Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Nguyen.
Hi Katie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Born and raised in Seattle, I am the daughter of two immigrants who came to America from both Vietnam and Laos. Our home was in the quiet suburbs, but close enough to the city that we could keep up with our weekend outings for dim sum in the International District. With my grandparents also under the same roof as us, I remember having a childhood full of Asian dishes for every meal and a time where English wasn’t spoken in our home at all. With my father being an artist himself, I grew up expressing myself in various creative forms whether it was through music, writing, or drawing.
I was 16 when I started becoming involved with the local music scene first attending shows and then becoming interested in the business aspect behind it. I was lucky to have a mentor that put a lot of trust in me to manage a budget, book the artists, delegate roles to help the night of, and essentially be the show manager for all of my events. I went on to do similar work for the next 6 years while pursuing my undergraduate degree. However, when graduation was around the corner, I found myself at a crossroads. My passion for working in music was still a priority, but both my parents and I were concerned about how stable a career path like this might be. There was so much left that I wanted to explore including giving myself the opportunity to go on tour one day, but that would have to wait.
Years of cold reach-outs, marking up and negotiating contracts and managing budgets ultimately led me into a career of recruiting. I left Seattle to be at the center of innovative technology and for the next ten years, I would recruit for both technical and corporate roles at three startups. I was glad that my business degree was being put to good use and ultimately, I found my job and career to be very fulfilling. I loved being able to introduce people to new opportunities and help them find a role that would make them happy. But as much as I love my job, I constantly wonder, “what if?” To fill some of that creative void, I started a lifestyle blog back in undergrad that went on for 12 years to document the things that brought me joy. With the changing environment in social media, I also began to lean into both Instagram and TikTok.
Today, I sometimes feel like I’m living two lives. The first is as an established recruiter in tech as a corporate professional and the second is as an internet girl who gets to show a side of her that she hopes her colleagues at work never get to see! I would love to someday marry the two, but for now, I don’t mind splitting my time as they both make me happy.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Never! Some of the challenges I faced back then are still ones that I deal with today and some have transformed into other obstacles.
At the top of my list is time. There is never enough time for me to do everything. By giving myself to both sides of my life – the career and the social media aspect of it, I feel like I’m able to keep the lights on, but not go beyond that. When the blog was doing well, I wanted to continue to build on its success. Other influencers were able to grow their followings further by monetizing and utilizing affiliate links, but I needed my full-time job to pay my rent and live independently in a new city. Not being able to do these things for my blog and my brand felt like I wasn’t growing and instead watching everyone else around me reach the success I dreamed of.
And in both realms, there is, of course, imposter syndrome. If I was spending my time in both, was I ever really excelling in anything? It’s one of the reasons why whenever I hear the term “niche down,” I’m slightly triggered because that’s the advice that everyone gives that I never take. I’m someone that has always enjoyed many things and I like being in control of my own content. I know that it’s not for everyone and that I might be better off if I could be someone that was trusted in one area, but I like to remain flexible and open.
I would love to be that person that says that I’m not at all impacted by online hate and criticism, but I’m still very much a human that is bothered by it. I can’t help but read through all my comments and even if there’s one bad comment in a sea of positive ones, the negative one will stick. In order to build a community online, there is a level of being vulnerable and putting yourself out there. When someone criticizes your story or tries to hurt you with their words when you’re sharing something personal, it feels awful. More recently, friends of mine will see these comments and reach out to express their concern for me. I hate this feeling. It’s difficult enough for me to have to deal with this on my own, but I don’t want my friends to have to witness this either. Moderation tools can only do so much, but for now we’ll just develop thicker skin.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I grew up being a kid that loved all things pop culture. In our household, we loved music, food, television and film so it felt like that was a constant in my life. When I got to college, I was sure I would meet other people that shared the same interests as me, but that didn’t really happen! At least in the beginning, it wasn’t easy. I would talk to my classmates about all the things I found interesting in lifestyle, but no one could relate. I was keep up with so many blogs at that time from Oh Joy! Rumi Neely at Fashion Toast, Susie Bubble, and Aimee Song just to name a few and I wanted to start my own. It was mainly for myself to document all the things I found fascinating at the time, but I was a college student with a lot of time on my hands and if the blog happened to spread wider than that, I wasn’t going to be upset.
We captured everything from food, music, fashion, lifestyle, design, Seattle (where I was living at the time) and just the silly parts about college life. Other students would see people they recognized in photos and suddenly it became a blog that heavily featured parts of our campus and our neighborhood. Prior to me even becoming a recruiter professionally, I always had an interest in different jobs so I cold-reached out to people that had interesting careers and interviewed them for my blog like former MTV News journalist, SuChin Pak! We also had a post get picked up Perez Hilton which brought some virality to the blog. For a while, I did the whole influencer thing. Sponsored posts, product gifting, invites to events, all of it as a college student and post-grad seemed surreal, but I recognized that some of it didn’t feel as authentic to me.
I decided to take a step back and the pandemic was the reset that I needed. I stopped posting to the blog just to post and strived to be more intentional which meant longer form pieces that were personal to me. We put a pause completely on partnerships because I felt like at that point, I was just accumulating things in my small San Francisco apartment and I was also creating content without getting much in return or being paid. Like most people, I finally downloaded TikTok to see what it was all about and taught myself how to edit. I never considered video and YouTube vlogging felt daunting to me, but it also didn’t seem like blogs were growing anymore. People’s attention spans were lessoning and I needed to adapt to the new environment.
TikTok allowed me to try different things and because less people I knew were following me on the platform, I wasn’t afraid of being judged as much by strangers. We tried the trending dances and when I accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to be Charli D’Amelio and started making content based off things I already knew vs. trying to fit into a mold, things improved. A friend suggested to me that I make a series around recruiting and career advice because these were themes that people were always going to be interested in and they were relatable. This was the chance to merge the two things in my life together finally and it re-energized both my content and how I felt about my own job.
These days, my TikTok reminds me so much of my blog except this time, I’m more of the face and less behind the scenes. In two years, we’ve gotten much more comfortable on camera, but at times, it still feels nerve-wracking to put myself out there especially when I can’t control what the algorithm wants to surface to other users. We haven’t niched down and instead the topics I focus on today feel more mature. We’ve grown up a bit! I still want to help others by sharing more about my field and giving career advice, but I’m passionate about sharing the stories of the AAPI community and continuing to share my own experiences. I remember those times where I had just been embarrassed being me or not liking the way that I looked. I never want anyone to feel that way as they are growing up and I’m excited that now in 2022, we are celebrating Asian joy as a community. A younger version of me wished I had an outlet like this and one that might connect me to others that felt the same way as I did. It’s important to me to continue amplifying the voices of the Asian American community. Instead of promoting products like I used to, I’d like to focus my energy on creating content that brings people together in our community.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Consistency is key.
Being a content creator is often very glamorized. There’s money in this industry and it can be a form of status to receive invites or gifts. New startups are being created every day because they know how big this market can be and they want to be a part of it. Aspiring creators have an idea but get burnt out quickly because they can’t succeed on just one idea. Maybe they’ve reached a viral moment, but they have to have 10 more pieces after that ready to go and always be thinking about content. Most people do this because they believe going viral is everything, but that moment is fleeting.
I read something a long time ago when I was first starting my blog that most people give up on their blogs after 26 days. I’m proud that we kept it going for 12 years. It wasn’t easy. I think back to all the times I spent working on my blog, editing, reading posts, getting inspiration for content, transcribing interviews, taking photos, etc and what I could’ve been doing with that time. I rarely took days off from my blog. We posted nearly every day after a day of classes or a full day of work and I had little to no help for many years. There were always tradeoffs, but now when I look at where I am today, I realize that the many years of blogging experience have prepared me for where I am now and developing this next chapter. I don’t feel burdened for posting on different platforms every day and I’ve gotten used to filming and batching up all of my content intro drafts.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katieyowyow/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@katieyowyow
