Meher Bala is a WordPress freelancer from Mumbai, India. She has been working with WordPress for 11 years. She is a foodie by heart and loves to travel.

Website | Meher Bala

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives. And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 66.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Meher Bala. Meher is a WordPress freelancer from Mumbai, India. She has been working with WordPress for 11 years. She is a foodie by heart and loves to travel. Hi, Meher, how are you?

Meher: Hi, Liam. Hi, Tara.

Tara: Hi.

Meher: It’s so nice to meet you finally.

Tara: You too, thanks for joining us here today, Meher. We’re really, really pleased to have you. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Meher: Thank you for the opportunity firstly. I live in Mumbai, India with my family. I’ve been working since past 11 years and approximately nine and a half in WordPress. I started my first day of my career in WordPress, continued for almost one week, after that was shifted to another CMS for approximately a year or so, and was battling to ever come back to WordPress. My boss was pushing, “Let’s build a site in WordPress. Let’s build a site in WordPress.” And I was hesitating because I was so used to the other CMS. Finally, I took the plunge and now I’m here, I don’t look at any other CMS except WordPress. It’s fun.

Tara: That’s great. Yeah, we’re glad to have you in WordPress. Can you let us know where you work? Do you work for yourself? Do you work for someone else?

Meher: For the past nine years, I worked for someone else. I was working in a company. Then I was bored of a nine to five job and I was n’t getting too many WordPress opportunities. My company had gone into social media and digital marketing so there was hardly any WordPress projects. Then I said, “Let’s go into freelancing.” And my family stood by me so after that, I’m full-time a freelancer. Currently, I take on clients as well as work with an agency who gives clients and I do the development.

Liam: I was going to ask you about that because in the intro, I said you worked with WordPress for 11 years and then, not uncommonly, I got it wrong. You clarified that. Thank you. What are you doing within WordPress? You said you work in development. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Meher: Development as in integration mostly. Develop e-commerce sites, develop– if the client already has a ready design, I implement the design to the website. I’ll create a design from scratch. Usually, I have a person who backs up with the design but if he is busy, then I take on the design. That’s pretty much it.

Tara: Tell us a little bit how you even got started in computers and your background. Did you study computers in school or how did you find yourself even in the text space, and what that’s like, also I’m curious to know, in India?

Meher: I own a text space thankfully because of my father. I am dyslexic so I was kind of forced to take computers intent because that was not an option for me. I started liking it, I started developing interest in the internet and how it works and stuff. My father saw that interest and enrolled me in a three-year computer program. So with my three-year computer programming, and once I finished college, I had to do another one more year of computer program because in my final year, I stopped because my timings were clashing. Once I finished both, I got onto my job.

Tara: That’s interesting. You mentioned that you have dyslexia. Is computer programming or using computers make it easier for you to read and comprehend, because you don’t have to write? Tell me a little bit about what the relationship is between your choice to go into computers and your dyslexia?

Meher: When I was a kid, I used a lot of answers and all my answers were pretty decent. But when you put it on a paper, somehow it needs to come out. But when I was introduced to a computer, it almost started teaching me how to write, how to correct my spellings, how to work on myself. That’s how my computers and dyslexia kind of blends.

Liam: That’s really interesting. The tools of the computer, the spell checks, and the like that come with the applications were a great tool for you?

Meher: That was a lot of help. And also, my teachers have had backed me up a lot. They forced me to look at ways to help my growth instead of just thinking with the problem. They thought it’s how I can improve myself in learning, how I can improve my spelling, how I can become better. And don’t be defeated just because you have this. There are millions out there who have it and who are most successful. Don’t lose heart. Yes, some people will treat you differently, but then that’s life.

Liam: Indeed. Let me ask you, you said your father signed you up for a three-year course. That sounds like you were happy for that and not, “Hey, guess what? I’m signing you up, you’ve got three years to work on this.”

Meher: In the starting, I was happy. I didn’t know I was doing a three-year course. I just knew I was doing a one-month course. [laughter] My result of a one-month course was excellent, so my teacher who was teaching me, she literally drilled in my father like, “No, do a three-year, do a three-year.” When I was sitting on the table in the meeting, I was like, “Why three years? My college is there. I will not be able to have fun in college.” But I don’t regret it. I had my fun in my college, I had fun in the classes. I learned a lot. I’ve got a better exposure.

Tara: Tell me a little bit, Meher, because I was introduced to you because you are involved in Women Who WordPress, and the community that you have there. I don’t know if it’s just in Mumbai or if it’s in other regions around Mumbai and India. Can you talk a little bit about a being a woman in tech and being a woman in tech in your country?

Meher: Currently, I’m running a Facebook group called ‘Indian Women Who WordPress’, so it’s not related to only a state or city, it’s the entire country. Because there are a lot of women out there who are hesitant to come for meetups. I’ve always been saying that why are women hesitant to come for meetups or WordCamp? Why is only when a company forces you or only limits it in your own city, you’re thinking whether you should go or whether you should not go? When I started my career, I’ve been about WordCamps, I’ve been about meetups. It was after several years, almost seven and a half to eight years, when I was going through Facebook. I saw this event, something called WordCamp. That’s what led me to the meetup group, and I just realized I just missed it by a bit. That’s how it led me to become a part of the group. But I still enjoyed the meetup instantly. It took me another few months to join the meetup because the topics were not of my liking, it was a little too high for me. All my timings were clashing. I took a chance with one meetup and went and there were only two women with me, me and one more female. We were like, “Okay, is there any other woman around?” And I kind of left that meetup halfway. I didn’t know who to talk to. Gradually, as I started attending meetups, I got more involved, I got into the community more. That way, I became a part of the WordPress movement chapter. Then when Bridget and Jen spoke to me, when Bridget had said that, “You want to get interviewed?” And I thought for 10 days should I interview or should I not. I have never done this. I was scared to take up the interview. What questions are going to be asked? What am I supposed to answer? Why does the interview finish? Then I came to Women Who WordPress, and then few months later, in WordCamp Nagpur, someone was speaking to me], “You should start a Women in WordPress India chapter.” Then I started a group, because the best way right now is a Facebook group because not many people use Slack, especially the non-developers, the designers or just simple users. In that group, it was like– no one was asking questions. I had to get a lot of questions from them, I had to ask them, “What are the topics you all want? What are the issues you all are facing?” It just got silent. So at the start of this year, we, as a group, decided, “Let’s do monthly webinars.” This will help, if someone wants to speak up, you do a webinar because you are live in front of 10 people. Speak, speak confidently, do one thing, do three things. You’re not going officially live, but speak, gain confidence and developer skills, and then you can speak at any WordCamp. One of my main reasons to start a webinar was because it increases everyone’s attention in the group. Enhance people to speak and also helped me to speak. I can get a little confidence of applying as speaker.

Tara: That’s very smart.

Liam: Yeah, that’s a good approach and it’s not a small amount of work that you’re taking on. Starting a Facebook group is what, 15-20 minutes, but it’s the time and energy to build a community through that portal and to ask questions and encourage people to have questions and to think about different ways that the community, as varied as it is geographically, and culturally, and technologically, where they’re at in the WordPress technology level. All of that can be a real challenge and it sounds like you’re putting a lot of time and energy into that. It’s starting to become a success for you and for the group.

Meher: It will become a success when people, non-speakers, come in the group dual presentation and then become speakers. I am waiting for that. Hopefully, I’ll get there.

Liam: It will come. Speaking of success, let me ask you one of our signature questions here. how do you define success in a personal or professional way, or maybe both? What’s your definition of success?

Meher: For me, the professional way, success– everyone talks about everyone in a negative way to each other. But when someone talks about you in a positive way and encourages the opposite person to go and meet you or go and interact with you, or just says positive things about you when you have done for the community what you are doing and how that person can help me, or how I can help that person in improving their skills. And I’ve been told by social media that you’ve been mentioned, it’s kind of a different feeling because that’s how I realized that whatever I’m doing, yes, people are watching. To me, that is success because at some point, everyone does everything, everyone notices it. There are very few people who notice people’s work and appreciate the work they’re doing. When I have been told that you’ve been mentioned here, I was like, “Okay, where can I see?” That’s success to me in professional terms.

Liam: So it’s really the acknowledgment and maybe a feedback a little bit, if you will, that the work that you’re doing is proving valuable to a wider community. It’s not, “Hey, I really like what I built.” But people are getting value on it, people are appreciative of it, not from an ego standpoint but, yeah, “The work I’m doing is making the world a better place in some way.”

Meher: Right. And also, once someone talks to a female that and there is another female who’s working that much hard, who is growing the community– other women can take interest, can come forward to build a community, help their own cities to organize WordCamps or to create meetups. Because there are a lot of women in the WordPress community, but very few on the front light.

Tara: How is it for you? You’ve mentioned, can you tell us a little bit about your work/life balance and your family? You mentioned that you have a family there. Do you work from home? Do you go to an office every day? How does that fit in in terms of balancing what you’re doing professionally and personally in your life?

Meher: I work from home. I used to work from Starbucks. Now, I’m currently working with a colleague because when I was working at home, it was fun with family but then there was no one to talk to if you are faced with a problem on your website. There was no way to get quick solutions. And at the time, I was missing the office environment of interacting with people. Though being a freelancer, the office alignment is never going to be there. One of my colleagues from the community said, “I have a vacant seat. Just come in the office and do your work.” Currently, I am with one of my friends. I come to office daily. It’s fun, it’s interactive. It helps me learn more about WordPress and what are the new skills that I need to develop.

Tara: Tell us a little bit about your hobbies? You mentioned when we introduced you that you are a foodie and you love to travel. Where are some places that you’ve traveled to and what kind of food do you love?

Meher: My traveling hobbies come because of WordCamps.

Liam: Nice.

Meher: From the time I came to know WordCamps, I have been traveling to a lot of places. One is Udaipur, one is Nagpur. Recently, I have stopped traveling but I will get back to it. I am a Farsi love food and especially non-vegetative, non-veg. In that term, yes, I am an extreme foodie. I have a food Instagram profile also.

Tara: Oh. Do you like to cook?

Meher: Not really.

Tara: Okay. [laughter]

Meher: But if I’m forced to, yes, I can make dishes, not extremely high-quality, but I can make where I can satisfy my hunger.

Tara: That’s great. I also love food and I used to cook a lot and now I find it a lot more enjoyable when I don’t, for the most part. And I love Indian food, too.

Liam: Yeah, I love Indian food, too, and I like cooking. I need to learn how to cook Indian food from scratch. Right now, my Indian food is, go to the Indian grocery store and get the jar of sauce and go from there. I’m excited to try that.

Tara: I have to throw in a little pitch for an Indian cooking lesson at the end of the movie, ‘Bend it Like Beckham’. Have you ever seen that movie?

Meher: Yes.

Tara: At the end of the DVD version of it, she has a cooking lesson with– the director has a cooking lesson with her grandmother or her aunt, and her mother teaching her how to make Aloo Gobi, and it’s wonderful. Liam, if you want to learn how to make Aloo Gobi, watch ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ and go past the end to one of the special features, it’s great.

Liam: I’ll have to get it on the DVD. [laughs]

Meher: Liam, I’ll invite you to India, come. But I’ll treat you, my family would treat you.

Liam: Oh, I would love that. I had a few opportunities to go and just life intervened. A good friend of mine that I met in London is Indian and he keeps saying we should go over together. He still lives in the UK. My brother spent six months there on a work project and constantly tells us wonderful stories about it. I would like that very much. I’ll have to make a WordCamp out of it, which ties into the question I was going to ask you actually. You’ve talked about your work in supporting women to speak, to give tech talks, to speak to the community about what they know, and I wonder if you can share with us, have you spoken at a WordCamp, and if so, that first one, what was that like? And what specifically did you do to make that happen, kind of psychologically and emotionally? How did you gear yourself up for that? Because you’ve mentioned that a lot of people are stressed about it and I wonder if– like me, I still get stressed about it. So I wonder what you did to get over that hill?

Meher: I am official but I handled the group discussion locally. That was my first last year. I was nervous for it, I was pretty nervous. I did organize a couple of questions with my panelists. We did go through it once before the camp. One the day itself, I was just going through questions, I was just narrating how to face everyone. When on-stage, I think my fear just went away. It’s all in the mind that you can’t face a crowd. I had a good audience. I was surprised that I didn’t have an audience because there were three tracks and I really wanted to attend the other one. But I was surprised of the amount of people attending my session. It was fun. I enjoyed my session, I am sure the audience also did. And my colleagues also enjoyed answering questions that I was throwing at them. I did throw a couple of questions to the audience. Hopefully, coming soon I’m thinking of applying at a WordCamp, which I’ll solely speak.

Tara: Yeah, maybe you can come to the US and speak it at a WordCamp. [laughs] We’d love to have you here.

Meher: For personal reasons, because of family emergency, I couldn’t come for the Europe thing. Maybe next year.

Tara: Yeah, family always comes first.

Liam: Indeed.

Tara: I’d like to ask you our other signature question and that’s about advice. And especially as you start to do more speaking at WordCamps and Meetups and you think about your journey into your career. Can you share with us some advice that you’ve received? We like to say the best advice that you’ve received, that you’ve implemented in your life?

Meher: The advice which I had got from my school teacher to my seniors is that you work hard and success will automatically follow. If you run for success and if you fail, you’re going to get dishearted. So keep a small portion thinking that if it doesn’t go true, then what? Because not everything leads to success, there is always a balance of success and failures in life. And my friend says it’s work hard and party harder.

Tara: [laughs] I like that.

Liam: But I think, to go a little seriously on the advice there, slow and steady wins the race. We kind of forget sometimes that slow gives us time to react, it gives us time to perceive what’s happening, to process what’s happening, and to put our best foot forward with intentionality. And sometimes, if we’re going too quickly, we’re just moving everything and we’re moving forward, but we trip ourselves up and we don’t realize what we’ve done.

Meher: You get to correct yourself when you’re failing and it is essential for you to correct yourself because if you keep on doing the same thing, you are going to get the same results. When you do slow and steady, you correct yourself and then see success.

Tara: Yeah. I like the way that you phrased it when you first answered and you talked about running for success, and I had that visualization. It translates to this slow and steady idea, but the idea of running. You’re running so fast you can’t even see what’s going on around you or you trip and fall. So I like thinking of it, that visualization of the idea of running for success rather than sort of traveling toward it maybe in a measured way. I think that’s a great advice, thank you for sharing that.

Meher: You’re welcome.

Liam: With that advice in mind, when you find yourself running rather than steadily walking toward success, how do you find yourself catching onto that? How do you realize that? And when you do realize it, if you do, how do you correct that, what steps do you take?

Meher: I do realize that and sometimes it just misses, but when I know for sure that I am not going to get success the way it is, I stop, I take a break, I go out, I go for a holiday. I come back, I talk to people, then I start working. And then my mind freshens up. I come up with think different ways to solve things, that’s how I deal with my blockages.

Liam: Yeah, I like that. I think stepping away from the work environment, stepping away from the computer, stepping away from the monitor screen and going for a walk and placing ourselves in a different environment, maybe even taking off the headphones and not listening to music or to anybody except our head and the noise around us can be really valuable to recenter ourselves on that. That’s interesting, I like that.

Meher: Yes, it’s a relief for the body and soul.

Liam: Yes. Well, they’re all tied together, aren’t they? We don’t quite understand how but they all are, and if the body’s out of whack, the mind and soul struggling. If the mind is out of whack, the soul and the body do so. We have to figure out how to take care of all three together.

Meher: Yes, what you said.

Liam: It’s always easier to say that than it is to actually do that.

Tara: Absolutely, yes. Self-care is very important but it often comes last on the list.

Meher: I’ll even miss sometimes.

Tara: Yes, completely.

Liam: Yeah, especially if you’re running toward success. We lose the forest for the trees, we see that next project, or that next sale, or that next opportunity of business development, and we’re running, and then we either hit the wall or we fall in a hole or we find some kind of personal challenge and that’s a hard way to learning.

Meher: Yes, it’s hard.

Tara: Yeah. I think also, as we talked about in the beginning when Meher was talking about her advice is also failing and learning from that too. For sure, we’re coming back full circle to where we started on this conversation and we’re, I think, just about out of time here. Good circle, good circle, continuous and never-ending, but we do have to end. [laughs] Meher, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you tell everyone where we can find you online?

Meher: You can find me on Twitter at @meherbala, you can find me on my website, Meherbala.in. Thank you, Tara. Thank you, Liam, for the opportunity given. Loved chatting with you.

Tara: Thank you for sharing your story. We would love to meet you sometime.

Liam: Yeah, in real life. It’s been an absolute pleasure, Meher. Thank you for joining us.

Tara: Thank you.

Meher: And open invitation to come to Mumbai. Whenever you all come, just let me know, I’ll treat you everywhere, anywhere in India, even if not Mumbai.

Tara: Thank you so much.

Liam: I’ll have to check the WordCamp Mumbai schedule to see when that’s scheduled because that way, it can be a business trip as well, Tara.

Tara: Sure.

Meher: Next year.

Tara: Thank you, Meher. Bye.

Liam: Bye for now.

Meher: Bye.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.

Tara: If you like what we’re doing here – meeting new people in our WordPress community – we invite you to tell others about it. We’re on iTunes and at hallwaychats-staging.ulpgsyz6-liquidwebsites.com.

Liam: Better yet, ask your WordPress friends and colleagues to join us on the show. Encourage them to complete the “Be on the show” form on our site, to tell us about themselves.