Today we’d like to introduce you to Christine Le
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Throughout this past decade, I thought I was on the wrong career path, yet significant moments in my life kept pointing me to entrepreneurship. In fact, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur since graduating high school, but I forgot because I was concerned about having a high-paying career.
As a first-generation Vietnamese-Chinese-American, my father wanted me to pursue a career in finance. It didn’t pan out, but I felt I couldn’t turn back and spend another year pursuing another major. Of all my undergraduate business courses, I enjoyed marketing the most because, as a creative person, it is the part of business that allows for the most creativity—from collateral creation to copywriting to social media marketing—it was a natural fit.
My career in marketing did not come without its challenges. Often, I was the solo marketer of the businesses I worked for, feeling alone in my department and trying to collaborate with the other departments to create social media and email content. I began daydreaming of working within a marketing team, and then those daydreams expanded to leading a marketing team and eventually running my own marketing business. As I moved from role to role, company to company, I discovered that I didn’t want to market for one company or industry for the rest of my career. I wanted to experience the other facets of marketing and learn how to excel down those avenues. For instance, most of my experience has been in the design industry, but not every interior designer is the same. What works for one may not work for the other. Then, what works for an interior designer can be applied to a boutique general contractor. The beauty of marketing is that it’s versatile, especially now. With an evolving digital landscape, you need the ability to adapt and respond to the ever-changing wants and needs of the market.
This past year, I leaped and created my own opportunity. I started Say Front in March 2024. Acting as their part-time marketer, I help creative businesses level up their online visibility and close the gap between artistic craft and business growth with digital marketing strategies and solutions.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
With plenty of unknowns and too much information on the internet, I initially made plenty of mistakes, especially those involving fees. However, I began experiencing real traction when I took my endeavors seriously and took an Entrepreneur Workshop at PACE’s Women Business Center in Downtown Los Angeles. The mini MBA course helped me establish my business plan, exposed me to the facets of owning a business I would only come across once it became a problem, and helped me become more knowledgeable about my resources as a small business owner.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Say Front?
Say Front is a 100% woman-owned digital marketing agency based in Long Beach, CA. I help local creative businesses level up their digital visibility to reach the people they want to work with. How? By serving as their part-time digital marketer.
As their dedicated marketing partner, I prioritize understanding their unique identity, objectives, and aspirations to compose a comprehensive marketing plan to increase awareness, consideration, and conversion.
While I offer comprehensive full-spectrum digital marketing services, I specialize in brand development, website design and optimization, social media strategy, and email marketing, with market research, copywriting, graphic design, and photography capabilities.
What were you like growing up?
I was born left-handed, but somewhere in preschool and kindergarten, I became self-conscious that I was different and switched to writing with my right hand. According to my kindergarten best friend, she told me I was “bossy” and would make her get me milk. But as I aged, I became quiet, shy, and reserved, yet determined to work hard. My parents did not push me to get As. The determination came from watching my friends receiving praise for their As. I was the only 6th grader to enter the Honors Program, while the rest of my classmates entered in 4th grade.
In middle school, I learned how to code HTML and CSS from Neopets and design graphics on a Paintshop Pro. In my free time, I enjoyed crafting. A friend gifted me a jewelry-making kit, so on the weekends, I often frequented the local Michaels to shop for beads, strings, and clasps with the savings from the Lunar New Year and birthdays. I imagine the designs and replicate what I thought up. Later in high school, I sold some of these pieces to my classmates.
I chose and applied for the charter high school I attended because I was scared of what I heard about my school district’s high school. I didn’t enjoy my middle school experience, as I was friends with the wrong crowd. I didn’t mind wearing a uniform, nor being in a small school. It kept me focused on my studies and out of trouble. Throughout high school, I maintained a website domain, without anyone in my personal life knowing, that provided free resources to others, such as website layouts, patterned backgrounds, and desktop wallpapers. I saw what these other teens were doing online with their websites and wanted to do the same. Their creativity inspired me. Once I saw others using my website layouts for their websites or blogs, it motivated me to create even more.
Then, in my senior year of high school, I was introduced to a Canon DSLR and loved how it took my creativity to the next level. I was determined to become a photographer in adulthood, and it became a reality in my mid-twenties.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sayfront.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sayfront
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sayfront
