Meet Tammy Huynh | Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tammy Huynh and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tammy, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
When I first started, I think the drive was so intense that I felt invincible most days. I was so motivated, so driven, and so passionate that I was willing to sacrifice a lot of things: social life, mental health, and my time toward other things like hobbies or family time. I still battle this, 3 years down the road but I think I’ve gotten a lot better. Things like setting up boundaries have helped. Telling myself “If I didn’t get it done earlier in the week, it’s okay” and not pushing to work 70-80 hour weeks. However, I do think it’s a journey that everyone should go through. The intense time of working SO HARD on your business to then being able to set the boundaries and lessening the work load and perfectionism is a great journey that teaches you patience. Because I was so driven, it often drove me literally into the wall. I was so burnt out, I was so unclear of our direction as a business, most days I thought to myself it’s time to give up. We pushed to 3 years (and we believe beyond) because we’ve learned patience through setting up boundaries. Some boundaries include: stop working on alternating weekends, dedicate a day/days of the week when you don’t have to work on your side hustle and be ok with it, understand that you sometimes have to take a set back to make a come back. These boundaries have helped me build a BETTER (not perfect) balance for my life.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
People have always told us they love our concept. While our team internally (including myself) had to learn to love the brand we’ve built. A lot of the days were spent puzzled, conflicted, annoyed, and unsure of where our future is sitting. In these times, we’ve learned over the 3 years to challenge ourselves: what do we have to offer for the world, why should the world invest into us, and where can we come in to solve a problem? We looked back on ourselves, a team of creatives, who want to help other creators but also help other people with their creative needs. That’s where our mission, to bridge creativity and business was born. Our team is divided (but works together) in to two teams: our content creation team and our agency team. Our content creators, curate content: podcasts, workshops, events, freebies, downloads, resources for the modern day creative to learn business. While our agency team helps local (& recently national) business owners, fulfill their creative needs (branding, marketing, graphic design). A piece of advice I’d give to anyone is that it all comes with time. Your brand, your logo, your audience, your product, your service. We all start off thinking we know exactly what the business is, because who knows our business better than us, right? However, when you allow that flexibility, your brand truly grows. Your brand can really start to define itself. In the times we were unsure, we looked back at ourselves. We looked at who WE were as a unit, that has heavily influenced the level/type of work and partnerships we do today. We also stay open minded (as possible) to what our brand can become. We’ve learned to not put hard stops/deadlines on most things, instead do the things that we find joy in – that has helped us “rehype” ourselves about our brand.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Our office is located next to Ponce City Market so that definitely has to be a first visit just to say you’ve been! Other local places that are definitely worth the visit is, the Beltline & also visit the cool rainbow crosswalk in Midtown! Eating wise, Atlanta is such a hub, but to get out of the city, I have a big love for Buford Highway and it’s Asian Cuisine. Korean BBQ is probably first on the list (really any place because they’re all good), but for my food sensitive peers, I love Atlanta’s fav: Slutty Vegan!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
www.gurl2girl.com is a great organization that has played a huge part in our business. www.sourcelit.com hosted www.audaciousgiveback.com ; which is a client project we worked on that built our teamwork through COVID-19 times. We worked with Source Lit on their Audacious Giveback campaign (still on going) by developing branding, marketing material and collateral, etc. for the campagin.

Website: www.thecreativefolks.org
Instagram: www.instagram.com/thecreativefolks
Other: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-lightning-rod-62268877/