No. 1 – A Note From Naly

Hello, it’s lovely to meet you. My name is Naly Rice and this is my new website called, Notes by Naly. Thank you for joining me here as I write about an eclectic variety of topics that are currently on my mind including business, art, technology, books, cooking, travel, and more.

Get To Know Me

For the last 17 years, I’ve spent my career in marketing technology within electric vehicle charging, cloud hosting, data centers, software, and digital. I’m deeply grateful for my early start working in a technology incubator as an original employee for a VC funded Electric Vehicle Charging Station company. 

I learned so much rolling up my sleeves and working at the startup and incubator in 2010, before the first mass market Chevy Volt hit the market. I was mentored by a cohort of entrepreneurs and discovered the startup spirit within me that continues to this day. I later transitioned to an Inc. 5000 cloud company with a 100 person staff as Director of Marketing reporting to the CEO and COO. It was a challenging and rewarding experience scaling a business, compared to starting up. Both companies have been acquired.

For the last 10 years, I’ve run a boutique marketing technology services provider company and consultancy called Altairzen. It’s a combination of the words “Altair” and “zen.” It’s been filled with so many lessons and silver linings. I’m thankful to our clients in technology, healthcare, clean energy, nonprofits, and more. 

Applying the startup and scaling lessons has helped me throughout my career and into entrepreneurship. I plan to share what has worked for me to help more people startup, scale, and/or start a side hustle on your passions.

Owning a business has been a dream come true from my humble roots as a first-born generation Hmong-American. A business mentor inspired me to write and share what I’ve learned. I’ll write about my experiences in business, sharing strategies, startups, insights, funding, education, resources, and more on here.

I’ve been fortunate to share my journey in entrepreneurship at a handful of business and women’s events. Sharing my journey to entrepreneurship and mentoring entrepreneurs around the world, I discovered my voice and purpose.  

I’m passionate about uplifting and empowering more people to become entrepreneurs no matter their social, cultural, or economic barriers.

At the start of COVID, I challenged myself to write one poem a week and publish it on social media for one year. That experience was quite interesting and I was thankful to read my original poem, “The Grind,” on A Moment Of Your Time podcast to kick off Women’s History Month in 2021.

In the last couple of years, I’ve pivoted to personal passions and writing creatively within poetry, short stories, and a novel in progress.

During COVID, my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and I started writing everyday. Her diagnosis made me realize how much I enjoy writing and how much I needed to write again. Not just writing about technical papers, press releases, marketing, and advertising copy. 

I want to write and test my pen more. Challenge myself to get out of my comfort circle with reading and writing. Be a student of life and learn freely.

I discovered a writing community on Twitter and began challenging myself with writing everyday. It’s been a good place to share and get to know more writers. Over the course of time, I discovered Substack through other tweeters and here I am.

I’m looking forward to meeting more people on Substack and learning from you.

What To Expect

Making Substack my “headquarters” for Notes by Naly was an intentional choice after doing research. I’ve enjoyed reading on here, the ease-of-use, monetization options, and thoughtful community of writers and readers.

I’ve moved my humble email list of 208 subscribers to Substack and look forward to writing more in 2023!

It took me a while to begin my Substack because I wasn’t sure what to write about. 

I’m interested in a wide variety of topics and I couldn’t choose. Writing only about business felt bland and writing poetry has been a great outlet but limited. I also love to cook, travel, and read so I wanted to incorporate that too. I enjoy reading and writing on an eclectic mix of topics which include:

• Business & Entrepreneurship
• Books
• Cooking
• Graphic Design
• Poetry & Short Stories
• Life
• Travel
• More…

So I decided to just bite the bullet and begin. I’m sure this list will get longer as I write and read more on here.

Future Paid Subscription

Writing and publishing has changed so much and I’ve learned a thing or two writing professionally and creatively over the years. I’ve read countless books, attended writing conferences, spoken with agents, and reviewed writing contracts. I’ve also hired writers professionally while working in marketing technology.

I’ll share more of my experiences navigating the writing/publishing world and methods that I have, and will try. I chose Substack because of its ease-of-use and monetization options.

Notes by Naly will be monetized at a later date. For now, I’m looking forward to writing more and exploring the Substack world. Thank you for reading and subscribing!

Cheers,

N.

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