We were lucky to catch up with Tay “BeepBoop” Nakamoto recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tay “BeepBoop”, thanks for joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
I went from working in tech, to switching to art where I had no experience in it. I spent all of my time and energy pursuing my “dream career”, wanting to work at massive corporations like Google and Apple, I ended up becoming successful and achieving my goals, and I never thought of art as a career path option because it’s not typically seen as “stable” and I could easily be unsuccessful. But I made the decision to try out a new path all together when I was laid off from tech. My options were to either take a new reliable, and comfortable job and continue what I was doing, or take the risk of trying out art and design full-time.
The safer route would have been to jump back into a stable job with benefits and predictable work schedule, but I figured I was at a point in my life where I was given a rare and privileged opportunity to take time off from my “normal life” and try out a field I was more passionate about. It’s been one year since I was laid off and my life looks completely different. For the better!! I’m so thankful I didn’t continue doing what had become comfortable, and pushing myself to try out something massive that was new and scary.
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 moved into a new home during the pandemic and I spent a lot of time in an empty, white, lifeless space. I immediately got sick after moving in and was hospitalized a few times, I couldn’t do much around my house which led me to feeling really unhappy and like I was stuck in a prison. I decided to make my surroundings happy and bright so it could make me feel better, so I started working on my surroundings to make it the most fun place I had ever seen.
I taught myself how to DIY my space, I did projects around my home and essentially did art-therapy daily. I never had goals or ambitions to grow a following online, but I posted my first video on TikTok about one of my projects and it instantly went viral, I grew really quickly. I posted a few more videos and they went viral too, so I thought “this is easy why don’t I keep doing it?”. I’m very lucky that what I like to do for myself gets appreciated online, and that has led to amazing opportunities.
Now I get hired by people and businesses to decorate their spaces because they like the way I’ve decorated my own. I’m not an interior designer, I’m just someone who likes to build things and create happy spaces.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Because I’m not an interior designer, I didn’t learn software I could be using to make 3D renders of spaces until very recently. Now I use SketchUp and it’s been really great in helping me visualize spaces and designs when I want to do makeovers!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
At first my mission was very goal oriented, I like to make lists and achieve things. My goals were hitting benchmarks like “hit 1 million followers”, but I’ve done a lot of thinking on what I want to focus on that isn’t numbers based, and I’ve discovered I want to help small businesses and promote artists/small creatives that I admire. Now I’ll be using my creative skills and love for decorating to help give businesses makeovers and exposure as best I can.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taybeepboop/
Image Credits
Emilio Diaz, Tay Nakamoto