Alright, Yen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with 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?

Being a business owner allows me to imagine our studio’s future and to take real steps forward without having to convince anyone with higher authority within the company. It is liberating. What becomes critical is the ability to create a composition of people with complimentary skills and knowledge who believe in the company’s purpose, are committed to the mission, and are excited to be part of that future, their future.

For the first few years of our business, we were mostly going through the motions to keep the doors open while working on small pet projects in any given year. There was a point where we had to choose between growing the studio to serve bread-winning projects or to decline such projects to focus on crafting award-winning projects. We chose the latter and never regretted it. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to say so. Enduring a major shift in a company’s direction will never be easy; neither will there ever be any reassurance of success. The future one wants often demands a leap of faith.

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

I lead an architectural studio in Dallas known as 5G Studio Collaborative, which I co-founded in 2005. We design keynote buildings in the re-emerging urban districts in and around Dallas, such as the Virgin Hotels in Dallas Design District, AC Hotel Dallas by the Galleria, The Stack office tower in Deep Ellum, and Omni Dallas Hotel downtown; most US States; as well as key places in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Our architectural works transform places on which they are sited and have been recognized with numerous design awards and been widely published internationally.

For two years in a row, 2017 and 2018, we were ranked 31st among the Top 50 US firms, in the Design category, by the official publication of the American Institute of Architects.

How’d you meet your business partner?

The co-founders of 5G Studio Collaborative, including myself, were employed in an integrated architecture and construction company in Dallas. We were aware of each other through our reputation inside the company. There was a time when the architecture group was shuffled around the office, and we found ourselves grouped in a pod of four, sitting back to back with each other. We didn’t work on the same projects, but we sure did spend a lot of time at the office during regular and overtime hours. We grew very comfortable around each other and just trusted each other as good people. After a year, we were placed in different parts of the company to serve different roles. Few years later, a project opportunity arose through a side gig, and we gathered up to assess whether we could try to launch our own studio. It was roughly the span of a full month between our first conversation and the time we sat down in a half empty lease space of our own, getting our business off the ground.

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

My business partners and I were all freshly promoted by our previous employer when we decided to launch 5G Studio Collaborative; it all happened within the same month. We walked away from a significant salary increase in hopes of charting our own journey and making our mark in Texas architecture. It was barely two months into the existence of 5G Studio Collaborative when we received a call from our client that the project that we launched the studio with, our only one that should have carried us for the first full year, was to be placed on hold, indefinitely. I recalled I was in the middle of a table tennis game with my partner, Dang, when the phone rang. We practically had two choices from the harsh lesson in business ownership: Disband or Hustle. I shrugged it off and opted for the latter. Our naiveté probably afforded us the courage, but I’m thankful everyday for the little choices we made since then.

Contact Info:

• Website: 5gstudio.com
• Instagram: @yeno2t2
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yeno2t2
• Twitter: @yeno2t2

Image Credits
Adam Mørk Michael Moran Robert Tsai