A reflection on how Vocal Every Pal—and I—have grown up

When I look back at my very first post on November 14, 2019, I almost don't recognize the person who wrote it. That girl—because yes, she feels younger somehow—wrote with her heart completely exposed, every emotion magnified, every sentence reaching for something grand.

She opened with an Alison Lohman quote and told a story about failing a math exam. She used phrases like "venerated," "unending list," and "ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests." She was trying so hard to make you feel everything she felt, to prove she could write beautifully, to justify taking up space on the internet.

Reading it now, I want to hug her. Tell her it's okay. Tell her she doesn't need to dress up every thought in Sunday clothes.

The Voice I Started With

"A father's love for his daughter knows no bounds. It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark..."

That was me in 2019. Elaborate. Metaphor-heavy. Shakespeare-adjacent (poorly, I might add). Every paragraph was a performance, every sentence an audition for some invisible judge who would decide if I was "writer" enough.

I remember being terrified. Terrified that no one would read it. Terrified that people would read it and find it lacking. So I overcompensated. I piled on adjectives, stretched metaphors until they snapped, ended with dramatic sign-offs that begged for validation: "Kindly leave your comments and reviews and help me as I take on this journey of writing."

I needed you to like it because I wasn't sure I liked it yet.

The Turning Point

By July 2020, something had shifted. I wrote "Redirection in Rejection," and you can see me trying on a different voice—still earnest, still a bit breathless, but more focused on the message than the messenger.

"Have you ever stopped and wondered, about a time in your life when things didn't go as per the plan set by you?"

The rhetorical questions multiplied. I was learning to engage rather than perform. But I was still teaching, still positioning myself as someone who had figured something out and needed to share the lesson. The tone was motivational speaker meets life coach, peppered with quotes from Swedish House Mafia and J.K. Rowling.

I was finding confidence, but I hadn't yet found ease.

The Business Voice

Fast forward to May 2022, and "My Journey" reads like a resume dressed up as a personal essay. The metaphors are gone. The Shakespeare references, retired. Instead:

"After four successful years in this industry as a freelance content writer, experience in writing across 20+ genres and 40+ clients later..."

This is the voice of someone who had learned to write for clients. Clean. Professional. Efficient. I listed achievements, name-dropped platforms, mentioned the Forbes byline. The road-less-traveled metaphor was there, but it felt obligatory—a nod to poetic tradition rather than genuine expression.

I wasn't performing anymore. But I also wasn't really present. This was the writing equivalent of a LinkedIn profile with a sprinkle of personality.

Somewhere between trying too hard and not trying at all, I'd lost something.

The Voice I Have Now

Then came March 2024, and "Thank You."

"When was the last time you said thank you out of a feeling and not a necessity? Struggling to remember?"

Something had changed. The prose was simpler, yes, but it wasn't stripped down—it was settled. I didn't need to prove I could write beautifully or professionally. I just needed to write honestly.

The sentences were shorter. The metaphors were grounded (a light in our hearts, not a star in wandering barks). I admitted I was meditating when the thought struck me. I talked directly to you, not at you or around you.

I stopped trying to sound like anyone other than myself.

What Seven Years Taught Me

When I started Vocal Every Pal, I had no business plan. No monetization strategy. No idea that seven years later, this would be a marketing agency serving over 100 brands across industries.

But here's what I've learned about building something that lasts:

Your voice isn't something you find—it's something you shed into.

Like a snake discarding old skin, you have to let go of all the versions of yourself that were trying too hard, performing for the wrong audience, writing for approval rather than connection. What's left underneath—the voice that's quiet enough you almost missed it—that's the one worth amplifying.

The best writing happens when you stop caring what it sounds like.

Not in the sense of carelessness, but in the sense of letting go. When I stopped asking "Does this sound smart enough? Poetic enough? Professional enough?" and started asking "Is this true?"—that's when things got interesting.

What you write about changes, but why you write should stay the same.

In 2019, I wrote about my father because I was grieving and needed to make sense of it. In 2024, I wrote about gratitude because I was trying to slow down in a world that won't stop spinning. The subjects evolved, but the core impulse—to understand my own life by putting it into words—remained constant.

You can't write your way into wisdom, but you can write your way into clarity.

Seven years ago, I thought writing was about having answers. Now I know it's about asking better questions. The posts I'm proudest of aren't the ones where I figured everything out—they're the ones where I admitted I hadn't.

Evolution isn't betrayal.

For a long time, I worried that turning Vocal Every Pal into a business meant abandoning what it started as. That serving clients somehow cheapened the personal blog. That professionalism and authenticity couldn't coexist.

I was wrong.

The girl who wrote "Being There" didn't disappear when the agency grew. She just learned that the same skills that helped her process grief—empathy, storytelling, finding the human thread—could help brands connect with their audiences too.

Your foundation has to be honest, even if it's shaky.

Every client relationship, every brand partnership, every piece of content we create now—it all traces back to that first post. The one where I was vulnerable and earnest and trying too hard. Because underneath all that trying was something real: a belief that words matter, that stories connect us, that good writing can move people.

That belief hasn't changed. Everything else has just grown around it.

What Stays, What Goes

If I could sit down with 2019 Palak, I'd tell her:

Keep the heart. Lose the performance.

Keep the metaphors, but let them breathe. They don't all have to be Shakespearean.

Keep showing up, even when you're terrified. Especially then.

Let go of the need to sound like a Writer. You already are one.

Seven years feels both impossibly long and startlingly short. Long enough to build something real—a business, a body of work, a voice. Short enough that I still remember being that terrified girl hitting "publish" for the first time, wondering if anyone would care.

The Celebration and The Reckoning

Let me be honest: celebrating seven years feels complicated.

On one hand, there's so much to celebrate. An agency that's thriving. Clients across luxury, tech, fashion, media—industries I once only dreamed of working in. A team that believes in the work. A brand that's grown from a personal blog to a business serving 100+ companies.

On the other hand, there's grief. For the time it took. For the version of myself that got left behind in the hustle. For the posts I didn't write because I was too busy writing for everyone else. But maybe that's what seven years teaches you. That celebration and introspection aren't opposites. That you can be proud of how far you've come while still sitting with how much it cost to get here.

That both are part of the story.

What's Next

The truth is, I don't know what the next seven years will bring.

Maybe Vocal Every Pal becomes the go-to agency for brands that care about story as much as strategy. Maybe we hit that Forbes 40 Under 40 goal. Or maybe the business takes a completely different shape. Maybe my voice evolves again. Maybe I look back at this post in 2032 and cringe at how earnest I'm being.

(Probably that last one.)

But here's what I do know:

Seven years ago, I started a blog because I needed to write. Not because I had a business plan or because I'd figured out my niche—but because putting words on a page felt like the only honest thing I knew how to do.

Seven years later, that's still true.

The medium has changed. The audience has grown. The stakes are higher. But the core impulse—to connect, to be honest, to trust that words can build something lasting—that remains.

And maybe that's the real achievement here. Not the 100+ brands or the case studies or the anniversary itself. But the fact that after seven years of evolution, pivots, growth, and doubt—the thing that started this is the same thing keeping it going.

The belief that words matter. That stories connect. That showing up honestly, consistently, vulnerably to a blank page is the bravest and most necessary work there is.

To everyone who's been here since "Being There"—or joined somewhere along the way—or is reading Vocal Every Pal for the first time today:

Thank you. Not as a formality, but as a feeling.

You've watched me grow up in public, stumble through metaphors, find my footing, lose it again, and somehow keep going. That takes trust—yours in me, mine in the process.

Here's to seven years of finding my voice.
Here's to 100+ brands who believed in it.
Here's to every word written, every lesson learned, every version of myself that had to be shed to get here.

And here's to the next seven years of discovering what comes next.

Yours truly,
Vocal Every Pal

What about you? If you've been building something for years—whether it's a business, a creative practice, or just yourself—how has your voice changed? I'd love to hear your story.