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

Sarah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I officially registered the LLC for my graphic design & marketing studio, Cloud 6 Studios, in December of 2018 — but I do wish I had started the business earlier.

In truth, I had been freelancing since I was 16 years old (though I did it in secret). I grew up studying Fine Arts and I always knew I wanted to be in a creative field, but I also wanted to start a business. I don’t have a problem against working for someone else. In fact, I enjoy helping other business owners’ dreams come true – that is what gets me out of bed in the morning. But I just knew in my heart that ultimately, I would be happiest working on my own terms.

My mother has always been entrepreneurial and I inherited a lot of that drive and independence from her. Freelancing started out as a way for me to explore this drive and see what I was capable of.

When I was a teenager, freelancing wasn’t really recognized as a career choice. It was a very new concept to me and completely foreign to any of my mentors. Even more so, people in my circle only ever heard of freelancers as consultants in more traditional fields such as accounting or law. The real value of Graphic Design, while not a particularly new practice, has only recently been starting to get real recognition by the average business owner partially due to its exposure in the tech startup field and the rise of the internet.

When I started freelancing there were a lot less learning resources as there are now t0 improve my skills as a Graphic Designer. I had to learn on the job, through trial and error. While I had good design intuition and a trained art background, I ended up learning how to deal with clients first before really finding ways to sharpen my technical skills. Eventually I needed to make a choice on what I was going to university for — design, or business.

This was my first high-stakes investment because I had no financial support from my parents. Plus, the university I was looking at was out-of-state, which meant out-of-state tuition. I had very little backing for scholarships because I didn’t have much to put on my applications — while I had great grades, I had no extracurriculars, club activities, or community service because my family had one car, which my single mother took to work every day. I spent high school only being able to focus on my grades and nothing else.

I felt like I was betting my future on the kind of education I was going to choose — after all, I had to bet on what would return my investment the most and I had no fallback. So I chose to go to the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.

All of my peers at the business college wanted to become CEO’s of existing businesses, or be business analysts and advisors. I could not relate because I always had the goal of starting a design business – when I shared this, I was always met with doubtful looks. And I’ll admit, I felt insecure in university. I was not confident during this time.

Even so, I worked part-time in the IT department for living expenses, juggled schoolwork, and continued freelancing actively so I could build my design skills. Despite working so hard for my dream, I was also so worried I couldn’t achieve it that I told no one in my personal circle what my plans were. As far as they were concerned, I was just getting my degree and going straight into office life.

Looking back, I don’t regret my choice at all (even though I have a lot of student debt). However, if I could go back and give my younger self advice, I would have advised her to start the business sooner. I would have invested my university tuition in an online program and focused all of my free time on learning and growing the business. It would have given me a massive head start.

There is a stigma that you need some kind of credential to become a business owner, or to make your own income. While credentials and experience are certainly helpful, they aren’t required. What I’ve learned in hindsight is you really just need confidence in yourself, and self-belief.

I realize THAT is what held me back the most from starting the business sooner: I had a belief that I needed a fancy university credential and years of experience before I could be “worthy” of being successful as a business owner. As I mentor young designers today, I realize I wasn’t alone in this belief – it’s a common stigma.

The truth is you can learn almost anything in time. You don’t have to be a master to start. And I don’t believe it’s arrogant or reckless to start before you feel “ready.”

If I had gone back and invested in a most cost-effective program, I would have received the same level of education but freed up a lot more of my resources towards startup funds and *targeted learning. I would have also had more time to learn the business side of freelancing and scaling up with less risk, and I would have read lots and lots of more books. If I went back and started the business as soon as I entered college, I think it would have made a big difference.

I don’t dwell on the past and I do take responsibility for my actions. I would not have been the person I am today without those experiences. I continued to freelance through university and when I entered the working world in full-time roles. There were times I was working nearly 60-80 hours a week, and I was miserable, but it did push me to finally take the leap and take the next step from freelancing earlier than I planned. This was when I founded Cloud 6 Studios.

What I would give as advice to anyone interested in both starting a business OR freelancing today, is that there is no set of requirements needed to start your own journey. There are more resources now than ever before to start this for yourself. And there will be people who doubt – including people who truly care about you – but if it’s something you truly want, it’s something you should pursuit.

If you’re currently a freelancer and you need encouragement, know that taking a full-time position while you are building your client base is not a type of failure, but it’s being flexible. If you’re in a full-time position but want to become a freelancer, you can start to make a plan now.

I have no ill feelings towards the traditional working world, by the way. I don’t think that it’s some kind of defeat and I don’t call it “working for the man.” Freelancing or starting a business are simply a different way of life, and I think every person should decide for themselves what will make them the happiest. I just don’t want others who had the same desires as me to put their own dreams on old because they think they have to.

If there are any freelancers that need advice, I am actually starting a freelancing course to give more people access to *direct answers about what the lifestyle is like. This is something I wanted as a resource when I was starting — a place to learn what I didn’t know I needed to learn, transparently.

I hope reading my story will give others the encouragement to pursue exactly what they want in their careers — whether it’s freelancing, a new position, or a passion project. You can do it. Good luck!

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 Sarah Tran. I come from a single parent household and I have four siblings. We’re Vietnamese-American and I grew up on the east coast, 20 minutes outside of Washington, D.C.

As you can read from my story, I always planned to be in a creative field and studied Fine Arts since I was 4. Admittedly, sometimes I would skip classes in high school but I never skipped art class, haha. I was introduced to Graphic Design in a very beginner-level Photoshop class in high school. It was run by a quirky teacher and was basically an extracurricular class that I think was formed because there was nothing else to teach — it wasn’t going to be permanent. But I ended up being really good at it and the teacher let me do what I wanted with the program after I finished the assignments in the first 20 minutes of class.

I fell in love with design from the start, because I’m personally very analytical. I always thought being analytical was in direct contradiction with my creativity, so finding something that synergized both was empowering to me. I started learning the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite from when I was 16.

That is how I started with design itself, but it took a lot more for me to found Cloud 6 Studios. I worked in full-time roles in the past in both design seats and marketing seats. What I learned from these roles is that I really crave working with, and for people. I don’t mean being an employee, exactly. I mean I really craved being of real service to people, and there were times in the past I had to be loyal to my role with a company over the best interests of a client or customer. I didn’t know it at the time but my MBTI type is INFJ, so intrinsically I need to feel like I am actually helping people to be happy.

My first clients taught me the most about this. Like me, the small businesses I worked for were not working just for profit, but to make a living doing what they loved. This is what I grew to be passionate about – helping others make their dreams a reality. I feel this passion is one of the things that sets me apart from other designers — I am not just doing design tasks, but I have the intention to make the client as successful as possible, especially when I see the value of the business itself. This may manifest in providing recommendations for growth I see outside of the design piece of a project, or simply providing advice in addition to my creative services. After all, my formal education is in business, and I am able to see how design fits into the larger picture.

One of these examples is my long time work with Inspired Method, a fitness company in Santa Monica, CA. I started out doing basic freelancing work with them, but as I grew my relationship and provided more ideas for growth, I ended up working side-by-side with the Founder both as a design lead and a marketing lead. I felt passionate in helping their success as they also truly care about helping people live their best lives through a healthy lifestyle and fitness.

At Cloud 6 Studios, the way we go above and beyond is deeper than just overdelivering on design. We strive to see how any project – small or big – fits into your business’s larger success, and we use that itself to help inform our work with you. While I have a small team now, I am directly a part of every project. Company culture and values are so important to me that these come first before growth as a company. While I would love to scale the business, what matters to me first is providing true value to our clients for years to come.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Yes! I’d like to share this because from the outside looking in, running a business can seem glamourous. But you shouldn’t expect glamour if you want to start a business yourself (or become a freelancer) and you shouldn’t envy it just because it seems like the high life.

In reality, business owners are afraid to seem weak to both their clients and their employees. They can also be afraid to feel like failures, or look like failures to friends and family who call them successful. Imposter Syndrome is something that never goes away, no matter how successful you are, and it can be ugliest when you are having a low moment.

Businesses have ebbs and flows. This is one of the first things that we learn in business school. As the economy is cyclical, businesses will also have seasons. Even more so, if you’re a freelancer, you should be anticipating slow months. This is because no matter how prepared you are, business is about being flexible and being able to pivot if things go south because in life, things don’t always go as planned.

I had some really scary months where a handful of very historically stable clients all paused their work at once. This came as a surprise since they had good business even during the pandemic, so you can imagine my shock when the pause came after the pandemic slowed down.

I realized a lot of things all at once.

1) When business was good, I was so relieved I became too comfortable. You can be both relaxed and prepared, and I did not spend enough time preparing even when I knew better.
2) I realized I was afraid more of not being able to pay my employees than to be able to pay myself.
3) I would have to learn how to take responsibility while keeping up morale, and that included being responsible for my OWN reaction to the situation.

If I had panicked and spun out, that would have been running away from the situation. I felt a lot of fear, including all that I listed above. I had to rise above that fear and remind myself that businesses have ebbs and flows. I did not prepare well this time, but if there’s a next time, I will. This was a lesson that needed to be learned.

In addition, I reminded myself I was not above taking on more work in order to support the business in a slow season. I reopened my freelance work and took what I could find and do well. I told myself this is not a failure of myself as a business owner, but this is a situation in which I can learn to be better. I would rather take on more work personally and put funds into the business than jump ship and only save myself.

I want to share with others that you should never feel above taking similar measures if your business is in a tight spot. Even if your peers don’t see you as a successful person anymore, or you don’t feel like you are capable, priorities need to be made. I chose to prioritize keeping the business afloat over my own pride as a business owner.

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

I think people management is one of the most valuable things I learned from business school, but I didn’t learn it entirely from a textbook — it’s also a skill built through practice.

People management sounds like it might involve manipulation, but it doesn’t have to. I believe that profit and ethical practices don’t have to be mutually exclusive in business. I think that operating your freelancing practice or other business with the belief that the world is not a zero-sum game can actually make you more successful.

I keep in touch with clients in much of the same ways we foster relationships in our personal lives. I see and treat them as human beings, not as sources of income. I don’t chase their business or form discreet power dynamics. I don’t play word games on emails where I try to get them to name a number first. I am direct, transparent, and confident. Most of all, I try to see my services from their point of view, and I think this all comes together to create a good experience for them and benefits my relationships.

Every interaction with a client creates a memory that adds to their overall impression of you. I am fortunate that my clients have a good impression of me and Cloud 6 Studios due to the way I approach business, and this keeps us on good terms even when they are not working on a project with us. Because of this, it’s never awkward if I send a client a Happy Holidays email, or if they come out of the blue with a project after years of inactivity. I don’t feel uncomfortable asking for more compensation where I see it’s needed on a project.

I know what value we have, and I only offer it when I believe it will bring value to a project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cloud6studios.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cloud6studios/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloud-6-studios