Meet Ray & Elisa from Little Wins Studio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Little Wins Studio

Little Wins, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Little Wins Studio is the brainchild of married duo, Raymond Wei (a filmmaker) and Elisa Wong (a designer), born from the shared desire to use our creative skills for social good. We founded the studio in 2022, but have been tinkering with the idea for nearly a decade and it’s taken a lot of specific conditions to pull us to where we are now.

Prior to starting the studio, Elisa struggled to conform to an inflexible corporate work environment and was eventually let go, which gave her the drive to want to create a more inclusive and psychologically-safe workplace. Ray spent a decade working at a company that was slowly bought out by investors and eventually gutted, which drove him to want to create a more equitable, transparent, and self-funded business. Together, we experienced collective and radicalizing moments from BLM to COVID to mass layoffs and strikes, all of which made it clear to us that our current systems and leadership are unable to address the needs of working class and disabled people properly. These things, along with other personal growth and life experiences have informed our work, given us more direction, and have provided us with the tools needed to build something in service of the greater collective.

We decided on the name “Little Wins,” because it’s a reminder to us that all great successes are composed of many small victories compounded on top of one another. We believe this is how great change is born – little by little, win by win, and most importantly, together.

Since 2022, Little Wins Studio has worked with businesses, non-profits, political candidates, advocates and other movement leaders to help them catalyze real-world change. We’ve also branched out to other projects (like The Conscious Citizens) that fall under our vision of wanting to see a more engaged, liberated, and regenerative world.

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?
Like many companies, it taken a lot of time, grit, determination, thoughts, and pivoting to hone in on who we are, what are best work practices are, our purpose as a service, and the impact we want to have in our relationships, communities, and world. And we’re still figuring it out!

As neurodivergent, multi-creative, and highly curious people, we started off with so much energy and so many ideas and wanted to do everything and anything for anyone with goodwill – the desire for novelty drove us a lot at the beginning. While all that energy was really great, it also made the studio look unfocused. It’s taken us lots of self-reflecting, research, and chatting with other business owners/execs to clarify our vision so we could more strategically channel our energy. We unlocked a new level of clarity with the Gaza Genocide and Palestine movement. Once we started connecting the dots between Palestine, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism, we realized our skills could play a special role in popularizing critical education that was sorely lacking in the West. Since then, we’ve dived a lot deeper into learning more about history, activism, and ways art can be used to build a better future.

Since we also have different communication styles, and work experience from different industries, it’s taken a lot of practice and time to learn how to most effectively communicate with each other. Being neurodivergent too, we’ve both had to adopt new ways of doing business so we can better accommodate each other. This is really important to us, as we’re trying to build the type of business we wish we could’ve worked at.

One last challenge we’ll share – and we know many creatives can probably relate to this – is the continual struggle to find balance between wanting to do good, express your creativity, but still provide a profitable service. All of our life experiences have equipped us with many tools to help us effectively do this, but it’s definitely a conscious effort to find and keep that balance.

We’ve been impressed with Little Wins Studio, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Little Wins Studio is a creative communications studio specializing in multimedia design and storytelling. Combining craft with highly strategic thinking, we help movement leaders gain the clarity and confidence needed to win in the attention economy and catalyze real-world change.

When we collaborate with others, we do it because we are genuinely interested and invested in the work they do. We believe the most successful partnerships are simply trusted friendships built over time, through incremental, impactful, and reciprocal wins. We take on every project with design rigor and gentle guidance as we create something unique for each of our clients that cuts through this crowded world. At the end of the day, we want to see a more engaged, liberated, and regenerative world where all people have access to the knowledge and tools needed to flourish and view every project we take on as a step in that direction.

Our capabilities encompass strategy, branding, video production, digital and print design – partnering with local and international businesses, advocates, and organizations ready to be a positive ripple of change.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Along our short journey so far (the studio is almost 3 years old!) we’ve already had so much help in getting things off the ground and finding our focus. We’ve had friends help us create business plans, other studio owners and execs share their insights and tips, family members help us brainstorm where the studio could go, and even our CPA giving us precious insight into the precarious world of taxes. In particular, we are really grateful to the mutual aid community here in Los Angeles which has been a constant source of inspiration for us as we’ve built the studio. In just the last few years, in the aftermath of COVID, mutual aid networks in LA have bloomed. We’ve seen the community come together to support black lives, Palestine, immigrants, and Angelenos affected by the wildfires. Seeing the ways that people have worked toward a greater good continues to prove to us that a better world is possible if we put all our effort behind it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.littlewinsstudio.com
• Instagram: @littlewinsstudio
• Other: https://www.theconsciouscitizens.org