Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tia Sanderson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tia, appreciate you joining us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

With every customer comes an interaction, whether or not you remember it there is always the want to create a special experience for everyone you come in contact with. I’ve had a lot of experiences where I’ve felt like a business transaction and experiences where I’ve felt like I’ve had my day made. Every chance I get, I push myself to create an experience that my customers wont forget. Whether it be about just the small talk, or to forming a connection that feels so right, I always feel a little more whole after each of them. With every customer I have, I write small compliments on each selling card I give out letting customers know they are seen, and appreciated more than anything.

Tia, 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?

For years I’ve been working on learning about myself and what it would take to build a business. Learning constantly from artists surrounding me, the internet, and friends who had anything to share about their own personal experiences. With dedicating so much time to learning I always had a hard time starting new projects, because inevitably I would never “finish” them. A need for perfection always sat on my shoulders, and nothing was ever quite where I wanted it.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the US, I lost my job. After a few weeks of existential crisis I decided I needed to find something productive to do. Going through the history on my browsers of every art activity I had learned about in previous months, I found the memory of stained glass was reappearing quite often. I had made the knockoff version of stained glass with my dad when I was a kid and that memory always tugged at my heart strings. I decided it was time to take a risk and learn something completely new. I took over a year and learned to play with the craft of stained glass, learning techniques and about straying away from creating the “perfect” piece. Learning how to love pieces that were far from what my brain needed them to be, and were out of the ordinary. Through all of the work I was putting in learning the craft, I wanted to integrate some form of environmental action into my work. With lots of conversation in the glass world, and realizing I work in a very small scale, working with scraps became the way I found that. Every piece I make now is one of a kind, and uses the mission of sustainability through up cycling glass that would otherwise be thrown out.

In the late part of 2021 I started giving out earrings to friends, and family. Everyone was ravished by the products I was creating and asked if I was selling them anywhere. I had no clue that would only be the start of what I was getting into. I decided enough was enough and after a month of giving them out, a million and one pieces sitting in my living room waiting to be worn, I found myself doing a story sale on instagram. I had no clue these imperfect little beauties that had been sitting around were going to be a hit in my community. I had about 150 followers that were friends I had made living in San Antonio, and so many of them bought and shared what I was doing with their followers. After this sale, a small local business reached out to me and asked If I would like to set up at one of their weekly markets. The thought of this was terrifying but I decided it was time to take a risk again. I said YES!

Cut to one year later, December of 2022 and I’d slowly been integrating markets, sales and creative energy into my routines.

I’ve discovered throughout the year what I want my company to consist of. First, love. A concept that’s gets tossed around and isn’t a lot of peoples favorite but if you start everything you do with it you’ll find yourself flourishing. Second, connection. Creating an experience for not only myself, but for every customer who comes to my booths, and gets to have an interaction with me. Lastly, fun. Something not a lot of companies provide for you when you work a standard job. Laughing and getting excited about not only the big things but also the little things. With all of these parts working, I am finding that I am finally experiencing something that is what I’ve always wanted. It is keeping me happy and excited for more.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

When I was a kid I took an art class. In this class I learned that the final outcome of a project had to come out a specific way. It had to fit finely into a box thats edges were perfectly straight. I was never able to create art without feeling like it was never complete or perfect enough to be a product. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic I was enjoying the free time from working a service industry job, and exploring my creative endeavors of painting, collaging and learning stained glass. With the help of a lot of psychedelics I found myself exploring a more free-flowing and intuitive part of myself. I started experimenting with finger painting, trying not to explore an entire image before it was complete. With the help of these psychedelics I was able to create pieces of art I had loved more than anything I ever had in any creative endeavor. I was slowly teaching myself with each piece to love it as it was, in all its smallest faults and creative errors I saw in it.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I’ve always had this crazy idea that social media was so difficult. I could not learn how to use it to my own benefit. I lost the hope of this early into my social media experience. With the jump of deciding to do the first sale I ever had, I started experimenting with my presence in this world. It was more of a game for me. Take videos for the fun of it, throw them all together with a song that was going viral and see what happens with it. I made a many videos of myself, from start to finish of creating products and it was a hit with all my friends. Many of whom shared the videos with their own friends and families. I learned that I had to find products, and content that was the crowd I wanted to be surrounded with on socials. Starting with local content creators and artists in my own town. Each of these artists I found through markets and friends, I was able to find not only new friends but also someone to help me grow my business presence online in the slightest bit. I tried not to worry about the bigger picture, or going viral, but just about having fun while I was creating what would go online. I started showing off my personality more and more online and with the time I’ve been creating I have found myself flourishing. Caring less about the likes and shares, but more about the joy I feel out of creating in a way I hadn’t ever created before.

Contact Info:

• Website: Transcendentalcreative.com
• Instagram: @transcendental.creativeco

Image Credits
All me