“I love helping people,” says Tarek Ali. “Helping people makes me happy.” For the Los Angeles-based influencer — plus entrepreneur, artist, writer, actor, and more — this innate drive to uplift has been evolving since he was a kid. But one thing has remained consistent; it begins, each and every day, with himself.
In the vast landscape of carefully constructed social media personalities, Ali represents an oasis of authenticity: true to his heart, and open about his path from challenging childhood to thriving adulthood. Crucially, however, joy isn’t the only emotion that he cultivates. In fact, it’s his willingness to be honest about life’s ups and downs — including his own — that has created such a strong sense of community between the hundreds of thousands of followers on his YouTube channel, and Instagram and Twitter feeds.
Tarek calls his “How I’m Learning to Love Myself” interactive workbook a “guide to improving your self love.”
“I start every video the same way: ‘Hey, it’s Tarek Ali, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Hope you’re feeling great.’ It's a way to check in. I want people to accept themselves, like: ‘Okay. Let’s be real,’” he says. “My channel can seem like a help guide, but it's really just my journey. I take people on it and tell them what I’ve learned, and how I'm changing. And then people can choose to change with me — to grow with me.”
Here, in Ali’s own words, he opens up about balancing art and business, the meditative state of a skincare routine, and the beauty of self-acceptance.
Making his way.
“I've always been creative. I loved acting in plays at school and church, and writing plays to perform with my siblings at home. We grew up in a house with 11 people, so there were always enough people for a cast of characters. But then — long story short — life happened. My dad lost his job, we lost our home – we lost everything. We had to move to a neighborhood where I didn’t feel safe. I was bullied for being queer, for being fat, for being Black. I didn't have the luxury of doing things that cost extra money because we didn't have extra money, so I focused on my academics. I thought they were going to be my golden ticket. I happened to be good at science, and health care appealed to me as a way to help people. I was prepared to be a student for the next ten years and go to medical school.”
An unexpected pivot.
“When I was in high school, I started doing YouTube and Instagram videos on the side to feed my creativity, any way I could. I’d share what I was dealing with, and what was so hard for me, and then how I got through it, and I think that approach was different and refreshing for a lot of people. I wasn’t trying to be so knowledgeable or omniscient, with advice on what’s right from wrong. A lot of times we just want to feel a connection; we want to feel not alone, rather than being told what to do. Over time, people started following, and loving the content — so I kept doing it. By my junior year in college, I was like: ‘Wow, this is an actual income. Being creative can be my job.’ After graduation, I realized I had the opportunity to do what fulfilled me beyond health care, and I took a leap of faith. Ever since, I've been trying to get into the life of being an artist full-time, being an entrepreneur full-time. It’s really different than being a student.”
Ali shares personal moments from his life in YouTube videos like “Trying to structure my life and goals after graduating college.”
The delicate balance.
“It's a constant battle between the entrepreneur and artist in me fighting each other. To be business-oriented you have to be scheduled and organized in order to, you know, pay your taxes and stuff like that, while being a creative is so fluid. My content is so tied to my emotions and what I'm going through, and I share that so I can help other people. So, it can be a challenge trying to mix those together.”
A day in the life.
I wake up around 6 a.m., work out for an hour and a half — try to burn 750 calories — come home, take a shower, make breakfast. Boom, start my day. At night, it’s a glass of Pinot Grigio with a splash of St. Germain — that's the combo right there — with my skincare routine and a book.
Loving the skin he’s in.
“I love taking care of my skin, and I love my skincare routine — every morning after I wake up and before I go to bed, when I just focus on me. So many things I do are related to business, or helping me succeed in some way. During this time, I have to stop everything else and give myself ten minutes. Some people think that’s a lot to spend on your face, but it's about me taking care of me.”
Managing self-doubt and manifesting inner strength.
“Some people have self-doubt and it keeps them from doing work at all, some people have self-doubt and it makes them work harder. We all deal with it differently, but we all experience it. Recently I was looking at the camera and wouldn’t want to get in front of it; feeling like my content doesn’t matter, that people will watch it and two minutes later they won’t care. Instead of fighting that little moment of depression, which is natural, I opened my arms and said: ‘I am sad. I feel this way.’ And once I accepted it, I got into why I do what I do. I reminded myself, by watching my own content, that I loved it, and I love doing it. It fulfills me. It makes me happy. And when I focus on that, it's easier for me to create.”
Written in the stars.
“I'm a Virgo rising. Virgos are very work-oriented and schedule-oriented — very organized people. So after my skincare routine, I'll sit down to look at my calendar and to-do list. I have a huge dry erase calendar in my bedroom, and I’ll plan what I'm going to be doing that day. Some days I’ll block out for writing: TV shows, public speaking scripts I may use in the future, or video concepts. Some days I’ll block out for filming. Some days are just for rest. It depends.”
Finding the right toolkit.
“A couple of years into being an influencer, I started getting a lot of documents: agreements, contracts, sponsorships, non-disclosure agreements, media releases. I do literally everything in Adobe [Acrobat]. I can edit, organize, sign, scan. Using Acrobat is like brushing my teeth — totally natural.”
Words to live by.
“I have a tattoo in French that says, Dans la vie tu dois travailler pour ce que tu veux, which in English means, “In life you have to work for what you want.”
