We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tina Afiqah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Tina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

No one ever tells you at first, that (albeit of where you’re from) the creative industry is a cutthroat, competitive scene. For instance, you constantly have to adapt to the ever-changing needs and demands of your consumers and clients to sustain the hype (while also trying to find new ways on how to stay fresh). Over the years we’ve been in production, we constantly have to conduct a lot of research beforehand to study the current trends as well as before releasing potential new stories or merchandising. If you’re creating content, I also found that planning the year using a calendar really helps you plan and pace your projects better.

There’s also that effort that always goes into standing out from the other competitors. What can you offer in comparison that is going to make the customers/supporters come back? You have to be open-minded towards receiving feedback from your consumers and be willing to explore everything (whether it’s art style, genre, content etc.). There were many instances where I had to work with creatives who were so protective of their art style that they didn’t want to listen to customers’ feedback, and at the time as a leader who wanted to appeal to the artists’ needs, it only ended up making the final products look inconsistent and messy. Thus, it is important to find people who are willing to adapt and to be flexible and open-minded if ever there are any changes needed to be made.

Bear in mind that once you find what makes you unique, there’ll be other competitors who might follow/copy what you’re doing, so it’s about being resilient and creative towards problem solving and adapting to changes as such. For example, what has made us stand out from the other competitors is that we’ve been providing publishing, illustration and writing services catered to all kinds of needs, however now we have competitors offering quicker and cheaper services through the use of AI art and writing. What makes us unique is that we still want to preserve the authenticity of human illustrators and writers but to adapt to the consumers’ demands, we try to work within the customers’ budget.

I think the final ongoing struggle is that running a business or managing a project can be a lonely journey as other people may often find it difficult to understand or empathize with your struggles. Sometimes it can be tricky to find a team players who will correlate well with yours and others’ working style, and at the same time (especially in communities that are small) people around you can also start becoming judgemental or envious towards what you’re doing, thus I found that by collaborating with companies that are doing similar things to you, or perhaps even by finding allies in potential mentors, partners or even other business owners has really helped ease my journey. Mentors are there to help give you guidance while support from other business owners can help validate the obstacles, concerns and feelings you may be facing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a published author, illustrator and musician with a BaHons in Creative Expressive Therapies and a MA in Counselling, who founded my company, Parabelle Studios in 2020. During my experience as a creative therapist, I understood that storytelling and creativity are integral outlets that have shown to help address, support, heal and improve a range of different illnesses. For example, with storytelling, it lends people a voice and the freedom to express themselves. I worked with all kinds of patients in the UK, but it was hard for me to continue that profession in Brunei so for a while, I was unemployed (despite my qualifications). I founded my company by accident because I was blessed with a father and grandfather who happened to be expressive storytellers. They used to tell me many stories of their memories and the folklores of Brunei. What made their stories unique was that they gave me a sense of representation that I never achieved in the books that I used to read or the films I used to watch and I wondered how, many other children would benefit from these stories as they did for me. Eventually my grandfather was dying from an illness, so what came was my frantic mission in hopes of preserving as many of his stories as possible, and when he passed away in 2020, I shared these books to the public. It was only upon talking with the locals and attending events that I learned that many others shared similar struggles; finding the lack of representation in the media which has lead to many having a lack of self-identity, while others had stories to share but no outlet to share these stories to.

Thus, my company aimed to become the bridge that would allow for every family, every individual the opportunity to produce and publish their own books through accessible and affordable services. We also try to provide progressive alternatives for reading through the use of picture books, audiobooks, ebooks and animations in hopes of catering to different kinds of learning styles and preferences. We have also recently implemented other services outside of books such as writing (from company slogans, scripts, songs and jingles to profiles and book blurbs) to designs (from logos, mascots websites, merchandising, and illustration), as well as workshops for schools and organisations.

Over the 4 years we’ve been in production, we’ve had the opportunity to cater to different kinds of individuals, families and organizations to provide then with the representation they may not have had before as well as to help them have their stories shared and their voices heard. Just to name a few, we’ve written stories to help represent our indigenous tribal groups as well as our Children of Cancer and children of autism, and we were recently crowned Women of the Future for the Arts & Culture category of 2023.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think a lot of people in my country aspire to become trailblazers and changemakers who hope to be the spark for change. I had a mentor from the Philippines share that currently, there are 445,373 in the country to date, which means that businesses (excluding the food and beverage industries) will constantly struggle to meet the demands that is going to help them sustain for the long run, thus, selling our products overseas is something we hope to achieve.

Another common struggle many local entrepreneurs face is that locals don’t support locals until they’re being acknowledged first in other countries. Thus, our main goal is to try and outsource our stories, characters and products overseas, perhaps to neighboring countries (potentially in the Asean regions first). For example, for a while, not many people showed interest in our tribal indigenous groups until it unexpectedly went viral amongst ASEAN pages and social media. Upon seeing the appreciation, validation and acknowledgement received from other countries, the locals then showed a sense of pride to be represented. Thus, we hope to give Bruneian culture the exposure and representation (similarly to how Disney would evolve traditional folklores and fairytales from other cultures and them them into something that can be universally enjoyed and digested by all). If we are able to achieve this, then we hope that it would improve the exposure and perhaps even tourism of Brunei. Not to mention, it would inspire so many others that they too, can achieve their dreams if they dedicate themselves to work hard. By outsourcing our works, we also hope that this would in turn, offer more job opportunities and exposure for our local creatives.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There were many times I could have and should have quit because I was already so burnt out and spent, financially, emotionally and physically. I was working 24/7, skipping lunches with friends and birthdays with families only to work on multiple projects on my own. I was going in and out of hospitals due to exhaustion and dehydration yet no one seemed to empathize and I was constantly being told to get back to work and I was still not getting paid. At that time, I had 20 to 30 people working under the company, but for an introvert with a soft voice, it was often difficult to reign respect or control, and even to manage loud and strong personalities. I felt, at the time, there was a lack of teamwork and work etiquette because initially, I wanted to give artists the chance to work in a creative profession regardless of their experience. But from this, I learned that many of them were just in it to hang out with friends or to join in only when there were events, and there had been artists who refused to adapt their art styles to cater to our customers’ requests so almost all of the time, I was managing, organising, writing, illustrating alone. Even my family and friends couldn’t understand why I’m working harder than everyone else while still being “unemployed”.

Then once asked my mentor, “How do I know if my business is going to be the one that makes it or the one that fails? Should I just give up now so that I don’t waste anymore of my time?” And the mentor said “You know if you give up. Because running a business is never easy. If it was easy, then every business would have succeeded. The very few businesses you see succeeding are the ones who never gave up.” The common misconception I had was that if I worked fast and hard, I’d achieve more, but really it takes years to really see improvement and change. I knew I had to take my time to look after myself first (because if I was ill or down then the company would not run) and this meant I had to really put my foot down and select people who would work effectively on my team and still have my back when things got tough. Thus from 30 members, it went down to 5 and since then, we’ve worked faster and more effectively than we’ve ever had before.

I think, as someone with Social Anxiety, I also still struggle with networking and making meaningful connections in hopes of further expanding my business and its relations. I asked myself “How am I ever going to succeed in a business if I can’t talk to anyone?” Thus learned that sometimes, working with others and asking for help (especially from any friends or past volunteers who were more extraverted) really took a lot of pressure off me. Now I’ve got someone who helps attend networking events and mixers while I could manage everything behind the scenes.

At the end of the day, the main takeaway from these mess of events is that we have to firstly, be kind to ourselves. While we want to be kind to others and offer everyone the opportunity, we must help ourselves first because we cannot pour water from an empty jug. Secondly, we ought not to rush success and work at a pace that can be effective for the long run. Most importantly, we have to be resilient and adapt to the obstacles we may face in life because that is how we can determine who succeeds and who doesn’t.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parabelle.studios?igsh=M3VkYTBrZHRicHB2
• Linkedin: Check out Tina Afiqah’s profile on LinkedIn https://bn.linkedin.com/in/tina-afiqah-8b7768217
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@parabellestudios6229?si=XYPx9pnKRL0EgPBI