Nothing Can Beat You Ft. Shawana Iftikhar

This one is just me sitting down with Shawana Iftikhar, and honestly, I am still processing the strength in her story. She is the owner of an IT company with over a hundred employees, but the road to getting there was paved with moments that would have broken most people. We talk about the raw, unfiltered reality of building a business when you don’t even know how to install Windows, the grief of losing her mother right before giving birth, navigating a mental health crisis while tiny children slept on her chest, and the quiet power of simply refusing to stop. This is not a glossy success story. It is a conversation about what it actually costs to become financially independent, and why that independence is non-negotiable.

Starting from zero, literally

Shawana tells me a story that I cannot stop thinking about. Back in 2012, her relationship with a computer was basic. She used it to make her pictures presentable, maybe tidy up her desktop. If Windows crashed or data got deleted, the whole family would have to pack up the CPU and haul it to a shop, sometimes waiting a month to get it back. One day she just decided, enough. “I thought, what is this thing that takes so much time and creates so many problems? I will install Windows myself.” She found the steps, three or four of them, and started. Her system crashed. It was four in the morning. She told herself she would sleep and try again tomorrow, but her mind would not let it go. She woke up, tried again, and finally did it. That small victory, figuring out a thing she was never taught, set the tone for everything that followed. Her first freelance project involved graphic design and social media pages, skills she simply did not have yet. She learned by doing, by watching YouTube tutorials, by failing and starting over.

The weight of a sick child and a broken system

The early days of her business were not spent in a quiet home office. They were spent on a sofa with her infant son sleeping in her lap. She describes the scene vividly: one hand holding the baby, the other hand working the mouse. Her legs would go numb, but she could not move. When her son was two years old, he ate an ice cream and his temperature spiked to a terrifying level. He started having seizures. The doctors scared her, mentioning bone marrow tests and cancer. She was simultaneously trying to figure out how to afford his milk and medicine. “I was struggling for how to cover his milk and his problems,” she told me. It was a period of intense financial and emotional pressure, the kind that forces you to realize that being a woman who is financially dependent is simply not an option. You cannot be in a critical situation and have to rely on the questions and judgments of others about how you are managing.

Grief, postpartum, and the panic attacks

Then came a blow that still feels heavy to write about. Two days before her daughter was born, Shawana’s mother passed away suddenly from a heart attack. They had been shopping together, picking out clothes for the new baby. The collision of new life and devastating loss sent her into a spiral. She describes the postpartum depression that followed, compounded by grief. People told her not to cry, that a new baby in the house was a happy occasion. So she would go to the bathroom and cry alone. Her mental health deteriorated to the point of panic attacks and a diagnosis that took five years to properly understand. She was put on medication that dulled her senses, and she made the difficult choice to stop taking it because she felt she could not care for her small children in that foggy state. “I realized that I had to be present for my children. If I took the medicine, I would sleep. I wouldn’t understand anything. How would I look after them?” Eventually, a doctor discovered a severe Vitamin D deficiency that had been mimicking and amplifying her psychological crisis. The physical and the mental were completely tangled together.

Log kya kahenge and the power of a supportive partner

Coming from a traditional family in Rawalpindi, the idea of girls studying or working was often met with resistance. Shawana had to fight just to continue her education, eventually completing her Masters through a mix of private and regular university programs while working and raising children. The societal noise was constant. People would come to her house to investigate how they were managing their finances, suggesting she was a burden on her father. They commented on her dressing sense, on her working late, on her being a “pagal” who worked too much. But she had a secret weapon: a husband who respected her hustle. “My husband never did any of that controlling behavior. He always told me, just keep your self-respect. Do whatever you want.” That support, along with brothers who would drive her to university and pick her up at odd hours, formed a crucial safety net. But her core belief remained fixed on Allah’s support being the strongest system, one that no human support could ever match.

Building an empire on a broken laptop

She started with a faulty laptop that would overheat and shut down after an hour, forcing her to restart projects from scratch. She worked through the night, slept for two hours, and woke up to university assignments and client deadlines. She managed projects from a rickshaw on the way to class. Today, that hustle has grown into a company of over a hundred people, working with international clients including Microsoft and Procter & Gamble. But she is quick to point out that the goal was never just to build a big company. The goal was to create a system so independent that she could eventually step back and give her children the time they deserve. “My main focus is my children. I want to reach a point where I can cook for them, do everything for them, and the business runs itself.”

Why this conversation stays with me

Shawana’s story is not about a magical overnight success. It is about a woman who installed Windows when she didn’t know how, who held her baby in one arm and built a business with the other, and who faced the darkest moments of her mental health while refusing to let her goals die. She told me that people often ask her for motivation, but she believes you don’t need motivational messages. You need a goal. The criticism, the “log kya kahenge,” the judgments, they all fade into background noise when you are focused on where you are going. This episode is a reminder that you are allowed to build your own table, even when the world tells you to just sit quietly at someone else’s.