We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Qung Xav a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Qung thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
I think being a business owner that generates income through having jobs that help create more jobs is super important. Even though I am a business owner I am still a business owner that uses his business to obtain and create jobs. I don’t believe having a job is a bad thing especially when you are funding your business. I think it’s good to have income that contributes to generating more income is important.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got into this business by being a music artist who was with a couple different labels first before I decided to start my own company. Being a working artist in the music industry was my primary goal. After working for a few different companies and helping them build their business I began to realize I needed something I can create to not only serve my community, but to cultivate it. I started doing events, shooting and editing skits, merchandise and engineering sessions for other artist to build community while creating income streams. During this time problem solving became more of a daily task. Mixing and mastering unfinished songs, helping people edit footage, revising edits, making mistakes designing garments and dealing with the ups and downs of curating events. Some of the things I’m most proud of are my ability to bring different creatives together, being able to teach music production classes for the youth in different high schools in nyc, becoming a better artist through many years of development and being in a new place in my life where I am still recreating myself. I have an online store where we sell merchandise, music available on all streaming platforms that I engineered myself and a bunch of different videos I shoot and edited. These are tangibles that display my work on different platforms.
Have you ever had to pivot?
I had to make a pivot in my career in 2020 when the pandemic first started. At the time I was renting a recording studio where I did sound engineering for musicians, artists and filmmakers. I also started doing my comedy/music events and was editing videos on the weekends for comedians and wedding videographers. Once the pandemic started all businesses were closed and everyone was too scared to come outside. I was booking less and less sessions at the studio and had no legs to stand on to have events. I found myself jobless, scared and lost. During this time I spent many hours in my apartment recording, mixing and mastering music. Mainly my own music. I began to challenge myself more as an artist and even more as an intellectual. I released my 2nd album which was the first project I mixed & mastered by myself. After having no clients at my studio I got a state certificate for covid compliance and began working as a CCO on commercial sets. This allowed my company to began to make more money and be around people working in the main stream commercial production jobs. During this time I was going through a pivot in life that created a different type of resilience.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One major lesson I had to unlearn was one I learned from my parents. I learned that my vision of them as my parents was both good and very flawed at the same time. I thought that certain roles or jobs people had meant they had to be a certain way all the time. I’ve seen both of them go through many ups and downs and through some of theirs decisions I would be upset and even hold resentment towards them. What I learn after graduating high and gaining more life experience is no one is perfect and even when they upset me all they diid was their best. I know we all have flaws and different things we use to cope through different stages in our lives. I am very fortunate to have learn what they taught me.
Contact Info:
- Website: 888madhouse.com
- Instagram: @888madhouse
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ucpncgz-70FjU2E7dfEQw
Image Credits
Renee LaMay Caitlin MacDougall Carter