We were lucky to catch up with Skylar Saba recently and have shared our conversation below.

Skylar, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

We are a creative agency that helps brands show up and stand out through their branding, website and strategy. Our business is built off of our teams creativity. I think that the general path for school doesn’t alway allow room for students to lean into their creativity and challenge themselves to work outside the box. I think that growing up we I would look around and see that my peers were often just checking the boxes off to get the good grade, memorize the materials to ace the test, do the resume building activities to get into college. The way our school system is set up teaches kids to stay inside the norm and follow the path.

I was diagnosed with dyslexia in 3rd grade, and I think this was a big reason for why I feel so comfortable with my creativity. It was a challenge for me to learn the same way the other kids in my class would so I had to get creative with the way I learned and participated in school. I think that because of this I learned that the normal path isn’t alway the right bath for everybody and it is okay to try another option. I think this has been something that has helped majorly in our business and is a core value we stand on. We encourage our clients to find their own path and do the things that work for them and build the brand strategy around that.

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

My name is Skylar Saba, and I am the founder and creative director of Groove Street Creative Agency. We help build brands that stand out. My business started kind of by accident. I am also a sustainability content creator and have been for 5 years now. I studied Fashion and Sustainability in college at The Fashion Institute of Technology. While in school learning about sustainability I was bursting with information. I couldn’t hold it in anymore so I started an online blog, Happy Earth Habits sharing ways to live a more low waste/friendly lifestyle. I started to build an online community of fellow earth-lovers, today we have a following of around 70K across multiple platforms. As I was building this community people started to reach out about me helping them do the same. So on the side in college I would help small businesses build their brand online. Helping with branding, creative strategy and website development.

Fast forward to April 2020, peek of the pandemic. I was graduating from college in a weird time where the job market wasn’t necessarily popping. I realized that I was started to get more and more people who were needing support building their brands. Today 3 years later we have helped over 85 businesses build engaged communities, awesome products and thriving brands.

Th Groove Street client ranges from tech start ups, non-profits to clothing brands, and wellness companies. The common thread is that they are here to do things to the beat of their own drum. We are in a time where a good product or service isn’t the only thing essential to building a strong business. Customers are wanting brands to share more, tell more of their stories, participate in the community and they want to see something that stands out. That’s where Groove Street comes in. We build out the creative strategy for brands to show up and stand out confidently. We lean into your brands individuality, unique stories, and passions that drive your vision to create a strong brand that provides our clients with longevity, clarity and confidence.

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

As a creative, one of my biggest challenges is managing my creative energy. I think when you have to “clock in” and create it can take the magic away of creating. For most creatives, we create to express ourselves, to move and process energy/emotions/ideas. And because it just lights us up. So when creatives get into making a business on our creativity their is a layer of pressure that comes with.

In the beginning of the year, our businesses had grown to a new level and as a leader I was struggling to stay inspired and lit up around my creativity. I was feeling burnt out and like my heart just wasn’t in it in the same way. I was noticing this in my team as well. When the business started to grow, as the Founder/CEO I was having to do more and more things I didn’t love and still wanting to create and be in the weeds of the creative client work. The same thing started to happen with my team, they were starting to juggle a lot of tasks and projects. I started to notice the business wasn’t growing the way it was prior. We were flat-lining. I thought at first this is part of business and sometimes there are slower moments. However is seemed to be staying the same. I felt like our “hose” was kinked and things weren’t flowing.

After some “come to Jesus” moments with myself, I decided we needed to streamline and scales some things back, restructure the behind the sense so we could keep everybody in their zones of genius (the things that flowed easiest to them). This looked like cutting some of our offerings, shifting rolls/responsibilities/positions around, adding on some smaller scale positions to support the business in specific areas… and keeping people where they want to be. So the “hose” didn’t get kinked up with people doing things they didn’t really LOVE doing. This was a scary shift to make, especially when we had been doing things a certain way for a long time and generally it had been working.

Coming out on the other side, I think this was one of the best things we could of done for the business. It allowed for some new things to flourish, in turn seeing our business grow. I think that in the creative business world one of the most important things you can do is make sure the creative energy is being taken care of. Creating space for the inspiration and passion to be followed. Allowing room for things to flow and trying as best you can to take some of the pressures off of the creativity in your business.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, the most rewarding part is bringing peoples visions to life. I LOVE when our clients see it click. It’s this very special moment that we get to experience. As a business owner there is always a layer of risk or a big question mark of how this is actually going to work. When we work with clients they usually are either starting a new business or have a business that needs taken to a new level.

We bring that vision to life. We map out how its going to happen and basically give the brand all of the things to look the part. So when the client see it all click into place it’s the “Princess Diaries” moment, where they see that this is going to work. Their business is now looking the part, backed by a strategy that makes sense and feels authentic to them. And they are ready to take on the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: Groovestreetcreative.com
• Instagram: @groovestreetcreative
• Linkedin: Skylar Saba
• Other: Best way to reach us is squad@groovestreetcreative.com

Image Credits
Liz Pound Photography