We were lucky to catch up with Marya Nguyen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Marya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I started over five years ago in a bedroom just big enough to roll out a yoga mat.
From day one I knew two things: I needed to keep learning, and I needed to keep connecting with people. So I took ilovecreatives’ Squarespace Design Course and immediately put it to work, reaching out to the network I’d built in college, offering free and low-cost sites to build my portfolio from the ground up.
The work spoke for itself. Squarespace eventually recognized what I was doing and invited me to join their marketplace as an expert. Today I hold Platinum status with over 60 five-star reviews.
But the real growth didn’t happen in a straight line. As I gained experience across industries, I became a better strategic partner and not just a designer who builds pretty sites. I became someone who understands the problems underneath the project. I improved my processes, raised my rates, invested in communities, mentors, coaches, and education. I kept going even through burnout.
And burnout taught me the most important things. It pushed me to ask the harder questions — what does alignment actually look like for me? Why do I want to do this work? What does success mean on my own terms? What is my relationship with money, really?
Each year handed me a new lesson. The bedroom I started in was small. The vision I was building toward wasn’t!
Could I have moved faster knowing what I know now? Maybe. But I think the pace was the curriculum. Every stage of discomfort I’ve pushed through built something I couldn’t have shortcut my way to.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Marya Nguyen, founder of Yangu Web Studio — a Squarespace web design studio based in St. Louis, Missouri. We build custom websites and brand identities for creatives and businesses that are done settling for lookalike sites. Our work is known for one thing: personality backed by strategy. Every site we design is completely original because every client is different, and we treat it that way.
What I do goes beyond making things look good. I’m a strategic creative partner. I help clients figure out not just what their site should look like but what it needs to do: how it should speak to the right people, answer the right questions, and make the right impression before a prospect ever reaches out.
A lot of my clients come to me because their existing site no longer reflects who they are or where they’re going. They’ve grown. Their work has evolved. And their online presence hasn’t kept up. That gap has a real cost in missed opportunities, in confused prospects, in the quiet embarrassment of sending someone your link and hoping they don’t look too closely.
What sets Yangu apart is the combination of strategic thinking and genuine collaboration. I’m not here to hand you a template and send you on your way. I’m here to understand your business, your clients, and your goals deeply enough to translate all of it into something that actually works. Clients consistently tell me they feel understood, that I can take the idea in their head and turn it into something tangible that feels completely theirs.
I’m most proud of the transformation clients experience after launch. Not just the metrics (though those matter) but the confidence. The pride of sharing a site that finally feels aligned with the caliber of work they’re actually doing. That shift, from feeling like an imposter to feeling like a professional, is what I’m really building toward with every project.
What I want potential clients to know is this: your website is an asset, not an expense. The right investment at the right stage of your business isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about showing up as who you actually are, and making it easy for the right people to find you, trust you, and say yes.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

That stress is something to escape.
I’ve had multiple cycles of burnout over the years. At the culmination of one particularly hard season, I was in a one-on-one coaching engagement and my coach said something that changed how I understood myself.
Stress is not a bad thing. Stress is an indicator that the work you’re doing matters to you. That the commitments you’ve made are important. That for a period of time when you’re grinding hard to build something, something is actually happening.
I’d spent so much energy treating stress as a signal to stop that I missed what it was actually telling me. You’re expanding what you thought you were capable of. You’re trading fear and perfectionism for progress and momentum. The guardrails that kept you safe and comfortable are getting blasted apart so you can ask harder questions. When you have limited hours in a day and you’re stretched thin, stress is what forces you to ask: why am I doing this? What actually matters? What’s next?
That reframe didn’t make burnout disappear. But it made it useful. Now when I feel that pressure building, I get curious instead of panicked. I ask what it’s pointing to. More often than not, it’s pointing toward something I care about deeply and that’s worth paying attention to.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want to be a point of value to my community. That’s it. That’s the mission.
I grew up in an impoverished neighborhood and leaned on a lot of programs to get where I am. We survived on food stamps. I volunteered with nonprofits uplifting the people around me. I had support filling out college applications (to my fellow first-gen graduates, I see you) and I worked with mentors who invested in me when I had nothing to offer in return.
I wouldn’t be here without the support and resilience of the people along the way. That’s not something I take lightly. And it’s not something I want to receive without passing forward.
My mission is to show up for others the way people showed up for me. Whether that looks like a speaking engagement, a workshop, a conversation, or simply showing up present and intentional. I want the people around me to feel the impact of my being here. Not just through the work. Through who I am in the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.yanguweb.studio
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maccuddles/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yanguwebstudio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yangu-web-studio/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yanguwebstudio

Image Credits

JHR Photography