Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Tran.
Sarah, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I come from a Vietnamese-American household and grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. Most of my family still lives there today, but I moved to Austin, TX for my design goals after coming down to Lubbock, TX for university.
Growing up, I always knew my career would be in a creative field. It was both an intuitive feeling and a conscious goal from a young age. I studied Fine Arts throughout school not really sure where it would lead me. I didn’t want to feed the “starving artist” stigma, and I definitely wanted to make a decent living since my family was low-income. There was that desire to satisfy both my creative needs and my financial ones without compromising.
My mother ran a nail salon and several sides hustles throughout my life to make ends meet. Unknowingly, it exposed me to entrepreneurship from a very young age. I decided that I would open a business of some sort around my creative skills, and I started freelancing when I was 16 to gain experience providing a service for compensation.
In my senior year of high school, I pivoted from Fine Arts to Graphic Design. It was a creative area that balanced my artistic skills and analytical mind. I was the first in my family to attend university – leaving home to pursue a degree in Business Management. At the same time I attended classes, I also worked part-time in I.T. Support, actively Freelanced, and near the end of my college career, secured a Graphic Design internship in a local sign shop.
Austin is a huge design and tech hub. I decided it would be my best bet (as opposed to New York City) to work in the design field and eventually open my own business. I also just love this city.
I continued to actively Freelance while working full-time in Graphic Design and Marketing roles, gaining experience. It wasn’t easy to manage it all. Some days I would work 12 hours and most of the time, I was exhausted. It became clear to me that this lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, and I started to grow more serious about opening my business sooner rather than later. I directed all of my efforts – from the projects I took to the job roles I applied for to the networking events I’d go to – towards opening Cloud 6 Studios.
We were founded in 2018, and I went full-time with the business in 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. My last day at my full-time job on the management team at Domain NORTHSIDE was on Valentine’s Day. I planned this for it to seem like a little gift to myself for all the work that I put in.
The pandemic was definitely terrifying for a new business owner, but making the decision to run our studio fully remote was the best one I made. We aren’t restricted to only local clients, and working from home kept me quarantined. I was able to focus solely on growing the business and creating great work for our clients.
Today we are still quite young but I am proud to say we do exactly what we set out to do – providing amazing service and design to businesses of all sizes. Last year, we launched an internship program, and this year we launched a webinar program around freelancing.
We especially love serving small businesses that don’t need to pay agency prices for their current scale. I love that I get to work one-on-one with other business owners and help them reach their goals.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nothing comes without its challenges. I faced a lot of long, hard hours while building a network, gaining design experience, and balancing a full-time job. I had no support – my family lives across the country and my boyfriend was struggling with underemployment after university. My full-time roles would add further stress due to things that everyone faces – lack of recognition, extra hours, and patronizing supervisors. Physical exhaustion aside, I had a lot of mental obstacles.
Even freelancing since I was 16, I often had Imposter Syndrome when I landed bigger clients and at times seriously doubted if I was “good enough” to open a design business.
I had to make a lot of lifestyle changes to ground myself and be stable enough mentally to run the business. When we introduced our first intern, I buckled down even more knowing that I was now responsible for another person.
As you know, we’re big fans of Cloud 6 Studios. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Cloud 6 Studios was founded in 2018 with the goal of making beautiful and functional design more accessible especially to small businesses. Something I encountered often while in my full-time roles was that Graphic Design is necessary in so many aspects of a business, but it’s not common knowledge to know what exactly you need, how much it will cost, what value it will bring, or how to execute a project.
We are a fully remote Graphic Design & Marketing studio. Transparency is something that’s very important to me and the business, so we always make sure our clients know exactly what we are doing, WHY we are doing it, and what it will cost. We want to remove the fog around some of the aspects of implementing great design into a business and help implement it effectively.
We never suggest projects that aren’t necessary at business’s current stage of growth. We don’t try to upsell irrelevant services. And we actually operate on a sliding scale price model – we let you know exactly what you can get with what budget you have available.
Some of the services we offer include Website Design, Social Media Content Creation & Management, and all kinds of Graphic Design – which is so huge a topic, it can be anything from creating a flyer to a full ebook.
We’re the most proud about the growth our clients have experienced as a result of our collaboration. It’s extremely rewarding to help someone accomplish another step towards their dream business.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Something I learned while pursuing my Business degree is that a business must always be ready to pivot. I knew this from the theory side, but it was a rare opportunity to experience the importance of this in real life.
Cloud 6 Studios was lucky because I already planned for us to be a remote business for several reasons, but seeing the devastating effect COVID-19 had on other businesses was very humbling. While we are in good shape now, it’s a lesson to me that I should be ready to pivot in the future in case any disaster happens.
More positively, I’ve also learned that one’s attitude on things really has an effect on those around you. I often found myself reassuring other designers, business owners, and clients and sharing our ways of adapting and moving on with life. This really facilitated a feeling of community with those around me throughout the worst of the crisis.
Pricing:
- Quotes and initial consultations are free!
- Website Design – Starts at $2,000 from scratch
- Digital Ads – Starts at $20/ad a-la-carte or $15/ad packaged
- Graphic Design – Starts at $50 for single graphics
Contact Info:
- Email: sarah@cloud6studios.com
- Website: www.cloud6studios.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cloud6studios/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cloud6studios/
