We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Castro recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah , looking forward to hearing all of your stories 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?

Yeah, I’m happy as a business owner… but as any business wonder knows, this shit is not easy. And as a woman in the graphic design and media industry who is now also a toddler-mother, I bow down to all parents that have been able to sustainably juggle both. My “Roman Empire” thought – something I think about at least a few times a week – would definitely be the daydream of working somewhere that simply requires a clock-in and clock-out, a checklist of things to do and zero responsibility of keeping the ship afloat. When I’m working to meet a deadline and the baby is crying and the dogs are barking and my 19-year-old cat with kidney failure is taking a piss in the middle of the living room, I have to admit it’s a little tempting to apply to the next hum-drum-minimal-responsibility-desk job that pops across my Linkedin page. But I’ll tell you what, there is nothing more fulfilling than managing the chaos of your home and getting the paycheck and the raining praise of a happy customer, especially when that customer then refers you to others. It’s like chasing a high each and every time… finding the next hit of dopamine from a successful project with an elated client. And THAT, that I wouldn’t change for the world.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I grew up with talent all around me. My grandmother was an exceptionally talented artist who was self made. She started as a child on a farm, sketching on scraps of paper with charcoal from the fire, and ended up a chic artist working at Milan Studios in San Francisco. My sister and I used to thumb through photos of her detailing huge billboards for places like Macys and Wells Fargo. Up on a 12 foot ladder, in heels and a pencil skirt, she would turn to flash a cheeky smile at the photographer. This is what I had to live up to. My mother and father worked hard to give me everything they could, but in their downtime they were artists in their own right, father a talented guitarist and songwriter and mother a seamstress/cook/sculptor/painter etc. etc. I lived amongst the creative, which made it near impossible to deny the urge to become one. I spent much of my younger years doing theater productions. Hannigan in Annie, Audrey in LIttle Shop, Aida in Aida… but it was a single hairstylist at one of my very first part-time jobs (as a receptionist) that really gave me the first push to do something that made a HUGE impact on my career. She told me to go apply at MAC, the makeup store in the mall. “Starting pay is $18 an hour” she said, “way more than you make here. And you could totally do it.” And I did. I took my inherited, family talent and my learned, performative nature and I went and got the job.
I worked my way through college, received my degree in journalism, then went to my first post-college interview. I left that interview SOBBING. Not because I had botched the interview, but because between my nods and my “I’m a great fit for this position because,” I was staring at the towering PILES of untouched paperwork surrounding the old metal desk that I was applying to work at. The sad, dim, fluorescent light above kept blinking and the frizzy-haired woman who was interviewing me just kept repeating, “just so you know, there is NOTHING creative about this job and you will never catch up with your work. It’s endless.”
I went out drinking that night.
During my time in college, I had taken some classes in digital design. I ended up using these skills to make flyers and marketing pieces for a nightclub that I did photography for on the weekends. This nightclub I frequented to drink, blow off steam and flirt with the bartenders (one of which is now my wife and other mother of my child). When I started working at the club I met all kinds of amazing people, one of which had ended up offering me a job the day after that terrible interview – all based on my graphic work at the bar. I worked that job for 5 years, during which I made more connections and started moonlighting as a designer for other universities in the Los Angeles/Orange County area. Soon my side work was bringing in more than my main job. It was time to let that position go and move forward on my own. SBC Creative was born.

Now why did the encouragement of that hairstylist so many years before make such an impact on my career? Because that 5 years of makeup paired with the 5 years of graphic design and digital marketing at my university job made for the perfect combination when a friend who worked at Yves Saint Laurent Beaute approached me asking if I had experience in magazine design. I was the perfect fit to land a contract with L’oreal. My design portfolio is now filled with amazing beauty brands, renowned universities, awesome corporations and companies, large and small, and each and every one of them came to me through word of mouth from other satisfied clients. Whether it be websites, branding, art direction, graphic design, my clients walk away happy and they share that happiness with others. My talent may be my hat trick, but my network is my secret weapon…. And my clients, well, they are my prized possessions.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that to be a good worker you had to obey, take what is given, compromise your time, your joy, your opinion and your family. None of this is true. Not to say that some people don’t have to make these compromises to get by. It’s sad and also true that MANY companies don’t respect their workers and in these instances, people are forced to make impossible compromises in order to keep their job. But for me, in my experience and in my life, letting people walk on me had to be unlearned and then fully rejected in order for me to start anew in a better situation. Each and every time I pushed back, things would fall apart, but then get better. Once I began refusing to let the fear of workplace retaliation or demotion or termination hobble me, I was free to move up to better things and was able to achieve bigger and better opportunities. Complacency is toxic in the workplace. Tolerance of intolerability can creep up on you, but you should never let fear of another keep you from being the person you want to be.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Be good to them, that’s how you keep clients. Learn about them, know them, hear them and help them. Offering your help on small things that may be out of your scope of work goes a long way. Don’t ever let anyone take advantage of you, but also don’t be afraid to offer your talents to clients as you would your friends. Help your client with her child’s volleyball logo – free of charge, send your client a Christmas gift, offer to work into the night to make sure they meet their deadline. These things are not only good to help you keep client loyalty, but they’re just NICE things to do for another person. Keeping boundaries is always important when it comes to client interactions, but don’t let that get in the way of showing kindness and doing something out of the goodness of your heart. People see you when you see them, in business or otherwise.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sbccreative.com
• Instagram: @sbccreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahbcastro/

Image Credits
Teresa Castro, Keith Bryce