Lessons from long-time makers we keep going back to

When Common Room started 11 years ago, founders Roma Agsunod and Maan Agsalud had already spent many years joining bazaars for their first brand, Popjunklove. The sisters who were making handmade plushies and all sorts of adorable trinkets, had met so many fellow makers along the way and they knew they shared the same problem—they didn’t have a permanent space to display and sell their work. In this interview, Roma and Maan shared that when they decided to create their own store, they checked if the other makers and artists were willing to take the leap with them.

Since then, Common Room has grown from around 30 local makers into a shared retail space for more than 200 artists and makers in the Philippines. Along the way, Common Room makers have learned plenty about what it takes to keep making, building, adapting (hello, lockdown 😭), and showing up. If there’s one thing 11 years in the creative and small-business world has taught us, it’s that growth rarely happens in a straight line. In this blog, we’re revisiting some lessons our makers have picked up along the way—from starting before you feel ready to finding your people, making mistakes to finding inspiration, and perhaps most importantly, giving things time.

1. You start when you want to start

You can wait for the right time, the right experience, or the right amount of money, but eventually, when it comes to that dream project or business of yours, you just have to start. For Elly Ang, the designer behind Danger in Design, nobody else can make that decision for you. In a past Meet the Maker interview, where Elly also offered her own journey from multimedia arts grad to enamel pin maker, she shared, “The only time that you’re gonna start is when you wanna start it, so you can’t look at other people for that decision. At the end of the day, you’re gonna be the one designing, you’re gonna be the one making packaging, marketing those stuff, it’s gonna be you. If you wanna start, you gotta start…. You want to make it now when you still want to make it.”

Starting doesn’t necessarily have to mean you feel 100% ready. It can mean you want to make the thing enough to give it a shot (and that's a pretty good reason to begin). It can mean putting your work out there even when you don’t know if anyone will like it. Starting won’t stop being scary, but you’ll never know what’s on the other side until you take the first step. Figuring out the rest can happen along the way.

2. And once you start, brace yourself

You’ve begun, now what? Starting a creative practice or business is one thing, staying with it when it gets difficult or less exciting is another. As Catherine Limson of Bedazzled accessories reminds fellow makers in this interview where she talked about building four successful retail businesses, it’s important to acknowledge from the beginning that it will be difficult. Building something of your own, continuously creating—they come with challenges and plenty of messy moments. Knowing this won’t make the difficult parts disappear, but it can help you to face them.

For Jen Horn, co-founder of Ugnayan Cards, that is all part of the creative process. You need the courage to share what you’ve made, but once it’s out there, “Dapat may tibay ka rin ng loob.” The response to what you put out, whatever it may be, can teach you something about the work and where you want to take it next. Because while starting takes courage, carrying on takes fortitude.

3. Don’t be afraid to start small

Whether it’s starting a business with only P5,000 or having only a limited knowledge on the business side of your creative pursuit, starting small isn’t a limitation. It can be exactly what you need to learn what comes next.

Nike Nadal-Reyes of Nyuki & Co. encourages fellow makers not to be afraid of starting small. “Believe that everything you need [to start] or to grow, in that particular time, you already have them,” she said. What you have at the start might not be everything you’ll need, but it can be enough to get you moving.

Bedazzled’s Catherine looks at her own beginnings in much the same way. “Whatever it was I knew before I started, I believed that was what I needed at that time. That was what I needed to unfold the next learning, and then the next, and the next… until I've reached where I am today.” She adds that instead of thinking, “I wish I knew then…”  one can shift their mindset to “It’s a good thing this happened to me because it helped me today." When you start small, you don’t have to know everything yet. You just need curiosity to see where your next steps take you.

4. Invest in yourself

That curiosity will serve you well because it makes you more open to learn as you go. “If you want to make it a business, then treat it as a business,” says Nike. That means recognizing your own knowledge and skills are part of your business investment.

Simoy ng Haraya’s Lala de Leon, who’s been with Common Room since they started, took the time during the pandemic to regroup and learn parts of running a business she wasn’t so familiar with. Her background was in advertising and marketing, but there were other areas in business—from supply chain to accounting—she knew she had to master. So when DTI invited her to take part in the “Kapatid Mentor Me Program,” where participants were partnered with a mentor in a similar industry, she grabbed the opportunity. “It was for free [where] entrepreneurs can learn from each other. It’s like everything you need to know if you are going into a business… after three months of applying what I learned, it’s when the business started to grow.”

Investing in yourself can start with a simple shift in perspective to allocating time and space for courses and workshops on parts of business that are new to you. It’s a mindset we’ve also tried to encourage at Common Room through events and learning opportunities tackling the rights of creative freelancers, preparing for a pop-up, or scaling up your business. Because sometimes, what your business needs might not be another new collection, but a new skill or a little more knowledge from a fellow maker or business owner who’s been there before.

5. Find your tribe

Making might often be a solitary act, but building a creative business doesn’t have to be. “It’s really important to not work alone,” said Jodi Aguillon of reworked vintage brand Glorious Dias. For Jodi, learning has always happened within a community. “I’ve always just been been surrounded, fortunately, by other makers, creatives that not only encourage me but also put me in my place, suggest edits, give me advice, and more.” And if fear is holding you back from taking that first step or putting your work out there, Jodi further advises to offer support to fellow makers who are already doing the work. Look for them, offer support, be a part of a community.

It’s the same for Kimberly Tiam-Lee of Pulseras by Kim. Finding the right community means finding people who share your values. “Look for the people and the communities that speak to you, that emulate your brand.” She chose to consign with Common Room because she found there a community of makers creating handmade and passion-driven pieces that she clearly could relate to.

6. Go find your market (but also, it’s not just about your market)

For any business, it's vital to know who your market is. Kim suggests finding your niche, and more importantly, going where your customers are. “You really have to find your target customer—where they hang out, where they shop, where they go—and you go there and you set up there to reach more people who are interested in your items.”

While understanding your market is good business practice, it isn’t the only thing that matters. Elly reminds makers to consider the market without making everything for the market. “If you’re just considering the market and not yourself, then don’t do it,” she said. Essentially, consider the market, but don’t let it replace your reasons for making.

Hannah Armada of Studio Haebi, extends this thinking to social media. How likes, shares, and follower counts can easily become your gauge for how your market receives your work. “If you don’t have a proper mindset for it at the start, you’d confuse it with your measurement for success, which is wrong,” Hannah stated. “Your worth is not about the numbers. At the end of the day it goes back to you, are you happy with what you’re making?” 

It doesn't mean ignore your market or disregard social media data. The lesson there is about knowing who you’re making for, while remembering why you’re making it. 

7. Get help

“We were a bit reluctant to get in-house sewers at the start—yung ibabayad sa kanila, pwedeng i-save natin—but we realized there’s really a limit to what we can do on our own.” Maan recalled how their Popjunklove journey brought them to this lesson: at some point, doing everything yourself stops being a sign of independence and starts becoming a constraint. They reached this point when they began turning down opportunities because they couldn’t make enough orders on their own.

Mom and accessories designer Nike came to a similar realization. Trying to handle everything for Nyuki & Co herself seemed practical, but with kids to raise and a household to run, she found that it was actually more inefficient. “Hiring is an added cost but the return is greater. Time is expensive and I actually saved more than doing everything on my own.”

Getting help for your business—knowing when to hire and who to help you best—isn’t about doing less. It’s actually about making room for the work only you can do. Recognize that your time is one of the things your business needs you to invest wisely.

8. Perfectionism paralyzes

Wanting to do good work is one thing. Waiting until you can do it perfectly is another matter. Perfectionism might look like having high standards, but more often than not, it’s a roadblock to starting, trying things out, or finishing. Nike explained, “When you want things to be perfect first before you actually do something, that perfectionism makes you paralyzed."

Hannah of Studio Haebi is familiar with this outlook. As a self-described perfectionist, she would hesitate to start something if she didn’t think she could excel at it right away. “My expectation of myself—I can instantly learn this, I can instantly do it—that kind of mindset was something I brought to my brand,” she narrated in this YT episode. She realized she needed to change her mindset so she started taking up hobbies she wasn’t particularly good at. It gave her room to experience what it felt like to learn without expecting herself to master something instantly. When you don’t expect everything to be perfect, it allows you to keep learning. And if things don’t go so well, to keep trying.

9. Making mistakes is how you learn (data helps, too)

We all know that “to err is human,” but there are times it needs to be repeated: You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. The question is, what do you do with them? For Jodi of Glorious Dias, making your own mistakes is part of figuring things out. “The best way to learn anything is to make mistakes. It’s that first step, it’s that risk,” he shared in this interview.

When Studio Haebi’s Hannah was making herself comfortable with failure (through all those new hobbies), it allowed her to see it as part of the learning process. “You won’t learn if you’re afraid to fail. What that taught me is you have to be patient with yourself.”

Roma and Maan know that learning (including making mistakes) doesn’t stop once you’ve been in business for years. What they prefer to focus on is what comes after a mistake is made. Maan shared in this episode, “Don’t look at [the mistake] as a problem. Maybe you can look at it in a way as to what else can I improve on my process or my system.” For the sisters, this means considering the assumptions they made and the data they gathered. When Common Room opened Mess Studio, they assumed which section wasn’t performing but their data told them otherwise. Mistakes give us something to learn from, and data can help show us what that lesson is.

10. Play, get inspired, have fun!

When making becomes all work and no play, it’s easy to forget one of the big reasons why you wanted to make in the first place. It was fun, it was something you love. It brought you joy. It’s no wonder that most of the makers we’ve partnered with and have interviewed for our YT channel, know how important it is to keep a sense of play especially when what you love to do has turned into work. “We really need to have that sense of play when we’re creating, “ said Jen of Ugnayan Cards who encourages makers to create from a place of joy. “When we’re genuinely showing up from that space, it translates to what we create.”

Hannah takes a similar approach. While the artist behind Studio Haebi admits that she doesn’t necessarily draw every day, she makes time to inspire herself. When she created a 22-character collection, it was based on her favorite anime. “I want to love it before I make something out of it.”

The takeaway: When the pressure to keep producing starts creeping in, it’s good to be reminded that you don’t always have to be making. You can play, explore, try something that sparks your interest. Giving yourself room to enjoy the process is what helps you want to keep making. 

11. It takes time

Whatever you’re building, it needs time to grow. “Don’t stress yourself too much, that this [business] needs to be successful immediately. It’s not like that. It will really take time,” said Catherine of Bedazzled, who’s been part of Common Room since they opened their first branch.

Roma and Maan also know firsthand that success doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s rarely an end-destination. Their first brand, Popjunklove, has already been around for almost twenty years and even after all that time, they admit they’re still learning and trying to find opportunities in failures they still encounter. Roma’s perspective on time shows how it’s simply part of the process. “Maybe the reason you haven’t achieved what you wanted now is because you needed to learn [a] lesson first,” she explains. Maybe looking at it that way makes time less frustrating.

Eleven years ago, Roma and Maan began with an idea, a handful of makers and the willingness to see where it would take them. Eleven years later, they’ll be the first to tell you, along with their fellow enterprising Roomies, that they are still learning, messing up, and trying again. That can be another lesson—that there’s always another thing to learn and another reason to keep going.