From Hobbyist to Business Owner: Empowering Women Through Creative Content with Dele Nguyen

In this episode of The Kindling Project podcast, Melissa Halpin interviews Dele Nguyen, a creative entrepreneur specializing in content creation and digital marketing. They discuss Dele's journey from being a college dropout to establishing her own agency, Nguyen Creative. The conversation delves into the challenges of client management, the importance of pricing and value, and the dynamics of collaborations in the creative industry. They also explore the impact of social media on business and the psychology behind content consumption. Dele shares her insights on setting boundaries with clients and the significance of knowing one's target audience. The episode concludes with a discussion on future aspirations and the evolving landscape of digital marketing.

• Dele's entrepreneurial journey began in the music industry.

• Starting with free work can help build a client base.

• Pricing strategy is crucial for attracting clients.

• Building rapport with clients enhances business relationships.

• Social media should be a tool, not a life-consuming task.

Connect with Dele!

https://www.instagram.com/nguyenncreative/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dele-nguyen-6a0638279

Listen to the full episode:

• Transcript

  Melissa Halpin (00:01.893)
  Hey, welcome back to The Kindling Project podcast. My guest today, Dele Nguyen, is a new friend and a new collaborator with me. She recently started working on some client work at my agency with Memora and she has her own agency, Nguyen Creative, and she is creating just really, really compelling social media content that I feel has a voice and has a mission and...
  
  has a sensitivity to women and where we are right now in our society and I felt like this would be a great conversation to have today. Welcome, Dele
  
  Dele Nguyen (00:40.433)
  Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be finally a part of the Kindling Project officially officially.
  
  Melissa Halpin (00:45.677)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we shot some content together for the Kindling Project that I really have used only a little bit. if you're longtime follower, if you belong to our Facebook group, if you've checked out the website recently, some of the new photos were shot by Dele. And they're just beautiful. Yeah, she really just knows how to capture women and community.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:08.718)
  Thank you.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:10.211)
  Yeah, yeah, so why don't you tell people how you got onto this journey of content creation? Where did you start?
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:16.235)
  Absolutely. So would say this whole entrepreneurial journey that led me to content creation and digital marketing started way back. So I was homeschooled. Actually, let's backtrack a little bit. I was homeschooled for my whole school career, and I'm a college dropout. So I did what any college dropout would do, and I started partying.
  
  and going out with my friends and I soon became a club promoter, which led me to the music industry, the underground music industry of Detroit. And I was promoting for them, I was taking photos, and then I was leading sales. And I think that was the place that kind of birthed the love for art, but most importantly, business, because I was working for a startup.
  
  Melissa Halpin (02:00.335)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (02:06.323)
  in the music industry and it really just showed me the logistics of things, what's needed, kind of, they were self marketing at the time so they were doing it all in house themselves so it was just very interesting to see what all went into it and I was like, I could do this. Obviously it's not easy but it looked easy to me at the time and so I was like, this is something I could do. And then my journey in the entertainment industry stopped maybe
  
  Melissa Halpin (02:23.578)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (02:36.747)
  uh like 2020 maybe yeah but it was like i think i was at that point i was like 20 and i i was like okay it's it's time to get my life together so i was working these nine to fives um but i still had like the photography um i was doing it as a hobby it was just a hobby um and at one point
  
  Melissa Halpin (02:40.771)
  Yeah, well, everything's tapped, right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (03:03.37)
  And I can't really pinpoint. I was thinking about this earlier. I can't really pinpoint it, but I was like I can do this like I can do this myself For myself and so I just started creating for others and I actually went to Detroit demo day Which is like I love Detroit. I love pitch pitch nights pitch events Detroit demo day and that was another pivotal point where I was like
  
  startups need, like who's my target audience, who needs this, how can I help? And so that was just another awakening moment of like, okay, these are my people and these are my skill sets and they go hand in hand, they go perfectly together. I think I was just so stuck on because of where I started that I had to be street photography, that it had to be, you know, moody portraits, that it had to be stage concert stuff. And I was like, that's not what I want to do. So I just pivoted a little bit and I haven't looked back since it's been about
  
  Melissa Halpin (03:37.978)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (03:58.601)
  10 years altogether, but it's maybe five or six solid years working with startup businesses and personal brands.
  
  Melissa Halpin (04:00.869)
  Wow.
  
  Melissa Halpin (04:08.665)
  Yeah, I mean that's how I...
  
  That's how I found out about you, heard about you, is the work that you were doing with personal brands. I really know a lot about how hard that work is, especially in Detroit. mean, Detroit is cool. And I love Detroit. And I came back to Detroit in 2015. But I grew up here, even though I started my business in San Francisco. And I was gone for almost a decade. When I came back to Detroit, I also
  
  started doing Motor City match work and doing work with entrepreneurs and startup businesses and it's really rewarding in my experience, but it's also and you can confirm or deny. It's really tough. It's really tough. It's really scrappy. You're trying to do your best job for them and they're trying to grow a business at the same time and the funds are low and it's and and and I just
  
  I kind of was watching this work that you're doing and I really felt like here's this young woman, this young creative director who is maybe coming up, I don't know, 15, 20 years behind me and she's got so much figured out in that space that eventually, I don't know if it was because of natural growth or exhaustion, I don't take so many of those entrepreneur clients anymore. I'm tending to work for corporations and foundations and funds these days.
  
  And I do have some small businesses and some passion projects and I tend to go for small business women that they have a mission that resonates with me. So I'm editing that work out and then I see you're in this mode of doing all that work and doing it so well and I'm kind of curious, how did you evolve? Did it just come to you naturally? Were there some hard lessons that you had to?
  
  Dele Nguyen (06:02.278)
  Absolutely.
  
  Melissa Halpin (06:03.299)
  set some boundaries, you had to qualify these folks. How are you really pulling this off is my big question to you.
  
  Dele Nguyen (06:13.798)
  There are several things, but one is, so at the very very beginning I did a lot of stuff for free. Did a lot of stuff for free. I was still working nine to five so I knew this wasn't gonna be my main source of income anyway. I was still transitioning out of hobby mode. Free didn't really like, it really didn't phase me. So I did a lot of free work at first and then I transitioned.
  
  Melissa Halpin (06:22.222)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (06:29.646)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (06:33.615)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (06:43.525)
  At one point in time, was very much known, this was during the pandemic, very much known for having the cheapest prices in the city. So at first it was free, then I was doing 30 minute shoots for $25. Then was doing 60 minute shoots for $50. And so that was once I, and I have this rule of thumb, and this doesn't matter your price point or anything, if you're just starting out, always say,
  
  Melissa Halpin (06:50.373)
  Mmm, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (07:04.815)
  Wow.
  
  Dele Nguyen (07:13.764)
  Please five clients. Whether it's free or you're charging them full price, whatever. If you can make five clients happy, they're gonna go off and tell their friends and tell their friends and tell their friends. And so if you can just really wow a small group of people and just do everything in your power to just impress and give them the deliverables that they want, whatever, it will take off from there. So then my price point in addition to that, my price point was really, really low.
  
  Melissa Halpin (07:16.121)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (07:44.76)
  I was getting booked. Like it was the pandemic. People had their stimulus checks. They were starting new businesses and they were like, and her price point is so freaking low. And so I was booked and busy and I was looking at other photographers and they weren't being booked and busy. But then there was this narrative online of like, charge your worth, don't charge small because then you're going to have problems. I didn't have problems.
  
  Melissa Halpin (07:54.17)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (08:09.443)
  with clients and my low prices until honestly the last couple of years. And for those reasons, I'm not quite sure just yet. But the low price point was really what hooked people. And then my third thing is rapport. I think a lot of photographers in the city are missing the rapport with their clients. And I've been in customer service since I was 16. And so
  
  Melissa Halpin (08:34.297)
  bright.
  
  Dele Nguyen (08:38.647)
  that business side of things, really making sure people feel the brand trust, making sure they understand like they're getting exactly, know, I'm promoting exactly what I'm able to offer. When I wasn't that good, the prices were low for that reason and I was very transparent. Yep. Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (08:45.423)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (08:54.437)
  Right. Right. It's capacity building. I mean, really they're investing in your growth. You're investing in their growth. Yeah. Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (09:01.566)
  Right. So it was kind of trial and error for all of us because I was at that point, I was working with a lot of influencers, a lot of influencers that were just trying to be seen and I was trying to be seen too. So it's kind of like this, this, this unspoken understanding of like, this is trial and error for both of us. We're just trying to see where it goes. and then they ended up doing really well. And then I started taking on more small businesses. I had a couple of big clients that really transitioned me into working with businesses more so because
  
  started out with heavy influencers. Now I work with less influencers, more small businesses. So I worked for a couple of restaurants. I worked for a woman in tech who was very well known at the time. And so that kind of helped build my clientele as well. And we also, I'm very lucky, we live in a city where, and I learned this in the entertainment industry as well, we live in a very clout seeking community where
  
  Melissa Halpin (09:38.872)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (10:00.345)
  We do.
  
  Dele Nguyen (10:00.853)
  We work with one, let's say we work with one woman and she's well known in the community. Everybody wants to who she works with.
  
  Melissa Halpin (10:09.029)
  Exactly, exactly. That's been my experience too. I mean, I'm, you know, my agency was, I started 2010, 2011. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, 2010, 2011. But I'm very much word of mouth. Even though I do a lot of marketing and branding work for others, my own growth has been very much referral based and...
  
  Dele Nguyen (10:10.528)
  So if you
  
  Melissa Halpin (10:34.883)
  You know, one or two manufacturing clients have led to a whole silo of that kind of work. And one or two funds and foundations have led to a whole silo of nonprofit work. Really just by letting the work speak for itself. Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (10:48.563)
  Yep. And I've been very blessed to have to do that. A lot of people come to me, well, we need to market for this and we need to market for that. And then they get to me and they go, what about ads?
  
  Melissa Halpin (10:58.102)
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (11:00.095)
  Now I can walk you through how to set up an ad, but never had to put an ad out for myself. So that's not really my area of expertise, right? That's not my lane. So I'm like, you know what? I always eat transparency always. I'm always very honest. Hey, I've never had to put an ad out for myself. Like everything I've been very lucky. Everything's been word of mouth. And so I haven't really had to, so I haven't explored it for myself to see what advice I can offer you.
  
  Melissa Halpin (11:02.883)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (11:07.695)
  Blame.
  
  Melissa Halpin (11:24.077)
  Right. Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (11:29.09)
  And so it's a good and bad problem to have.
  
  Melissa Halpin (11:32.673)
  It is. Well, I mean, we don't do ads at my agency. And also one of the reasons my agency ended up collaborating with your smaller agency is we weren't doing a lot of content creation. Now, we were doing social media, but it was more peer-to-peer because B2B clients are, you know, they're talking, they're becoming industry experts. Or we were doing sort of knowledge sharing content because it was foundations talking to other foundations or they were sharing.
  
  Dele Nguyen (11:43.903)
  All
  
  Melissa Halpin (12:01.827)
  benefit of their grand partners. But as we got small, you know, more more small businesses are feeling the need, as you know, your business is built on it, you know, to become the personal brand, to become the face of the brand, to be doing more social media. And I guess, you know, you didn't ask for advice. I just tend to give unsolicited advice. But I do think sometimes one way to build capacity is just to find collaborations where
  
  Dele Nguyen (12:24.061)
  No.
  
  Melissa Halpin (12:32.071)
  wait, this is my specialty. It's the content creation. It's the strategy. It's the creative direction. And I want to work with this SEO agency or this Google ads company or just another small collaborative partner of like, let's bid together. Let's walk hand in hand and let's take on a quarter or a year or some contract to see how this goes. Because sometimes you just decide, at least this has happened with us in several areas of.
  
  Dele Nguyen (12:41.742)
  up.
  
  Melissa Halpin (13:01.721)
  I'd rather have good partners than build that capacity in my agency because what we actually do really well over here is experience creation or creative direction. I can build you a trade show booth and I can take it to Vegas for you and we can have an awesome result. My background is in museums and events and exhibits, but I do have collaborative partners for that work.
  
  Dele Nguyen (13:05.129)
  Absolutely.
  
  Dele Nguyen (13:10.812)
  Okay.
  
  Melissa Halpin (13:28.909)
  And I'm not paying them, they're not sitting on a bench all the time, but they're 10, 20, 30 year old relationships at this point. And I feel like that's kind of, that's the way of the world now. The notion of like a big agency with a big wide bench of contributors, I mean, it's just been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking my whole career.
  
  Dele Nguyen (13:34.748)
  up.
  
  Dele Nguyen (13:40.111)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (13:49.627)
  Yep. and, um, yeah, it's a, it's a fairly new concept to me, partner rating. Um, and I honestly think that that has been put in my frame having met you, um, first thing about was to partner and collab for your clients. Um, and so that kind of put that on my radar of like, oh, okay, that's, you know, I like, I like that. Um, and we always say there's, we always say there's enough room for all of us to succeed, but I think that.
  
  Melissa Halpin (13:55.075)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (14:16.653)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (14:19.598)
  We have to take it a step further and build the bridges to allow people to also win. We can say that and then leave them hanging.
  
  Melissa Halpin (14:24.267)
  Yes. Yes.
  
  Right, right, they do. I've had that experience. I mean, I guess none of us get through life without being scathed, right? I I've certainly had some, what I felt, where collaborations go south. And sometimes in a big way where I felt that they took the client in a rather unethical way, or sometimes in a small way, it's kind of like dating. After a while, you're like, you know, we just don't.
  
  Dele Nguyen (14:51.083)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (14:58.341)
  We just don't gel, right? My voice is about authenticity and my values are on creativity in women and you have a different voice. so, yeah, I guess navigating that is just one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur. I've had it with clients too. Have you had that experience where, you know, not, you know, there's a whole narrative in all the business books about qualifying your clients and knee-shaking down and.
  
  Dele Nguyen (15:25.856)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (15:27.973)
  I consume all that content, those are all very difficult things to do. It's hard to say no to a client. It's hard to fire a client. And it's also hard to drive a client down the lane you want them to go if they're just not going.
  
  Dele Nguyen (15:33.057)
  Easier.
  
  Dele Nguyen (15:44.153)
  Yes, I think I'm both For both things yes for Collaborations and making sure you're in alignment with each other Is really important because Especially after a certain point like at the beginning it might not seem like a big deal But once you've built something right once you look at your business and you can see that you've actually built something like it's there and it's
  
  Melissa Halpin (15:58.853)
  Thank
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:07.396)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:12.1)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (16:12.76)
  and you've put a lot into it, I'm not going to collaborate with someone who's a liability. I've so hard for this. So if I work with someone who's not in alignment, who's misrepresenting our partnership or the services that they're offering or they're moving funny, making me look bad, go, right? Because we've put too much into this. And then for the client thing, this is actually a very, very new topic for me.
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:15.247)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:21.603)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:32.834)
  Yeah, yeah, You're right.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (16:42.552)
  Um, but I'm actually loving it so much. It feels so good once you get over the hump. Um, but as a, as a people pleaser, as someone who was in a scarcity mindset, just trying to build something, anything, um, I'm finally, finally just, just now this year. So it's only been a couple of months, um, and in a place to draw those boundaries and to say like, Hey, yes, I have built something and it is worth, um, serving people who don't get it, who
  
  Melissa Halpin (16:48.387)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (17:11.395)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (17:12.021)
  who slow me down, who ignore policies, who don't respect my boundaries, who just, you know, and so I've been, I have been firing clients and I've been ending contracts and it's sad and it's difficult. It's hard to have those conversations, not knowing how the other person is going to respond to it. But at the end of the day, time is money. And if I'm spending my time, like really worked up all the time, like we talked about our nervous system earlier before we have
  
  Melissa Halpin (17:15.029)
  Mm-hmm. Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (17:38.383)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (17:39.478)
  My nervous system has to come first as a business owner. I'm still a solo owned and operated business and so Liability is not just the reputation of the brand. It's me, you know
  
  Melissa Halpin (17:46.277)
  Yes.
  
  Melissa Halpin (17:51.107)
  Yeah, it's your body, it's your cells, it's your well-being.
  
  Dele Nguyen (17:54.102)
  So if you are making like every time you have a shoot on the calendar and you make me nervous or you are preventing me from doing my job the way I need to. If you are trying to control everything or you are ignoring my policies or I have a very strict policies. And so sometimes when I'm working with a new client, I respond in very matter of fact ways, but I'm just trying to set a tone because the tone is also important to set. So I'm learning, I'm learning all these different ways to set the tone before.
  
  before things happen, learning how to end contracts or have difficult conversations after things happen. And then like you said, you said something about getting clients, guiding clients, of trying to them to where you want them to be. Some clients have very good intention and you can, but sometimes it's like,
  
  Melissa Halpin (18:43.215)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (18:47.834)
  Yes.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (18:51.668)
  If you have a strong enough brand and you are a clear enough communicator with your onboarding and your pre-conversation, your consultations, things like that, and they still don't get it after that, sometimes it's just not meant to be. And there is no guiding or training a client. If you don't get it, you won't.
  
  Melissa Halpin (18:54.66)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (19:08.355)
  Yeah.
  
  Right. Yeah. I mean, I haven't gone as far as like a qualifying survey or anything upfront for people. And I know businesses that do that kind of thing. But I do think as an empathic person or an intuitive person, really having some early conversations, the way that I operate in the world is, it is actually very clear to me.
  
  Does this person feel open? Is there like a sharing of energy? Is there a mutual respect? Or is this person's way in the world very much authoritarian or leadership driven or, you know, this happens a lot with CEOs where they, in my experience, they've now spent a career only being asked, you know, here's all the work.
  
  Dele Nguyen (19:57.486)
  Okay.
  
  Melissa Halpin (20:13.989)
  And their job, they come to see their job as pointing out errors, right? And correcting, which for myself as an artist and a sensitive and a creative person, sometimes that feels dismissive, it feels disrespectful. Even if it's a good idea, it feels like, you know, I spent a lot of time and energy on this and you are just wiping out a third of the work.
  
  Dele Nguyen (20:20.338)
  Yep.
  
  Melissa Halpin (20:42.853)
  And it really feels like the reason you're doing it is this is how you see your value in every meeting, right? And I remember one of my very first jobs, I worked at a museum in San Jose, California, and we were building a huge museum and working on exhibits. And so always presenting storyboards and concept art and concept design. And he was an older gentleman from Pratt and like the whole CV, the whole resume of the creative.
  
  Dele Nguyen (20:54.222)
  .
  
  Melissa Halpin (21:13.189)
  And he had said to me, when I came to him with all my great creative ideas, he was like, where's the hairy arm? And I was like, the hairy arm? What do you mean, where's the hairy arm? He's like, one of the things you need to learn, Melissa, is you got to give a certain type a hairy arm to remove.
  
  so that when you put the ideas out in front of them, they can be like, my God, get that hairy arm out of there, so they don't take out the good.
  
  Dele Nguyen (21:43.58)
  That's interesting.
  
  is like, why do I have to go through all of that?
  
  Melissa Halpin (21:50.839)
  And it was really kind of a joke because I don't think he meant literally, I mean, he really meant it as a compliment of like all of this is good. They can pick any of it, but it is sort of a vocabulary and a way of thinking and understanding that, I mean, I personally don't put the hairy arm into my decks because if I'm presenting you three to five logos, I need to know that no matter which one you pick, I can live with it, right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (21:55.896)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (22:09.129)
  Right. Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (22:18.645)
  And even when I'm working with three different designers and I love them dearly and the work is good, still if I have a little sense of, know, it's good, it's strong, they did what I asked, but it's not gonna resonate with the whole vision, I will take work out, I'll edit as that CEO myself before I present. But I think of that conversation a lot because it's more about a psychology.
  
  Dele Nguyen (22:41.582)
  It is. Yep.
  
  Melissa Halpin (22:47.405)
  and understanding that perfectionism and working and not being comfortable with a concept and an iterative process, it can bite us and it can really bite us if we put our very, very best foot forward on round one of concept design.
  
  Dele Nguyen (23:09.854)
  Correct. Now it's gonna stick with me for my next 20 years.
  
  Melissa Halpin (23:10.211)
  and then they wipe out half of it because there was no hairy arm to get rid of or there was no space for iteration and collaboration. So that stuck with me for 20 years as kind of a joke, but kind of like some good creative direction for young creative directors.
  
  Yeah, maybe some of our audience will be like, yeah, Harry Arme. So it's more conceptual, but it was just a funny way of saying like certain people's egos need, know, their job is to come into the meeting and, you know, piss on the work. That's how they see their role or that's how their culture has evolved that, God, we all have to run around like crazy and get nervous for this guy and he's definitely going to change it.
  
  Dele Nguyen (23:33.543)
  Hehehehehe
  
  Dele Nguyen (23:46.015)
  No, absolutely.
  
  Dele Nguyen (23:58.028)
  Mm-hmm. Yeah, and they almost always do. Yeah, it's really hard not to be sensitive about your work, especially as artists. I think that that's a perfect way of putting it, though. And I'm literally going to be thinking about that for the next 20 years.
  
  Melissa Halpin (23:59.333)
  And that, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (24:15.117)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, and it's not so much holding back, but I know I build into a lot of my contracts that have branding, particularly upfront, because it's not the fast churn that you and I are doing now together on content creation. You know, I think a good brand should last 10, 20 forever years, right? And...
  
  Really explaining and educating to the client if you need to that it's an iterative process and it's a sketch and it's a concept and round one of design is round one of a design and it's it's gotten harder and harder I mean you probably can't even imagine this like back in my art school days like we did hand drawn and cut out and like, you know wasn't digital and People do understand a napkin sketch is not real but they
  
  often if they're not creatives and they don't understand the creative process, they don't understand that digital work is not final. It looks to them something an illustrator or Photoshop or Canva looks good. It looks finished. The pixels are on their screen and so that's my new logo. And so I often even put in the slides and in the decks like sketch or concept.
  
  Dele Nguyen (25:19.243)
  What's that?
  
  Dele Nguyen (25:34.441)
  Yeah. Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (25:35.853)
  and try to educate the language of, these are rough concepts. We grabbed a few shapes and it's vertical or it's horizontal or it's round typefaces, but maybe not this round typeface to explain that, hey, we're inviting you into a thought process.
  
  Dele Nguyen (25:50.738)
  Yeah. I think having heard from my clients as well as knowing my perspective, I think that there's trauma on both sides as a service provider and as a client, right? You go to somebody, like, let's say, you know, a client goes to another service provider and the service provider has really strict rules. Like it's just, this is the final and I'm done. Like I'm not doing touch-ups. So if I do touch-ups, it's an arm and a leg to fit, you know, this project that you don't like. But then they
  
  Melissa Halpin (26:14.223)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (26:17.685)
  us and we're like no it's just a sketch like this is just penciled in like it's not that serious we can change and then they're like well this isn't what i like and then it you know it's just a cycle of trauma responses to to a servant and we're you know we're the more opened you know creatives of like no we want this to be what you want it's just going to take time and communication whereas the client is like
  
  Melissa Halpin (26:22.351)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (26:28.995)
  Yes, yes.
  
  Dele Nguyen (26:43.015)
  Well, you know, still responding from their last terrible experience of like, they told me that this was it and this is just how I thought it worked. Whereas every single service provider does something a little bit differently than the last. and so that's why it's important to like, well, a communicate, but then also just brand yourself to say like, Hey, this is the type of person I am. I'm actually, trying to hop more in front of the camera to explain my services more in depth of like, cause you know, people are especially photographers, you know,
  
  Melissa Halpin (26:55.182)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (27:12.721)
  I call myself content creator, I'm primarily a photographer and a lot of photographers have strict strict rules. I don't. I like you want 20 deliverables. That's up to you and me to get it done. We get done what we get done, but it's not going to be like you get three outfits and two edits like that. You know, so.
  
  Melissa Halpin (27:18.959)
  They do. they do. Yeah. Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (27:26.691)
  Right, right, right, right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (27:33.357)
  am with you on this and I've hired photographers and videographers for 25 years now. And I have a bench of about three in Metro Detroit and a couple in San Francisco that I, like these are my people, right? Now we've worked on multiple brands together for multiple years. But even still, I often have to spend up front time with them pitching a new client because they all have different ways of billing and charging for hours.
  
  Dele Nguyen (27:59.911)
  Yep.
  
  Melissa Halpin (28:01.669)
  And sometimes it's, like you said, X amount of headshots. Or sometimes you get the whole unedited lightbox and then you have to pay hourly for edits. Or sometimes you can have three edited images but you can't use the rest of your lightbox because you only paid for a four hour shoot. So that kind of like, are you buying is very hard for the client to understand. But even as an agency, it's hard for me to translate that into.
  
  I know you well enough to know that you would be great on this pitch. And I'm going to just factor your timing because I know how you bill. Then I have to go and call Dell and be like, hey, this is the client. This is the scope. And then I have to figure that into our structure. And I think that this is an important conversation for creatives to understand. There's so much business in it. There's so much business in finance and project management. And now in a digital age, so many tools.
  
  Dele Nguyen (28:37.329)
  Yeah.
  
  Yep.
  
  Melissa Halpin (29:00.069)
  And this is something I feel like maybe these podcasts and maybe the community that I'm building through the Kindling Project can, I definitely, my first level of priority is providing stages and providing spaces for female creatives. But the second kind of tier is maybe providing guidance to how do you build out scoping or how do you.
  
  How do you get a list of vendors and how do you collaborate and have good contracts? Because I've found as a person who studied art and art history and graphic design that I'm a, here I am, I'm in my 50s and I've been doing this a very long time and I still feel like I didn't sign up to be the CEO. There's so much to manage.
  
  Dele Nguyen (29:50.051)
  Right. Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (29:52.983)
  It's not all fun and paint and games and design and creative work all the time. A lot of times it's spreadsheets and talking to the bookkeeper and running the business.
  
  Dele Nguyen (30:06.293)
  And to that point too.
  
  A lot of creatives are usually really good at what they do and not so good at the business part of things.
  
  Melissa Halpin (30:19.171)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (30:21.45)
  which will become a problem in the career. And I feel like you and I can both relate to both sides. We're creatives, but we're also really good at the back end business portion. We're communicating with the client. We're good at setting up structure. We're good at, you know, know the business marketing, kind of solving the problem, what people need. And then that empathy. A lot of creatives are just so like when I think of artists, I think of
  
  Melissa Halpin (30:24.484)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (30:32.866)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (30:49.493)
  musicians, think of painters, think of photographers, videographers, they're so tunnel visioned into the artsy portion of it, the creating. And I will say there is some art into what I do. There's definitely creativity. It's more creativity than art, and I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all. But I've streamlined so much of what I do now that there really is no art behind it. And that really
  
  Melissa Halpin (31:03.161)
  Mm-hmm. Yes.
  
  Melissa Halpin (31:09.151)
  it does, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (31:18.689)
  I am a businesswoman first and foremost. I'm a better businesswoman than I am a creative.
  
  Melissa Halpin (31:25.619)
  I don't know, I don't know. I think that what you're doing is you're downplaying what comes naturally, right? And I think as women and creatives, we tend to do this. think, well, I'm arranging colors and shapes and light and balance and all these principles of art all the time in my head, just like a gazelle is running across the desert all the time. They're not thinking I'm a runner. I put a lot of work into being a runner.
  
  Dele Nguyen (31:32.323)
  Mmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (31:55.525)
  Because they are they are doing it all the time and I see this I do this myself to to downplay and in this is when the whole charging things comes up Sometimes I feel like I end up doing free work or extra work or correcting people's work and I'm like, well, it's no big deal Because I'm not valuing the art part the creative part So I think that's it's easy to fall into the trap that what you do really well and really naturally
  
  Dele Nguyen (32:13.067)
  It is.
  
  Melissa Halpin (32:25.005)
  is easy, but it's not easy. It's not easy, it's just inherent. You're doing it, you're doing it, you're doing it all the time. You're almost not tracking that you're doing it. Right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (32:34.049)
  Right, right, no, that's absolutely... Sometimes I don't even know what I'm doing and what goes into it because we've put in so many reps now that it doesn't feel like anything. Just, you know, so I agree with you.
  
  Melissa Halpin (32:39.683)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (32:44.899)
  Right. Right. It would take more time to explain the checklist that's happening when you're setting up light and you're setting up your materials and you're looking at a space and you're composing a video or you're composing a photo. It would take more time to write it down than it now does to just do these things. we have, and I know you have, because I've worked with you now for several months, we do have a big investment in this.
  
  that we've built and nurtured in ourselves. And even if it's coming naturally and even if we are not explaining it to anyone else, I think we've all seen the content that hasn't been curated or didn't have an experienced creative director involved. So yeah, that's my thought about that is that maybe you think that you're more of a businesswoman, which you are a striking businesswoman. I'm so impressed.
  
  Dele Nguyen (33:42.196)
  Thanks.
  
  Melissa Halpin (33:43.237)
  that, you know, this young woman has good boundaries and I can communicate with her and we can go away for two weeks and I don't feel like there's any handholding. You know, we had this transfer of information and this agreement, you know, we're doing this, we're doing this in two weeks, this is your part, this is my part, and there's not a lot of, you know, I don't, there's no handholding. I don't feel like I have to, I don't have to.
  
  feel like I need to feed and nurture this baby bird and then kick it out of the nest. I know that you're going to fly there and get there. And I love that.
  
  Dele Nguyen (34:14.783)
  I feel like our first, maybe setting up our first shoot, you felt like you might have to. Right, right. But, you know, and I felt the same vice versa, right? Because you never know where a client's coming from and who they've worked with previously or how their workflow goes. But I learned each other very quickly and I realized we both backed off from each other. We're like, okay, see you at the next.
  
  Melissa Halpin (34:23.449)
  Well, yeah, you don't know anyone. Yeah, right. Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (34:36.762)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (34:41.059)
  Yeah, right. Yeah. It's a mutual respect of time too. Because like you said earlier, I mean, one of the things we all learn, whether we're creatives or accountants, photographers or event planners is time actually is the money. We're selling our time and our expertise. Service businesses are about time. And once there's a trust there, then you're not spending that extra time like, did you do your homework?
  
  Dele Nguyen (35:10.642)
  Right. Yeah. And that goes back to the whole you're good at what you do, but the business things.
  
  Melissa Halpin (35:10.937)
  Did you email me your homework? Are you gonna be there on time? And I mean, I work with people that do a fabulous job and they've been doing it for 30, 40 years and I still need to be like, well, I need to make sure he's gonna be there because we have actually waited 90 minutes for him before.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (35:33.521)
  the reliability, the paperwork, the communicating, the following up. Sometimes a lot of, not sometimes, a lot of times, create missing that part. And so, you you gotta kind of feel it out until you figure it out where exactly someone's coming from, what their strengths are. Because yeah, you know, it's difficult to find somebody who has both where you don't have to hold their hand.
  
  Melissa Halpin (35:40.995)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (35:57.54)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Exactly, exactly. Well, kudos to you that you've figured a lot of things out sooner than I did at least.
  
  Dele Nguyen (36:07.772)
  Lots of trial and error, lots of tears, lots of late nights.
  
  Melissa Halpin (36:13.025)
  Yeah. I suspect it's also the nature of social media. It's such a churn. I mean, maybe we could talk a little bit more about that since it's one of the biggest requests that comes up in the Kindling Project community. my design agency is, how do I do social media? Can I do it myself? How can I afford it? Or I've been doing all this social media and I'm not getting results.
  
  And the nature of it is still very fast and very new and definitely evolving and hit or miss. so let's talk about that. I mean, think that speed can be, you know, it's a good master in some ways. Because you gotta make your mistake and move on. Make your mistake and move on.
  
  Dele Nguyen (36:58.028)
  Right, I definitely say in some ways because
  
  Again, back to the nervous system, I'm finding out that the speed is actually not helping me currently. I think that the fast pace of social media is really good because if you do make a mistake, people tend to just move on really quickly, right? Like they don't even, they see it, and then same thing for actually absorbing the data of making a mistake or finding out that that's not as effective as you thought. Yes, you can learn very quickly that way. And there's a lot of grace.
  
  Melissa Halpin (37:08.381)
  Melissa Halpin (37:32.421)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (37:33.248)
  in the fast pace, but then when you do end up scaling something great and figuring it out and now you just know how things kind of go, what to do, what not to do, what works best for you and your clients and what doesn't, that fast pace kind of gets to you and when it's time to slow down and realize like, okay, well not everything is an emergency, not everything is urgent.
  
  you know, everything's going to be all right, it's really hard to flip that switch back and realize, okay, I can slow down or this isn't an emergency or this isn't something that needs, you know, and so.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:06.159)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (38:12.087)
  Social media is, and I'm a digital marketing strategist, so everything that I do touches social media. I don't do regular marketing, I don't do sales. This is all social media-based services that I provide. it was really hard to slow down. It's still really hard to slow down. have a bodymate coach right now who's trying to teach me to slow down and teaching me to have those boundaries with my career.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:25.583)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:33.839)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:38.029)
  Nice.
  
  Dele Nguyen (38:41.804)
  so that I can still thrive but also understand that, you know, it's not that serious. And I tell my clients that all the time. It's not that serious. But then you see me at home trying to get everything done for the clients and you would think that it was that serious. So I always tell clients social media is a tool. It's very effective tool if you know how to use it right. But it should not absorb your whole life. The whole point of having somebody like me or like you to help them.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:50.243)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (38:54.989)
  Yeah. Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (39:10.864)
  is to do it efficiently so that you can still be present online, but you don't have to manually post every day. There are ways to streamline this process to make it more easier for your personal life because at the end of the day, you can look at my brand and say, my God, she is so good at helping strengthen online presence for businesses. No, I'm trying to strengthen your personal life by making your online life more streamlined so you don't have to think about it.
  
  because it's really not that serious.
  
  Melissa Halpin (39:43.525)
  That's a really good way of, yeah, that should be in your marketing language. That's a really good way of describing it.
  
  Dele Nguyen (39:49.559)
  You know, people are all worried about, because when you're a small business, you have no choice but to put on all the hats, right? We're not in a position to hire out, to partner, to collaborate. We're not structured that way. We're not priced that way. We don't have the funds, whatever it might be. So sometimes you have no choice but to do your own social media. It might not be a strength. So that's why I'm here to help you. It might be a time thing, right? You might be creatively able to do this, have the capacity for it, but you don't have the time in your day amongst all your other tasks.
  
  to sit down and create content, that's what I'm here to help with. Because you will start to compare yourself if you consume too much. You will start to think, my content isn't that good. I shouldn't post anything at all when you're missing hundreds of sales. Or just it's so easy to lose yourself in just keeping up. But then the comparable trends.
  
  And just being that, like it can be a very helpful place, but it be a very toxic place as well. And so I think that.
  
  Melissa Halpin (40:52.41)
  Yes.
  
  Dele Nguyen (40:56.465)
  amongst the benefits that we listed earlier of like, yes, it's eight, know, fast learning, fast fixes, but it's also, you can quickly, very fast, very quickly get carried away in sweat under to the point where you despise it, you resent it, you don't want to be a part of it at all. And you're missing out on opportunity, right? I don't know.
  
  Melissa Halpin (41:11.653)
  Bye.
  
  Melissa Halpin (41:19.033)
  Yeah. Yeah.
  
  Right, right. I think that's where authenticity is super important. Right, don't believe your own hype. I mean, maybe don't have so much hype. Maybe try to show up genuinely. I mean, one of the things that, I mean, because I came from a museum background, which was very much experience oriented, whether it's an art gallery experience or it's a children's center, science center type interactive experience.
  
  Dele Nguyen (41:28.53)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (41:50.548)
  Thanks.
  
  Melissa Halpin (41:52.035)
  The whole lens is what is the visitor's experience interacting with this content. And so then that's always sort of been my lens or my paradigm. And so then when I went into having a private agency and I wasn't doing as much nonprofit educational work and more marketing and branding, I brought that with me of, no, no, no, all the touch points and all the experiences you're creating for your client, that was also the audience for me, the same as the museum audience.
  
  And it's very, very difficult, I mean, even for me, to understand and to know who the audience is online. And it can be surprising who the audience is online. And so when you've been sort of curating and building a brand around, we want to have a consistent experience in our retail store and with our product and with the hang tags on the product and the bag. And when you come to our private event,
  
  And all these different touch points, like when you think of classic brands, like you know it's Starbucks when you're in the store, and you know it's Starbucks when you're at the grocery store and you're pulling it off the shelf, and you know it's Starbucks when you're at home and you have the mug. They've really created a brand and an experience at all their touch points. And then you get into social media, and it's very difficult to know who are these people? What experience are they looking for? And is consistency important?
  
  Or do they just want to laugh? Do they just want to gag? Do they just want a cat video? Or do they just want to argue about politics in the comments section? I mean, is definitely like a Wild West of what are we talking about here? And who are we creating the experience for? And sometimes I feel like, we don't have time to do it in social. But I think.
  
  Dele Nguyen (43:27.026)
  and
  
  Melissa Halpin (43:47.745)
  I think I just have to go back to what I've learned over the course of a long career is it's still important. The brands, at least the brands that resonate with me, I know when I see their content, the feeling I'm going to get, the content I'm going to get, the information I'm going to gather.
  
  Dele Nguyen (43:56.998)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (44:04.03)
  I it's always important to know your target audience and who you're creating for. But it's okay to generalize because I feel like it is such a wide net of people out there that even if they aren't your typical target audience, that you can still kind of catch everybody's eye with one, know, one big swoop.
  
  Melissa Halpin (44:12.687)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (44:19.054)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (44:33.392)
  You can still create scroll stopping content for everyone. I think that...
  
  Melissa Halpin (44:37.635)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (44:42.436)
  And I always tell my clients this and it's probably a little bit different for your clients. But the great thing about being a creative is that you're also a consumer. And you can sit and you can make lists of content that you love to consume. Right? Like that's the best data that we have. It's not going to another professional and being like, well, what do you think about this? Or how should I impress my target audience with this? It's like, no, all that. You have data right here within yourself.
  
  Melissa Halpin (44:51.95)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (44:57.07)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:01.209)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:10.979)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (45:11.755)
  If you don't, if you can't afford to hire someone like me, and this is my consultation, because I'm always just like, you know what to create, what you like to consume. So, and you know, whether you're a part of your own target audience or not, you know what catches your eye and what doesn't. So if I know that I like get ready with me, you can incorporate that into anybody's career, anybody's industry, right? Whether it's influencer or small business.
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:19.789)
  Right. Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:32.675)
  Yes.
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:36.836)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (45:39.523)
  You own a restaurant, you're realtor, it doesn't matter what your background is. If you love consuming get ready with me videos, there's a piece of content that you can recreate right now. If you love, say like mukbangs, you love watching people eat. Maybe you're a realtor, it has nothing to do with what you do. Okay, well what are you eating on your lunch break as a realtor? So there's ways, if you know, that is the best
  
  Melissa Halpin (45:47.447)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (46:05.187)
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (46:10.171)
  Data collector that I will always go back to is like you don't know what to create, but you know what you love to consume. So just recreate.
  
  Melissa Halpin (46:18.051)
  Yeah, you're sharing some really good tips here, really good tips, even for me. I'm thinking about this. I know I also like Get Ready With Me videos. And I know you and I are specifically working on a fashion brand right now, and so it's a logical choice. But I just made that leap when you were talking about there could be a Get Ready With Me video for a warehousing business. There could be a Get Ready With Me video.
  
  Dele Nguyen (46:26.144)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (46:45.381)
  for a law firm or a counseling agency. So I think you're sharing some wisdom for those. I mean, so many businesses are trying to do their own social media content, or they're trying to have the receptionist do it after she checks everyone in, which is like...
  
  Dele Nguyen (47:03.809)
  Everybody thinks that everything has to be an original concept, but if you've never done something, even if it's being recreated, it's still original. Because you haven't done it. So I've personally never done a Get Ready With Me. So yes, people do Get Ready With Me thousands of times a day. right? Like there's thousands of Get Ready videos. But if I've never done it, it's still original to me because I'm recreating it in my own
  
  Melissa Halpin (47:14.135)
  Exactly.
  
  Melissa Halpin (47:23.749)
  Thousands of ways, right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (47:31.755)
  And so you're like not every piece of it honestly, it's not sustainable to create content That's original every single time There's just no way that you can sit here and do an original piece of content every single time you post It's not sustainable
  
  Melissa Halpin (47:39.812)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (47:49.381)
  Well, and there's so few new ideas, right? mean, most occasionally you accidentally have a new idea. I feel like it comes through you from God, from the universe, from the creative source of energy. Really, really, really good ideas and really, really good art and design are always sort of a building up of all your experiences, everything you've consumed, what that society values. There is no real
  
  Dele Nguyen (48:04.627)
  Absolutely.
  
  Melissa Halpin (48:18.245)
  new ideas, there's just new eyes, new lens, new moment in time. you know, one thing, I feel like I could just talk to you for hours and hours. You'll have to come back. one thing that I've really started to find interesting about this, this question you pose of, what do I like to consume? Or, you know, to the client, what do you like to consume? And of course, the algorithm is a whole bit of science that's figuring you out.
  
  Dele Nguyen (48:28.299)
  Thank
  
  Melissa Halpin (48:46.775)
  And it's learning what you're going to like before you know you're going to like it. And I'm a person just to overshare who's, I've been on a million diets my whole life. And I'm always either cutting out sugar or cutting out carbs or cutting out calories. I'm always doing something that I hate to admit. And so I would have told you, I don't want to watch food videos.
  
  I don't want to watch. I don't want to watch people eat. I definitely don't want to watch people in their car eating fast food because then I'm going to beeline myself to McDonald's and get chicken nuggets, right? Except I do like watching people eat lunch and go to the drive through and there's like this whole psychology happening now in the social media and content space of how is this happening? Why are we drawn to it? What itch is it scratching?
  
  Dele Nguyen (49:20.299)
  I'm
  
  Dele Nguyen (49:28.779)
  Hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (49:39.979)
  Yep.
  
  Melissa Halpin (49:42.117)
  You know here I am I'm not you know I'm trying to cut back carbs and I am you know this is like during the pandemic and I'm trying to cut back carbs and I'm trying to do a keto diet and Every day I'm watching 30 minutes to 90 minutes of people making bread like what is happening? Like does it satisfy my brain because I'm not eating it what like what's psychology?
  
  Dele Nguyen (50:01.117)
  Yes.
  
  Are you on the sourdough starter TikTok too? And I am not like, you will never catch me just at home making bread, but is attempting, yes. I think that you do make a good point though with the, you know, always dieting and then seeing somebody do an unhealthy mukbang. We do have to ask those questions of like, what is it scratching? Like, right? Do I like that they're unapologetic? Do I like that it's feeding into the opposite of diet culture?
  
  Melissa Halpin (50:08.517)
  Exactly.
  
  Melissa Halpin (50:14.66)
  Never.
  
  Melissa Halpin (50:33.519)
  Yeah?
  
  Dele Nguyen (50:33.96)
  Like the the noise the asmr. Do I like the crunch of it? Do I like the do I like how they make it just look good? Is it the sauce because at the end of the day if if And and this is where I say is as a service provider Create content that you like to consume but make it yours is you could do a mukbang Of your lunch break and it could be a salad. But what are we doing? We are
  
  you because it might have been the ASMR. Okay, you're eating a salad. That's crunchy. Like, we're going to hear that, you know? And then it's also staying true to you. You're being authentic. And then maybe even when you're talking, know, lot of people talk during their mukbangs, maybe talk about, you know, and I think the vulnerability and transparency is another big, huge selling point when it comes to content is, you know, stop hiding the fact that, you know, if you were to just post a video you eating a salad, to me,
  
  Melissa Halpin (51:05.732)
  All right. Yeah. Yeah.
  
  What?
  
  Melissa Halpin (51:26.297)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (51:32.782)
  Sure, I might find a little bit of enjoyment out of that, but where's the value in it? The value would be the narrative. The narrative is you talking about how you watch these mukbangs, but you're currently watching your health. And this is what I'm eating for lunch today. And to me, that would resonate with me even farther. It would be taking it a step further. But the content itself is so simple, right? You didn't have too much thought into it. You sat down. You're eating your lunch as you would anyway.
  
  Melissa Halpin (51:47.812)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (52:01.785)
  Right, right, right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (52:02.598)
  plus sidebars, but now I'm relating to you because you're giving me more context and
  
  Melissa Halpin (52:11.973)
  Yeah, it's the vulnerability, you know, and it's visual. I know for me, like when I try to analyze why do I like this or that, there's always or often some level of sensory satisfaction. It's color, it's texture, it's crunch. You can smell it through the screen, you know, with the food or the Get Ready With Me videos. You know, it's the fur or the knit or the, you know, the scar, fur.
  
  Dele Nguyen (52:38.768)
  Bye.
  
  Melissa Halpin (52:41.869)
  whatever the textures are. So that's maybe kind of feeding the artist for me. But I know, I know there's like some deep psychological stuff going on too, because I'm seeing what the algorithm is serving me and it's figuring out what I might like before I know I might like that. Or, you know, that I wouldn't predict that I would like that. So that's, it's just a fascinating sort of intersection. You know, we already talked about the intersection between art and
  
  Dele Nguyen (52:45.798)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (53:00.954)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (53:11.909)
  creativity and business and then there's this whole new intersection between of psychology and wellness and well-being and some you know basic human needs that are I mean on one hand I think a lot of us are trying not to spend so much time scrolling and we and we don't want to raise kids that never look up from a screen but on the other hand it is telling us something about ourselves
  
  that if we're listening or if we're interested, it's kind of fascinating. I feel like we're all part of a psychological experiment in some ways. Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (53:45.362)
  absolutely. feel like I am especially, it was, it was both during it started in the pandemic, but then when they were, when they had taken tick tock down for a little bit and then they put it back up, I realized that we do so much.
  
  subconscious learning we we learn the things like you said like psychologically that we we don't know we're doing things about ourselves that we don't we don't are not purposely learning trying to learn but then you realize like especially on tiktok for me anyway you realize how much you don't know that other people do and then i'm like getting these
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:06.189)
  Yeah
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:13.157)
  Right?
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:17.562)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (54:29.778)
  small bits of information that's palatable. And so I'm learning actual factual things as well that I didn't know. Like I said, it's social media is a tool and there's much to learn both psychologically and not psychologically, but you just have to like anything, right? Everything in moderation. Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:38.49)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:42.682)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (54:51.941)
  Right, right, right. Or just be thoughtful. Be thoughtful about how you're consuming, why you're consuming, why you're sharing, what you're saying to people. Be kind. I mean, do think that's a whole nother conversation about social media is that the anonymity of it or even just the asymmetry of it is, you know,
  
  Dele Nguyen (54:57.099)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (55:18.287)
  People can say something nasty and then shut down their computer and walk away, right? And they don't have to face the consequences and they don't have to see the face of the feelings being hurt. yeah, there's so many things to navigate in the space that you're in. It's super exciting. Super exciting. It's like a brave new world. So what's the future? What's the future for Wynn Creative, for Dell, for what's next?
  
  Dele Nguyen (55:28.459)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (55:35.125)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (55:47.873)
  That's a really good question. I spent the last 10 years just going crazy, like hungry, chasing after anything and everything. And now I'm in a place where I, this is relatively new, and it feels good to be in a place where you no longer feel that scarcity mindset. You can kind of relax and breathe. And people are like,
  
  Melissa Halpin (55:50.479)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (56:12.538)
  Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (56:16.159)
  freaking out when I say that and they're like no Dele you have to keep going you have to keep going and it's like I can't take a break it's been 10 years
  
  Melissa Halpin (56:21.155)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (56:24.64)
  There are a couple of different things that I've been thinking about, but nothing is set as stone. One is I would like to offer more digital services, right? That don't require my presence. Cause I would like to kind of pivot to where I can be in the field less. Something I've dabbled in, I I'm not, it's not winning me over right now is a team having a team to scale even farther.
  
  Melissa Halpin (56:35.215)
  Mm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (56:50.207)
  I think one of the reasons, one of the biggest reasons I went into entrepreneurship is because I don't prefer to work with others as far as a team goes. I think that depending on somebody else to get a job done is not productive for me because I very much, I mean, you've seen the way I work, you see how fast I move.
  
  Melissa Halpin (57:07.203)
  Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
  
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (57:14.461)
  you see the output that I bring to my clients and depending on somebody else to continue that. For me, I think I would rather go a digital way and have more income coming in that way rather than paying someone to may or may not fulfill what I'm already fulfilling for people. So it hasn't quite won me over. I have been learning to delegate and I do work well with others more on
  
  Melissa Halpin (57:27.789)
  rather than grow a team, right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (57:43.315)
  you know, how we work in our capacity. Working with my clients, obviously I love and I do well, but having a team, just is not...
  
  Melissa Halpin (57:52.119)
  It's a lot of work. And I've had scale up and scale down with teams over the years. And it's really good to know that about yourself. And I think that's probably why you and I are good collaborators is because as much as I'm sociable and I love community and I'm community building, I also don't work well with others. It sort of reminds me of like when you have, when my kids were little and I was reading all these books about child development, there's this early phase.
  
  Dele Nguyen (58:11.719)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (58:20.581)
  I don't remember if it ends at two or three years old, where you take your kids to preschool and it's parallel play. It's not collaborative play. Like all the kids are around the sandbox and they're playing, but it's parallel play. And then the next stage of development is this collaborative play where they can actually play a kickball. And I sometimes have this thought of like a lot of us artists stayed in parallel play.
  
  Dele Nguyen (58:27.132)
  Mmm.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (58:47.449)
  We're introverts, our minds wander, we need time and space. I'm happy to parallel play. And I love to have a community of women around me. And if you and I can get together, sort of get in harnessed and pull something together, but also in parallel, like that's really more where I feel at the end of the day. And I'm certainly comfortable saying, hey, this part of the job was produced by...
  
  know, Memra design and this part of the job was produced by Wynn Creative and this part of the job was produced by, you know, whatever.
  
  Dele Nguyen (59:24.579)
  when you so i've been doing this for years but you put a name on it that you put a narrative and you called it something when we were first on the phone and you mentioned white label and and i realized after you explained what white labeling was i've been white labeling like i've done it before a handful of times didn't put a name on it and it was just what it is i think i like white labeling for the fact that like and i love
  
  Melissa Halpin (59:45.657)
  Right, right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (59:54.884)
  collaborating in a behind the scene way of playing that supportive role. But the moment our jobs are linked, I start free. It feels like handcuffs. And it doesn't always feel the greatest, especially if you don't know exactly how the other person works just yet. But I really do think that my main issue is the dependability part. I think that I
  
  Melissa Halpin (59:58.223)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:00:02.457)
  Right, right, right. Let's do enmeshed, then it's problem, right. Yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:00:23.254)
  have just found it very difficult to depend on others. One of the biggest feedback that I get about the way I operate is that I'm reliable. And you never have to, even if I don't, if I don't text you the day of a shoot or about a project, if I say I'm gonna do something at a deadline, you're going to get it, almost always you're gonna get it on time. I'm gonna show up to the shoot on time. And I'm very predictable, you're gonna know exactly what.
  
  When you work with others, they don't operate that way. And as we discussed earlier, I guess this is a full circle conversation is that a of people have the creativity and the talent of what they do, but they don't have the business side of things. They're not reliable. And when you're running a business, when you're connecting with others, you have to consider the liabilities. And if you cannot perform at the rate that I am, you're a liability.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:01:02.073)
  Right.
  
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:01:12.237)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:01:15.159)
  And then we get into the whole vetting system and we've talked about how difficult it is to vet someone. You will never be able to vet someone 100%.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:01:15.491)
  Right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:01:22.595)
  Right, for sure. there's folks that I found like I love their work, or maybe I really love them personally, but it's not clicking my boxes for timeliness, or it's not, and maybe this we can, in our next conversation we can address this one. You over deliver, and I over deliver, and you've met people on my team, whether it's Mary Alice or Krista or Maria Elena.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:01:28.376)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:01:47.768)
  Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:01:52.439)
  I am surrounded by over deliverers, which, you know, that can be a problem and that can cause burnout and you have to figure out how to charge for that in the end. But I don't want any stinginess. Like creativity flows. And if there's a constant like, you know, I'm late because of traffic, but I still have to leave at three or you only get four images, but there was time for six more. Like I need that flow.
  
  I need that sort of, you know, the results are often over delivering, but that's not why I'm over delivering. I'm over delivering because creativity flows to me and through me and back to you, right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:02:34.104)
  I actually I tested it out a few months ago and I was I had some some peers around me that is asking to do you know a small task and I just wanted to like test it out and I said hey can you take these clips I had the clips ready for her and I said can you edit this reel for me so that we can post that that that
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:02:48.516)
  Yeah, yeah.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:02:59.862)
  This should have been, this is like a 30 second reel, should have taken her maybe five, 10 minutes out of her day. I didn't put a strict deadline. I was just like, as soon as you can. Maybe before bed or in between whatever you have going on, just a couple of minutes, clip it together, nothing fancy. Just do this so that I can do something else. She said, sure. It took her a week to do it.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:03:18.916)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:03:25.142)
  Mmm, no.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:03:26.685)
  And that didn't sit right with me and that really solidified where I stand in the whole having a team thing. Because, you know, sure, I didn't say, hey, I need this done today, but I also said as soon as possible. for something that takes such little time, I didn't feel, and knowing this person's schedule, I didn't feel like it should have taken a week. And then to your most recent point, I had a mentor.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:03:44.1)
  Right.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:03:53.365)
  And he made a very good point and this has also stuck in my head. He said, he worked in mortgages and he said he would rather train somebody who did too much, was a 10, right? You're doing too much, you're this, this and this, rather than have someone who does too little because you can tell somebody who's a 10 to take it to an eight, right? You can say, like, you know, we're down here. But you can't, if you are naturally a three or a four,
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:04:13.327)
  Right. Right.
  
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:04:23.125)
  It's going to be very hard to make me, to get you to come up to an eight because you're not built for that. So I 100 % agree like, yes, it's not always good to overextend and be extra all the time, but I would much rather have a team of people who do too much than not enough.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:04:28.389)
  You're right. Yeah.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:04:41.165)
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is because we're all about sharing wisdom and lessons to our audience here. This also really applies to bill rate. Really, really to bill rate. So over the years, I've had contributors that have billed me $25 an hour and as much as $250 an hour. That kind of huge range. And until you do those tests, until you know are they a three or a 10,
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:04:52.627)
  Mmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:05:10.021)
  you might be inclined to think, okay, well, this client's on a budget and I can only afford the person with the $25 an hour bill rate. However, the person with the $100 bill rate may deliver eight times as much in an hour. And so it turns out that for that one reel or for five logo concepts or whatever it is, car wrap, we have a lot of deliverables here, book covers.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:05:19.027)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:05:25.267)
  Yeah?
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:05:39.845)
  The $25 an hour person needs 40 hours and the $100 an hour person needs three hours. Well, actually, what was the better deal?
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:05:43.475)
  Right.
  
  Yeah, for those seeking out services, ask for the itemized quote.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:05:54.927)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  It's really let's talk about the deliverables I'm very flexible if you want to bill hourly or you want to set rate or you want to be on a retainer I have now Gotten to the point where we can make any of those work if it works with your business model our business model will absorb it It's really that test that you're talking about if you're hiring vendors if you're hiring collaborators if you're hiring contractors it's super important to understand time and deliverable and
  
  And don't be sucked in. I have people tell me all the time about the podcast, well, you could get a VA in X country for $10 an hour. And I don't speak their language and I'm not in their time zone and the quality is not up to par. actually that $10 an hour, if they need a hundred hours, I might as well just call my girl in Brooklyn. She gets it to me tomorrow. Right?
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:06:49.762)
  Yeah.
  
  People tell me the same thing about VAs out of the country, right? And to me, and it sounds like it works for a lot of people, but that would not work for me. It wouldn't.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:06:57.381)
  Yeah, right.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:07:04.129)
  No, not for me either. First of all, for me personally, I really want to work with women. I really want to work with creatives. I really want to work with solopreneurs or small businesses. I have a criteria that that doesn't fulfill. that's kind of the first thing. But even when I have tried things, it's that whole thing about quality and delivering and bill rate and are you a three or a 10?
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:07:31.333)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:07:32.963)
  What is your natural inclination for delivering and flow? It doesn't work for me. Different time zone doesn't work for me. Different language barrier doesn't work for me. Different tools. If you're delivering something in a file format that I have to spend a bunch of time or I have to download a new software, this is not going to work for me. Well, hopefully, I really think that we touched on a lot of things. I'd love to have you back.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:07:54.351)
  I think. No, but please.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:08:02.373)
  I'm just honored to know you. I'm happy to be collaborating with you. Tell everybody where they can find you.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:08:10.595)
  Yes, you can find me on Facebook and LinkedIn under DelWin, but you can find me on Instagram and Facebook under WinCreative, which is where all my business stuff will be.
  
  Melissa Halpin (01:08:26.597)
  Perfect. And we will put all of those links in the show notes and reach out to Dele, reach out to myself. You can join our Facebook private community for women and start a conversation with either one of us about anything we talked about today. We'd be happy to share whatever knowledge we have or collaborate with you in any way that we can. Thanks, Dele. I'll talk to you soon.
  
  Dele Nguyen (01:08:48.481)
  Absolutely. Thank you, Melissa.