The Riza 2020 Review

Photo from the Micro Huddle by Nicole Breanne

It’s fun to look back isn’t it? Even on such a crappy year -- to laugh at the insanity of it all. Okay, we may not be in the mood to laugh at 2020 yet, but if you’re a goal maker or a go-getter, it’s good to reflect on the year to position yourself for success in the next year. So here’s my reflections and hopefully it’ll inspire you to take the next step forward in achieving your goals.

My only expectation for 2020 was that I was going to make some changes in my business. My goals were simple and perhaps vague. All I wanted was for my business to substantially look different than what it was in 2019. Even calling what I was doing a business was growth! That’s how bad my imposter syndrome was! The only skillset I proudly owned (and that’s a bit of an exaggeration...remember I had imposter syndrome!) was that I was a freelance illustrator who specialized in fashion. I wasn’t doing great in my freelancing work in that I was awful at marketing. My social media game was lame and even though, in my own awkward shy way, I was proud to say I was a fashion illustrator, saying that title was often followed by the response, “so what exactly is that?” which would then shut me down. I’ve been asked that question since studying at university. I was the lone fashion illustrator amongst comic book illustrators and soon-to-be animators. So from the very beginning of my career I didn’t know how to talk about myself. 

Isn’t talking about yourself key to running a business?

And since I didn’t know how to talk about myself, I didn’t know I was running a business. 

So much noise and scattered-brain-ness I literally felt “what the fuck am I doing and what am I?!”

Cue Jackie Chan screaming at the top of a building yelling with fists in the air, “WHO AM I!”

Name that movie. Okay that’s an easy one. I for real just gave you the title. 

I had bouts of illustrating here, writing there, but photographing constantly -- but I never told anyone I was a photographer lest I added more weight to my identity crisis! 

I had a sense of what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to New York Fashion Week. I wanted to work with designers. I wanted to get my work published in a fashion magazine. Participate in art competitions, sell my work, and so forth and so on. But amidst all that, my brain was filled with so many thoughts! I had so much to say about so many things outside art and fashion, but I didn’t know how to tie that in with my barely-existing freelance illustration career. 

At the end of 2019, I made two goals. To go to NYFW (again...I had a bad experience my first time and was scared shitless of going back and then I got pregnant) and to apply to be a presenter at Alt Summit and get into Alt! When I was selected to present at Alt Summit (along with my partner-in-goals-and-ambitions-crime, Donna of The Ratchet Hipster), Alt showed up in my inbox with the opportunity to take part in a one-day Huddle with Liz Stanley of Say Yes. I read over and over the words of this add-on event, and it spoke to me. I, unfortunately, had no lessons on business in the arts from university. Social media as a marketing tool was on the rise while I was in school and us artsy fartsy folks had our heads buried in our work, too busy to pay any attention to what was happening outside our classrooms. That and I was being fed lies about how making money off your art was a disgrace. But that’s another story for another time. 

I digress. But not really. Because my education inadvertently taught me not to seek business advice, I was surprised that I would be giving all my monies to Liz Stanley. I was even more surprised when everything that my mentors and the other entrepreneurs would teach or speak on spoke to my artsy fartsy soul and beyond! 

And by beyond, I mean my issues with my faith, racism, stereotypes about Asians, stereotypes about Asian women, stereotypes about Asian women married to white men (wow, that’s a lot to unpack)...cause what we don’t talk about when it comes to business aside from the fact that women are kickass entrepreneurs, is that our personal traumas can hold us back in our ambitions.

I cried my eyes out in my 30 minute hot seat to six strangers. 

I said things that I’ve never said out loud before. 

Photo of Meg Keene and Priscilla Vega by Nicole Breanne

Meg Keene exorcised all my internalized religious oppression demons by shouting at me, “You fucking tell people you’re Mormon!”

That actually felt really good, but, once again, I digress.  My whole religious trauma thing is yet another story for yet another time.

I had been placed in a group of women. Strangers. As I let go, they listened. Then they literally huddled around me. That’s the photo you see above. It’s real. The support. The community that was being formed. 

Then I would meet one-on-one with my assigned mentor. Priscilla Vega. I word vomited my “what I want to do” list to her and she simply replied, “You’re a magazine!” 

I returned home to a different world. I was weirdly excited about quarantine because I saw this as an opportune time to work without social distractions. I would later learn that I’m not as much of a homebody as I thought and not being able to take myself on “artist dates” had a big impact on me mentally and creatively. I started a second Instagram account (as if one account isn’t difficult enough to manage, but what Priscilla says, you do!), I hand lettered my new logo, redesigned my website, worked on a mission statement with Rachel Dorsey (another Huddle mentor), and so much more. Inspiration, work and opportunities continued to come or in a weirdly magical sense, it simply just presented itself and I chose to see it for what it was and seized the opportunity! Before the Huddle, fear would have talked me out of taking those opportunities or to not even see them at all! At the end of 2019, I wanted to see change in my work. A simple vague goal, but it was enough to take the next step forward. That acknowledgment prepared me to see that the Huddle was what I needed to find clarity and to start something that had never been on my radar, an online magazine. With 2021 just days away, I hope you take a moment to assess what it is you want in life and decide to want it because when you’re willing to acknowledge that you are worth taking a chance on and that it’s okay to want more, with your values intact, what you need and the people you need will show up just in time to help you. Even through the unknown and even through the craziness like 2020.

If you’re needing a transformative and challenging experience to up your career game, Liz has scheduled the next Huddle on May 10-13, 2021. Applications will open on January 1st and will close in February. Follow @thehuddle_co to stay tuned and learn more about the retreat and who the mentors are for the Spring Huddle here. 

All the best to you in 2021! And whether you’ve known me for a while or just arrived in this little space of mine, thank you for being here with me!