Community Highlights: Meet Cindy Lo of RED VELVET

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cindy Lo.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
So, I always tell people that my starting RED VELVET 18 years ago was a happy accident. Similar to what we went through in 2020, we had a momentary shut down in the US after 9/11 had happened. During this time, I was contemplating changing careers because my job had offered packages to take a sabbatical. While trying to figure out what I wanted to do next, many of my friends suggested I produce/plan events, and I was taken aback because my only encounter with that was what I did for the non-profit sector as a volunteer and in my head, I was thinking only corporate work. So my immediate thought was I’ll apply for some jobs in this sector and learn the ropes. Unfortunately, I had three unsuccessful attempts trying to pivot into this industry. My naïve self immediately decided to make it happen by starting a business to gain experience. Needless to say, I have fully embraced this industry and here we are 18 years later. I share this example in my book Behind the Red Velvet Curtain because I really didn’t know much about this industry when I first started, but I knew I really wanted to try to make it a professional career. I am so glad I stuck to it; it wasn’t easy, and I share what I learned in the book because there were only a handful of people that were willing to openly share their learning lessons with me as I grew up.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not easy. In fact, if you aren’t always learning every day, can you say you are really pushing yourself? I always tell people as a small business owner, you’re going to encounter two consistent problems – people and cash flow. You have to decide early on do you want to work ON the business or IN the business? In the beginning, just because cash flow is tight unless you are heavily backed by investors, you have to work scrappy and smart. Wear all the different hats and figure out how you’re going to scale. Then once you’re starting to scale, you have to decide, are you the one that’s going to lead the company or someone else while you work on delivering the goods/services. Once you come to a decision on these big items, you need to stay focus. Otherwise, it’s very easy to let a whole decade go by and you haven’t made progress on your goals.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We organically grew RED VELVET over the last 18 years. My biggest regret is that, at times, I probably should have taken a bit more risks to grow the company even faster. My proudest moment for sure is how we taught ourselves how to produce digital/virtual events during a pandemic when everything around us was devastated. I think the biggest thing I want readers to understand is that we have grown up and we are ready to tackle some of the more strategic approaches to defining a successful event/engagement. We are redefining what a boutique agency looks like. This blog post shares a bit more of our thought process – https://redvelvetevents.com/feed/growing-up-and-out-red-velvet-gets-a-makeover

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I LOVE that Austin is an extremely welcoming city for ALL entrepreneur types. I tell people all the time that I think part of the success that RED VELVET has first hand experienced is made possible because of where we started. I am fortunate to call Texas my home all of my life (I grew up in Houston); Austin for the past 27 years, and I have a very deep network not just among the University of Texas at Austin but also my Trilogy Software days where many of us have now gone onto much larger projects/organizations now, and our network continues to stay strong. Like many, I loathe traffic and the fact that we don’t have a true mass transit program, but that will be changing over the next decade.

Pricing:

• 100% custom but we do have a minimum US$50K engagement fee.

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@redvelvetevents.com
• Website: http://www.redvelvetevents.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/redvelvetevents
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/redvelvetevents
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/redvelvetevents
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/redvelvetevents/ | http://www.instagram.com/cindywearsred | www.twitter.com/cindywearsred