We recently connected with Shannon Fong and have shared our conversation below.
Shannon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I had always been a fan of Trader Joe’s growing up my mother and I would go shopping there twice a week in San Francisco and it was kind of a tradition for us. I really enjoyed meeting all of the very friendly employees and looking at all the kind of new affordable Products that they had. The environment was very friendly and everyone was wearing Hawaiian shirts, and the music always was very lively. Since I had always been a fan, I had promote a lot of my favorite items on my personal page, and my friends asked me to create a separate one on Instagram, not knowing that it would grow so fast which I’m so grateful for because I’ve met so many wonderful people across the world. I started my account in June 2018 and seven years later here we are.
Shannon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
In addition to being a super fan of Trader Joe’s, I love taking pictures and I also love meeting the people and sharing anything that I knew or recommending anything so it was a perfect fit. I also have a finance & Communications degree which helped me grow my account and reach out genuinely to create relationships and meet new people organically. I’m a busy mom of two teenagers and love sharing my quick recipe ideas that are also affordable because I know that everyone is always so busy and meal planning is the last thing on their list. One of my favorite parts about this account is sharing new products because there’s always so exciting and traders is very innovative with their new products as a source of around the world.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Yes I think there are a lot of creative since there’s so many now out there. You have to definitely separate yourself, but it’s also very hard since many times we are at the mercy of algorithms but sometimes it just takes one lucky post or reel to get you started. I would recommend to never give up because it’s very easy to especially this. Is your passion for me after seven years I still am excited every day to do this and I also appreciate that I have no boss to answer to 30 days where I don’t even need to post anything, but It’s definitely a nice creative outlet. Another great tool I would say not that I used it, but I have helped others is to reach out to someone that has been successful in your passion and angle and either grab a cup of coffee for close by or just offer them a small gift card for their time and advice.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Yes, so after being semi successful on Instagram, I decided to create a YouTube channel because everyone was telling me too and it was just a thing to do so I spent so much time creating these videos of how to recipes and it was really a lot of work and I went live and I kept on pushing and pushing for six months and I only had 500 followers and I realized That the time I had put into this was definitely not worth it and I had to pivot and stay with Instagram and just branch out to TikTok because it was easier for me to repost things on Instagram to TikTok as opposed to YouTube.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @traderjoesobsessed