We recently connected with Tammy Huynh and have shared our conversation below.

Tammy, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I’m often caught in the rifts in between loving where I am and hating where I am in the business journey, so we would probably be here all day if I had to go through all the times this feeling comes around!

The last time I was in this darker place, it had a lot to do with money. I was flipping between quitting and going back into full corporate work because the stability was affecting my mental health and I was extra snappy all the time. As business owners, our minds are running a million miles a minute. From ideas to the next bill due, I think it’s hard to actually compartmentalize all sectors of business but also your own personal life. The corporate full time life in these moments look appealing, less stress, and gives you back time of day you’re longing for.

While our company is prospering, but my mom has a Vietnamese philosophy that stuck with me. Basically, the bigger your ship (the load you carry, the goals you have, the members you have on your crew) the bigger the waves you create and have to face (monetary loss, legal work, business operations, HR issues, and clients etc.) which could tip over you ship at any time. We were growing exponentially from ideas to clients, which also meant we had to put out more money for necessities to keep business operations afloat. At this time, I was stressed with potentially having to let team members go, which pushes us back on those said ideas and clients or I would have to pivot and change our price structures again to better compliment our operations, however, that detracts the clientele that we have.

Often times when I’m here, I feel like I’m placed at a split street where I have to put my Founder hat on and make a decision that best benefits the business and team. I talk to a lot of people, but I’m getting mixed reviews or mixed thoughts. Some people just really don’t understand your business the way you do.

I waited it out which caused delays on projects and it affected my mental health since it was a constant stress in the back of my mind. That in turn affected our relationship with our clients, which then in turn affected the revenue that came in.

In this, I decided it’s important to bite the bullet and take action. I relooked at my values as a business and communicated with my team what was going on. I gave options in terms of solutions and how we can make it out of the hole.

I think it’s important to acknowledge you’re going through that process and then DO SOMETHING about it. I’ve been experimenting over the past few months on coping methods that will help me get out of “that funk”. It all starts at thinking about the “why” you started and thinking about the goals you had when you started.

Sometimes that’s enough for me to kick back into business mode and push 110%. Other times, it doesn’t work and that’s ok. I think it’s important to recognize that the business journey is not at all perfect and that things that may have worked for you, will start to die out and you have to pivot and relight your own passions.

Other methods I suggest is:

Looking back at your own wins. Big or small, write them down, have them physically in front of you so you can always reference when you’re down. Being able to see those wins will help relight some of that passion.

Take a break! While taking a break for me in my story pushed us back, but it’s definitely needed and it may be the universe telling you to stop and clear your head. By clearing out the noise of day-to-day operations you may find yourself some clarity that you weren’t able to see.

Go see family, friends, whoever you feel like is your support circle. I was fortunate to be have a space of escape where it gave me clarity during the time. If anything my support circle relit a lot of my passions because they told me “You’ve been around for 4 years, you must’ve been doing something right. It’s ok to pivot”

Consume new media and manifest! I’m a believer of “If you look good, you feel good” By consuming new media (I started attending webinars, new cohorts, youtube interviews, or just simple content that surrounded around business but not intense like a course), it’s almost like putting on a really good outfit that you feel good in. It then propels you to match that energy and feel good about yourself and in turn, do good in your endeavor.

Tammy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a non-traditional Graphic Designer, as in I’ve never learned it as a skill traditionally in school. I kind of picked up the skills in high school and kept building it through internships and college which resulted to me opening it as an agency after 8 years of working independent as a freelancer.

In mixture, I saw that the freelance community was always in some weird struggle. How do I price? How do I get clients? How do I start? How do I even operate a business? I saw those issues and realized, I wanted to be a resource. I’ve always enjoyed being the “go-to” or basically an encyclopedia that just kind of knows a little a bout a lot of different topics. So I created The Creative Folks – which started off as a blog where we wrote about the freelance & creative journey. From there ideas snowballed, partnerships snowballed, which now created a division in our company which focuses on making resourceful content in creative ways: podcasts, workshops, events, partnerships etc. with an overall goal to bridge creators to the business world.

To bring the two worlds together, I transformed The Creative Folks to be a hybrid styled company where we have our agency team and our content team. Agency team members work with our clients and their work, while content team members focus on making content.

In all of this, I take a lot of pride in being able to pay team members to create content as that’s also a constant struggle in the content curator community to not get paid for their work. Through this, we’re able to build a network of creatives and in turn create even bigger projects in the future.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Our biggest project that was done and completed within less than a week was our Stop Asian Hate campaign that was launched immediately after the Atlanta Spa Shootings (March 16, 2021). Atlanta being our headquarter and home town, also driving by the Spa almost everyday as a local, and being an Asian-owned and Asian-ran company, this was a shock that was not only emotional but empowering to us to make moves. We created an art piece that was turned around within 24 hours and put into production within 48 hours. During that week we took pre-orders for the merch with an impact goal of just $500 so it can be donated to a local ATL organization that works with AAPI issues.

During pre-orders, we saw WAVES of support come through, which resulted into over $600 in purchases and additional support funds, matched donations etc. and we were able to add this toward the donation to NAPAWF.

As pre-orders were closing out, we had massive amounts of press reach out to us about our work. We were highlighted and brought into conversations after the pre-sales to talk about the AAPI experience and how can corporate companies be available for their employees. We’re often referred to as a stakeholder of the ATL Asian Community as a company, and we take a lot of pride in this as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

After a huge project flop in 2019, I was devastated because we had planned the project out 3-4 months in advance before launch. We didn’t set up the proper marketing and we realized our footing in our community wasn’t strong (this point we were one year into business). However, I tunnel-visioned myself into thinking that this project was something the community needed, people will be excited, and all that jazz simply because we’ve saw some success around our brand after one year of being opened.

Once it was launch time, we completely flopped – no interaction, subscribers, or even an inch of eyes on it. I was defeated with the thought of how much time, energy, and money was placed into getting it done I just stopped thinking about projects for months. In this I’ve learned time and time again, that it’s better to get something done, rather than trying to make it perfect.

As a creator, perfectionism is almost inevitable because we want our “best self” put out there. I learned as a business owner that I had much rather be able to push projects out, test and see if they’re being received and tweak it to “perfection” from there, rather than go through that process again where I basically exhausted ALL of my resources and time on the project, only for it to flop.

If you read my previous answer, we completed a project concept in 24 hours, launched in 48, and completed the entire cycle of making orders within a week time span. Which in turn gave us WAY more opportunity. In that time of launching, we definitely saw mistakes and went back to tweak and kept things moving in business as we knew how crucial it was to get this project solidified and closed within the week.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecreativefolks.org
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/thecreativefolks
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/thecreativefolks