or worrisome times and she reminds herself, that “one day, she will find at least one aspect of this situation absolutely hilarious”. With this thought in her mind, she is able to cope with challenges with a sense of humor.

Another factor that has consistently carried Naakai through tough times is indeed Art.

--If YOU aspire to be a writer or involved in creative artful expression, continue reading because this is for you to hear.--

Naakai believes that art is a medium for communication and despite the fact that there may be a large physical distance between artist and audience, the art lives on and reaches far beyond the physical capabilities of the artist’s range. Naakai’s reason to stay motivated and keep going no matter what is embedded in the desire to offer this same motivation to others who have not found their confidence in following their inner creative desire yet.

As an aspiring artist, we all know that the creative world can be a financial struggle at times and we rely on a steady material income to continue the socially expected way of mainstream life.

Many writers amongst the artists cannot make the bulk of their income writing only about things they are passionate about. Sometimes people stop writing altogether because they have had to take a day job they weren’t crazy about, and they feel like their job title is their identity. Oftentimes, not embracing your inner creative self will cause a level of discomfort, which may be reflected on other outlets.

However, if you want to be a writer, an artist, find what makes you happy and embrace it. Utilize your day job to fuel you up for the after-hour writing period. Do not give up your dream just because it may seem off mainstream; strive for the goal and keep in mind that “everything you experience is something you can use”.

Keep the communication going, and embrace the artist inside of you. Naakai herself came from a background where writing was not considered a legitimate career path. Because of that, she didn’t receive a lot of encouragement from the people whose approval she really craved, and for a long time she would not even show her writing to anyone, but that did not make her feel fulfilled.

Naakai soon learned for herself, that writing was completely essential to her overall sense of purpose and wellbeing. The more she kept at it, the more confidence she developed.

Finally, Naakai shares her biggest highlights from her career thus far. As food writer, Naakai had the opportunity to meet some of the most talented chefs in New York. She always admired that chefs are incredibly hard-working people who have to excel both at precision and creativity.

In addition, Naakai made it to the point where she sees her very own work as articles in print. “Having an article in print in a fashion magazine was another personal milestone” she states. Naakai wants to further reach her audience via online publications as well as the traditional print style.

She is currently working closely with Viral Fashion Magazine, which has a print and digital presence, as well as the Fifty is the New Fifty, a great website made for an underrepresented audience. Furthermore, she does copywriting, editing and content production for different brands, and she is working on a few personal creative projects such as a book and a blog. In her free time, Naakai also enjoys renting studio space to choreograph dances.

In the future, Naakai is passionate about traveling to many more countries and places, and using this travel to talk to people about what shapes their values and beliefs. She looks forward to finding a creative way to collate and share that information so that people can feel a little bit more empathy toward each other. As Naakai expresses, “One of my professional role models is Anthony Bourdain, because he has found a way to do just that using his own area of expertise as a way to highlight people’s humanity.”

In following the adventurous example of creative innovators like Bourdain, Naakai stands by her focus to use her gift as creative writer “to help people understand each other.”