1. Welcome to our Corner

Alane: 0:32

okay, are we live?

Shaochen: 0:33

Yeah. Woo.

Alane: 0:35

Woo. All right. Welcome to the very first episode of Calligraphy Biz Corner. We are so excited that you're here and we can't wait to connect with you. My name is Elaine and I am a wedding calligrapher in Hoboken, New Jersey, and I own right Pretty for me, and I am here with.

Shaochen: 0:53

I'm Sha Chen. I am based in Denver. I'm the owner of Monster Goal Calligraphy Studio, and I'm also a wedding calligrapher and biz educator for calligraphers.

Alane: 1:04

Awesome. I'm so excited that we're finally doing this. We are so excited to connect with you on this podcast and share what we've each learned in our five plus years of business so that you can build your dream business too. And before we get into all of the juicy content that we have planned, we thought it would be fun just to introduce ourselves, share a little bit more about our journeys, and give you a sneak peek at what you can expect on this podcast. So, Chen, do you wanna take it away?

Shaochen: 1:30

Yeah, so I've actually been thinking about starting a podcast for a long time, a couple years, and I, I gathered a lot of ideas that I just didn't do anything with. Um, and I think what really made me feel like. I wanted to make this a reality and talk to you about it was that we were both kind of craving more community um, more connection with other calligraphers. Um, we had a lot of that for better or worse during the pandemic. And I felt like we were really like tight-knit community and I just feel like I wanna bring that back. Um, we both remember what it's like to start a new business and all the uncertainty that comes with that. Um, And how Lonely it can be sometimes. And I remember what got me through those beginning times was listening to other people's podcasts actually and learning from them. And feeling like that there was someone to guide me and I wanna in turn do that for somebody else now.

Alane: 2:25

Yeah, exactly. I'm the same way. I mean, I remember when we connected during the pandemic, which we'll share our story in a little bit, but. Building that connection with you and like being able to have that business bestie to run ideas by get gut checks on is just so helpful. So we really wanna bring our calligraphy biz corner into your corner as well. And just help give you the insights, share our experiences. And you can also hear us bent because we're gonna give you the good and the ugly of running a creative business. So a little bit about the two of us. Do you wanna kick things off and share about like your journey, how you became a calligrapher, and how you're here today?

Shaochen: 3:10

Yeah, so my name's XO Chen. Um, I Actually got my first exposure to calligraphy when I was a kid. I learned Chinese brush calligraphy and I didn't actually learn English calligraphy until 2018, so a couple years ago.

Alane: 3:27

Oh gosh, that's so interesting. Is Chinese calligraphy like super different or similar to English calligraphy, or do you feel like it gave you a good foundation to then learn English calligraphy.

Shaochen: 3:40

Chinese as a language in general is just very different because everything's character based and so, it's pretty different. The tools we use for calligraphy, it's like this brush that you hold upright um, in a different kind of like hold than you would a normal pen or even a brush pen. But for some reason I did feel like some of that translated to learning English calligraphy. I don't know, maybe that's just in my head, but I felt like I got the sense of the brush motion more quickly, and I actually started by learning brush calligraphy before I learned point of pen

Alane: 4:14

Okay. That's interesting. I started with pointed pen first, but I can see how like, since

Shaochen: 4:19

that.

Alane: 4:20

doing, struggled so much with brush calligraphy. I was like, how does this work? I don't get it.

Shaochen: 4:27

Yeah, for sure. So when I started taking the English calligraphy workshops, I, I wasn't at all really thinking about this as a business. I was working a tech job. It was a pretty stressful environment. I. And I was just doing a lot of creative hobbies on the side. Um, literally just to take my mind off stuff, you know, just for fun. I found calligraphy to be really calming and meditative, which I know a lot, a lot of people do as well. And but the thing for me that made it stick was that it was an easy hobby that I could just do in my spare couple of minutes. I had done things like pottery and even like Glass, flame working, which is like super cool, but you kind of have to be in a studio if you're gonna be working with like fire and glass. So it's just really hard to keep up with those kinds of hobbies. And then I ended up leaving my, my job unexpectedly a couple months after I started learning calligraphy. I just had hit a breaking point. It was no longer a good environment for me to be in. I had been wanting to start a small business for a while, but I didn't have a business idea and calligraphy was kind of like fresh on my mind.'cause I'd just taken a few workshops and, I mean, it felt kind of crazy, but I was like, maybe calligraphy can be my business. So I ended up starting Monster Gold. A couple of months after leaving my job. Like right after I left, I started working on it and then I launched it a couple months later. And this was only a, a couple months after I took my first calligraphy class, like less than six months. So, um, I don't know, it felt a little crazy at the time.

Alane: 6:06

Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like that's wild. You just like. Had the opportunity, you saw it and you just dove right in as opposed to like a slower burn it. So how did you go from like calligraphy as just kind of a casual hobby to like deciding that I wanna do this as a business?

Shaochen: 6:27

Yeah. I felt like. as Far as starting a business goes, it was lower risk because there were lower startup costs. Like I didn't need a brick and mortar, I didn't need any, large investment upfront for equipment or anything like that. Um. And so I gave myself six months to try it out. I set aside, you know, I, I did a little bit of financial planning as far as like how much money I would need to cover my rent and things like that. but it's obviously still felt really scary not knowing how things were gonna go. And then I just spent those months that I kind of set aside, like exploring, doing a bunch just. Trying everything as far as calligraphy goes. Learning new skills like creating signage. I did some live events. I did some popups um, where I sold like products that were customized with calligraphy. I was on Etsy. Eventually I found that my passion was in weddings and wedding calligraphy. And so then the last few years I've been specializing in weddings. I've been working in California and the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, and then in Colorado and the Denver area. So that's kind of where my business is today. We'll talk a little bit more about how it's like continued to evolve. Um, but yeah, and then after that first initial six months, I would say it's not like. I was like, oh wow, this is such a successful business. I'm making so much money. So I don't want anyone to think like, oh, six months is all it takes to build a business. Like it is something that's like a long-term play. But what it did give me in those six months was it basically showed me that I liked doing this, which was really important, um, that it was something I wanted to continue to do. And so at that point I re-evaluated my plan and was like, okay, what do I need? In order to allow myself to continue doing this because, you know, I, I kind of felt like when I left my job, I didn't wanna go back and do the same type of job just at another company And so when I, when I put that next to like running my own small business, I was like, yes, what do I need to do to make running my own small business a dream that I can continue? Um,

Alane: 8:36

yeah. Well, and I also feel like because you were in a position where you were no longer at your stable job or full-time, job, whatever you wanna call it, like you had that fire kind of lit under your butt. Right. To be like, I'm gonna figure something out. So what may have taken, I mean, we'll get into my story. Mine was. Definitely like a longer period of time, but I also didn't have that like fire under my butt right away to be like, I gotta figure this out. I gotta decide what business I'm doing, how I'm gonna be making money, because I don't wanna go back into the industry that I was in before. So I love that.

Shaochen: 9:11

Exactly. Yeah. Well, let's talk about you. What's your story, Elaine?

Alane: 9:15

Yeah, so I started practicing calligraphy way back in 2013, which is insane that it's been like 10 years. It started just as a hobby, kind of like you were saying, like I was looking for a creative outlet from my nine to five job. I wanted something that was easy to practice when I got home from work every day, that I could just pour myself a glass of wine and put on some Netflix and. Make some art. And I just fell in love with writing pretty letters, so I just practiced it all the time for a couple years. And then it was in 2015 that one of my friends was getting married and she asked if I could address her wedding envelopes. So that was my very first job. And also the very first time that I made the connection that, oh, calligraphy is something that people are looking for in a very specific industry too. In the wedding industry. So once I did that job, I decided to tell friends and family that, hey, I'm starting to offer calligraphy services on the side. And I was just kind of doing anything that anybody needed. Like some people would be like, oh, can you write me a pretty quote to hang on my wall? Or, um, you know, I'm, I need place cards for a wedding. Something like that. So it was kind of just like hodgepodge here and there. But the majority of my clients in the early days were weddings and that's kind of when I really fell in love with bringing people's love stories to life through handmade details.

Shaochen: 10:45

So in those early days, were you actively marketing your business or was it like more organic growth where people came to you?

Alane: 10:53

Yeah. I don't think that I realized that I was actively marketing my business, but I think I was now that I actually look back on on it so in the beginning of 2016 when I was like, I kind of wanna see if I can make some side income doing calligraphy and like wanna have a reason to practice with. Jobs I made my Instagram public so that I could just start sharing like the practice things that I was working on and connect. Connect with other calligraphers on the platform and also like learn on that platform.'cause I feel like people were posting tutorials and stuff even back then. Or different techniques and whatnot. And then. I made myself a really scrappy Squarespace website that again, was just like pictures of my practice work because I didn't have any actual jobs to show, but I figured those were good enough to get a feel for a style. And then that spring I had taken a calligraphy workshop that was my first in-person workshop at a paper store in Hoboken, which is where I live. And they specialized in designing wedding invitations. So timing was actually like very perfect for that because when I took that workshop, they were like, oh, you're in town, you're local. We're actually looking for a new in-house calligrapher to work with our stationary clients on addressing their envelopes. Would you be interested in that? So that was really like the first like big push that I got into like getting new clients, getting referrals and whatnot. So Like I said, I think without really knowing it, I was unintentionally marketing myself even back then, just in like small ways. So yeah. So from there, my side hustle grew to the point where I felt like I had enough money coming in and enough jobs coming in that I would be able to leave my corporate job. I was on the verge of turning 30 and I was having like a. It's not a quarter life crisis, but some, some moment in time crisis of like, I'm 30 and I don't wanna be at this desk job forever. And I feel like there's more out there and I wanna do something different with my life and have an impact on people and. All of these things. So I decided that that summer, June of 2018, I was going to leave my job. I gave my notice right before I turned 30, and then right after I celebrated my 30th birthday I left. And I have been full-time ever since, which is insane

Shaochen: 13:17

That's pretty amazing. Congrats

Alane: 13:20

Thank you. yeah, so it's definitely like the best decision I've ever made. I mean, even on the hardest days, like there's nothing like. Being my own boss and having that flexibility in my schedule and getting to work with such amazing clients and now other calligraphers as well, and getting to do things like this that we're doing. Um, it's definitely been worth the ups and downs of that ride. So, and I'm super excited to share all of those experiences that you and I have both learned over the past however many years with everyone who's listening.

Shaochen: 13:53

I was just gonna say, I think you're coming up on, is it six years this year?

Alane: 13:57

Yeah, this summer will be six years.

Shaochen: 13:59

And I'm coming up on five,

Alane: 14:01

Oh my gosh.

Shaochen: 14:02

I know. Full-time, right? Yeah.'cause you were doing it for a while before.

Alane: 14:06

Yep. So many things to celebrate.

Shaochen: 14:09

Yeah. Okay. So now that you guys know a little bit about how we each started um, you might be wondering how two choreographers from the opposite coasts met up. So I'm, I was based in California when I connected with Alane and Alane's in New York, New Jersey. You wanna tell a little bit about our story?

Alane: 14:30

Yeah. I love our story, So we met in the middle of 2020 during COVID. That was like such a crazy time because all weddings had been postponed or canceled, and I feel like we were all just like floating around wondering like, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our time? So I've always been pretty passionate about like helping calligraphers figure out their pricing and like just being transparent about money and numbers. I don't think that it should be as taboo of a topic as it actually is. So I think I had just started like posting on my Instagram stories, some questions about pricing. I got a lot of interest from other calligraphers and I was like, I'm gonna host a Free pricing webinar because again, like what else is anybody doing? So I hosted that webinar on Zoom and you attended it.

Shaochen: 15:20

Yeah, so I'd actually been of like an Alane fan girl for a while um, by the time I attended the workshop. And it was just really cool to like get a better feel for, for you and like I kind of felt like I got to know you a little bit as you were teaching the workshop, and so I thought, okay, why not just go for it? Like I'm gonna reach out to her. It seemed like we were both interested in this like mentorship, um, area and I wanted just to see if you were open for a coffee shop, and I was really lucky that Elaine said yes. Because it's it's kind of led to a lot of really cool collaborations between us. Um, And then in that year of 2020, we both created a lot more resources for calligraphers. I created um, like an entire website dedicated to business education called calligraphy ceo.com. And that's actually, um, where I am trying to put more of my energy and my efforts towards is calligrapher business education. And that's part of, you know, the podcast is part of that endeavor too.

Alane: 16:20

It's so exciting, yeah, and we ended up creating a joint resource. We created the, the Creatives Guide to Pricing. So I had developed like A workbook, ebook style guide after this pricing seminar. And then you had such helpful templates to be able to contribute so that like everything that calligraphers would be learning in the guide, they could actually start implementing into their businesses. So we found through that, that we work really well together and we really like each other. I like working together, So then I think we just started having, I don't even remember when we started our monthly calls, but we now have a monthly Zoom call. Together each month where we just chat about life, business, bounce ideas around off of each other, which has just been like so helpful. And soul, like, soul giving, you to have somebody else.

Shaochen: 17:12

A large driver for this podcast was actually feeling like, what if we could let other people listen into our business calls, because this would be helpful for other people too, if it's helpful for us. So that's kind of where a lot of this idea originated from too, from those biz chats.

Alane: 17:27

Yep. Exactly. Yeah. I remember, I think you had posed this idea, I'm gonna say at least a year ago

Shaochen: 17:34

Yeah, maybe I like planted the seed a while ago, but I, at the

Alane: 17:39

Yeah, I. was gonna say, I think you've been planting the seed

Shaochen: 17:42

Yeah, I wasn't ready myself either though at that point. And anyway, as we talk more about in our next episode, our goals for this year, you'll hear a little bit more about like things that we had to let go for this to become a priority for us.

Alane: 17:57

Yeah. I'm excited for that one. It's gonna be really good.

Shaochen: 18:00

Well, let's actually talk about that. That's a good transition into what our podcast is gonna be about, what you can expect when you tune into the Calligraphy Biz Corner. Um, we are aiming to have new episodes with you every other week, fingers crossed. Um, and While we consider ourselves like wedding calligraphers, and that's our primary focus, we're gonna have lots of topics that relate to Weddings and also other calligraphy offerings as well. There's just, there's so much about business that is translatable across different kinds of offerings. So we'll make sure that we have a little bit of something for everyone no matter what you're working on. Um, and we want our episodes to both help you get started with your business and also help your business grow so that again, no matter where you are, you are gonna find something valuable here on our podcast. Um, we're also gonna be telling you. Sharing plenty of real life stories and experiences with you, about both the successes and the highlight reel, but also the things that are just like crappy and hard about running your own business, because that's the reality of it. It's not always, it's not always the highlight reel.

Alane: 19:08

Yep. And we have so much in store. I feel like we've both been brainstorming topics and we just keep like brain dumping them into a doc. So I feel like we definitely have enough for the whole year, but we also would love to hear from you. So if you have a. Topic or a question or something that you would really love to hear us cover, then please either send us a DMM on Instagram. You can find us at at calligraphy biz Corner. Or you can shoot us an email at

Shaochen: 19:41

It is the same Calligraphy Biz corner@gmail.com

Alane: 19:43

Thank you Let's get right into it. We've already got another episode ready for you to go, talking about reflecting on the past year, goal setting for the new year. So please go listen to that and let us know what you think.

Shaochen: 19:57

Awesome. Thanks guys. We'll talk to you in a sec on that episode.