Born and brought up in Karnal, Nancy Katyal had a blissful childhood.
“I have wonderful memories from my growing-up years. I was very fond of music and my mother says that I often used to sleep to the sound of music. My parents always emphasized spending time with friends and family rather than TV. We loved to travel and that helped a lot in bringing discipline and confidence in me. I think the main difference between my growing-up years and today’s children is the amount of influence television have in our day to day lives,” Nancy says.
Nancy started her career with ICICI Prudential life insurance as a Branch Customer Service Executive and then went on to work with a few other firms. During her corporate stint, she realized that when it comes to making customers happy and ringing in the sales – quality work and perfection matters.
Founding Her Startup
“Like life, perfection is a journey. I believe we all have one life and we all can make the most of it by ensuring every day we become a better version of ourselves. In most of my jobs, I have been interacting with the end customers and found out that they all value perfection. Your internal customers sometimes will compromise on quality but external customers want the best quality and behaviors displayed by the employees. I realized that knowledge and skills can help us to get a job or keep it. However, it’s our attitude in life, the right life skills that help us to achieve our goals. With this belief I started my venture, The Perfect You, where we empower people through our training programs and one on one coaching to be their best version”, she says.
Nancy is the CEO and the Lead Image Consultant at The Perfect You. She is an Image consultant, Storyteller, and Soft Skills Advocate. Nancy strongly believes that in today’s fast-paced world of instant communications, it is important that people are aware of the image and the message they sent – whether at home, attending a parent-teacher meeting, a wedding function or communicating at work.
Challenges
Surprisingly my age and my gender were the biggest challenges. In training and facilitation, many people told me that I don’t have the experience or I was too fragile to handle senior or middle-level management and they were of the belief that only if I had white hair or number of years backing me could I be the best fit.
I never relented to this pressure and kept looking for work wherever it came from as I knew once people saw my work they would not emphasize that much weight on experience.
I am so thankful for the first set of assignments that came in. My initial piece of work assignment was with The Future group. This and many others that came in, I am so thankful to them who trusted me. I see times are rapidly changing and age is hardly a challenge now and I am so happy to see that with colleagues younger than me are getting good work and in many places are doing much better than experienced folks.
Learning from Failures
We all face challenges and I think they only make us more strong and help us make better decisions in future. I have misjudged the role of some people and assignments and the time I invested in them. I used to take people at their face value, however, a big lesson learned was we should take our time and should be cautious while selecting our friends and assignments where we invest our time and efforts.
As they say “All that glitters is not gold”. Your circle of friends has a great impact on what you ultimately become in life, a positive circle motivates you to aim high, think good and become successful.
On Encouraging girls to go after their dreams
I love the quote – “Future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. I came from a small town called Karnal, and after marriage moved to a metro city called Gurgaon, where people were very smart and intelligent. I fell under complex initially and I was unsure if I could fit in or not with them. My husband, Vikas noticed it and encouraged me to be my own authentic self. I remember him telling me about my qualities and not compromise or get influenced by the glitterati of people who pretend to be more intelligent. I think you need people in your lives who will encourage and love you for who you are.
You need the right set of friends and if you have your family support then the sky is the limit for you. Never hesitate to seek help, I have met some wonderful people in my journey who have helped, mentored and supported me in achieving my dreams and making me a better version of myself. At the same time, I respect people who walked out of a relationship and took a stand when they were being harassed, tortured and were not getting that support from their partner. Girls should become stronger in my view in that regard.
Life Lessons
Be kind to people, every person carries their own baggage and hence don’t be judgemental because many people you believe to be rich are not rich.. and many people you think have it easy, worked hard for what they have got, however, DON’T allow anyone to take your kindness as your weakness. We don’t have to act small, just move away from anything that takes away your peace of mind. Life is too short to be spent in wasting time on smaller issues. Spread more love and happiness.
Treat Everyone As Equals
I was facilitating a program on interpersonal skills with employees of a company. There was this guy who was the head of the department and not letting others speak and trying to draw all the attention. I set an example very subtly in front of him through a role-play activity with participants by showing how collective partnership and participation is the best way to get the job done. I think that person was a changed man and thanked me for the lesson after the session. I believe that you should not let anyone’s designation, experience, status or power influence you.
This incident has stayed with me till date and I implement this learning in each of my programs when needed. “Treat everyone as equals”.
On her Biggest Achievement
I think as a facilitator or corporate trainer, my biggest achievement is when I see my participants become trainers. I always believe if you want to be a great leader then one should create more leaders and not just followers .. Awards and recognitions definitely motivate us to aim big. One of my fond memory is when I received “Lokmat Sakhi Sanman” award for my contribution to the Education sector.
Image Management Tips
Be authentic, be who you are.
Develop a personal brand through your words, clothes and body language. They define you more than you know.
Actualize yourself and your image will follow. Too many focus on just actualizing their image without any focus on self.
Have people around who see the good in you.
Nancy wants to scale up and hire like-minded people who are passionate about making a positive change in people’s lives. I welcome people who would like to reach out and work with me so that we can create something unique for people around us.
