The hard stuff of building a business as a designer

A little bit about me… I went to school for graphic design. I have worked in different sizes of creative agencies. And I’ve also had experiences working inside early- and growth-stage startups. Throughout these years, I have also helped a few friends launch passion projects and small businesses. I was always fascinated with the making, but I realized that my involvement in these brands is so little in comparison to when I started to build my own.

Years ago, I had a real talk with one of my good friends Karson Shadley (opens in new tab). At the time, he had just moved his whole family to Malmö (Yay to the origin of Oatly) because of a job. He asked, “Isn’t it weird when you transition from a 'rockstar' designer (his words not mine) to the worst manager?”That was when I told him I got a new director role in an agency and I had no fu*king clue what I was doing. My instinct was to make, but my role was to lead.

The process of growth is sometimes frustrating. But these uncomfortable leaps are inevitable in a growth journey.

Fast forward…. It was another leap for me when I started Yung Studio. By that time, yeah, maybe I was a better manager. But, I definitely was an inexperienced business owner. Sure I know “brand”, but that’s a small part of what it takes to run a business.

This year, I am still a designer, I still move pixels and solve problems tangibly. But my role has changed dramatically. I have been focusing at least 33% of my work time on biz dev, marketing, and operations like VC/company outreach, networking (Nothing is as scary as attending an industry mixer as the only designer in the room), recruiting, project management, office hours for founders, talks/lectures, and recently, my team and I also have been working on GTM ideation and content. Instead of spending my weekends going to design events and conferences (like every creative person I know!) I am now attending industry events at Tech Week, and reading Eli Altman (opens in new tab)’s Run Studio Run and Ben Horowitz (opens in new tab)’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

I am constantly exploring pricing strategy and market fit — how do we provide impactful creative work with a startup-friendly price tag and speed? We move so fast to stay competitive, so we only hire senior ICs (individual contributors) with both startup and agency experience, even better if they worked in VCs. I learned this the hard way... the most "impressive" people on paper might NOT be the best team for us. In our earlier days, I am so lucky to have some of my closest designer friends like Devon Stern (opens in new tab), Helen Ip (opens in new tab), Shea Sjoberg (opens in new tab) (and a few more behind-the-scenes), becoming teammates, that are entrepreneurial at heart, willing to let go of “perfectionism” and try things out together. Surprisingly, the most impactful creatives I worked with, are the ex-comedian, filmmaker-to-be, mix-media artist, and small business owner!

We had early clients that trusted us while we were still in stealth mode, like Laura Zapata (opens in new tab) from Clearloop (opens in new tab), Simran Kalra (opens in new tab) from Haldi (opens in new tab), Steph Mui (opens in new tab) from her first venture Mulu, Cooper Jones (opens in new tab), and Elizabeth Benson (opens in new tab) from RahRah - now Knitted (opens in new tab). When I talked to founding teams every week, I naturally learned a few things about how startups work. We adapted the flat org structure and culture in our studio as well. We are able to be scrappy and snappy with our process to get their brands off the ground. Everyone on the team has clear focuses and tasks. We are looking at goals that we need to achieve in weeks, not months. We operate like a start-up. When our clients Lauren Farleigh (opens in new tab) and Zachary Perret (opens in new tab) talked about the feeling of building a plane while flying… this is us. The iterative way of figuring things out is still undeniably true to this day.

To be honest, I don’t love the hard stuff, like putting myself out there (like my "unofficial" mentor Robecta Ma (opens in new tab) has emphasized the importance of marketing yourself continuously) or running trial-and-error loops on pitching, but I am slowly learning to appreciate the creative constraints, the art of selling and the shift of the business mindset as a designer. I think what I am trying to say is that I truly believe you can only be a better and more compassionate designer when you have a better understanding of how to run a business. You can’t help but learn to listen and observe. You know you can’t do it all. You need advisors, clients, and teams to keep it going. We get a lot of NOs, but when we get one YES, we know we did something right.

And we (yes, it’s teamwork) are just getting started.