Today, we’d like to introduce you to Sara Obando.
Hi Sara, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am one of those accidental business owners. After college, I found myself applying to any job that was available for a freshly-graduated designer. I had three years of experience working as an in-house designer doing graphic and web design, as well as website management, and I was open to pretty much anything where I could use those skills.
The first job I happened to land was a local contract where a couple of days a week, I’d go work as a contract graphic and web designer for a start-up. After a few months there, I am enjoying the flexibility of being a contractor (including working remotely while traveling!). I figured it would be good to establish myself more formally.
I had freelanced a bit here and there during college, but this was a long-term contract, and I knew I had to protect myself, separate my finances, and become more serious about my work if I was going to continue down this path. So, I registered as a business, got my EIN, and opened a business bank account. That was in January 2017, and looking back, I had no clue what I was getting into.
Starting a business so fresh after college–I really didn’t know what I was doing or where it was going. I had design experience and a bit of customer support experience, but nothing to really help me run a business.
I was pretty clueless at first when it came to sales, taxes, client experience, marketing, and all these other aspects that are part of a business. But I was very fortunate to be accepted to a mentorship in the summer of 2017 with a business consultant who helped me set all those foundations! She completely changed my business and my mindset as a business owner.
I know my business wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for all the guidance I received. This mentorship also helped me find more clients, and I ended up working as a sub-contractor for my mentor to help her clients with their design needs as well. It was a great way to get experience, real-life portfolio pieces, and money.
I started finding my own clients after that, attending networking events, learning about leadership as an introvert, and really embracing my business owner side–which was such a big and exciting discovery!
After that, the business has been on a rollercoaster. The business kept growing in clients and financially every year. In 2019, I started niching down to work with businesses in the wedding industry, and had an amazing time creating delicate brands meant to attract brides and help them have their dream wedding.
In 2020, I knew I didn’t want to play small anymore, so I signed up for a mastermind and made a few big investments. It turns out that was also the first year that the business stopped growing, and things took a downward turn. Probably not very surprising, given the industry I was working with when Covid hit.
Through the chaos that was that year and needing to get a part-time job once again as an in-house graphic designer for a group of companies so I could pay rent, I realized things needed to change.
I was stuck in a work cycle, and I was so focused on my future goals and making my work aim towards them that I was not living the present. And the present wasn’t looking great, which didn’t help. I set myself the goal that I wanted to work to live, not live to work like I was doing. I had to discover strong, powerful “whys” as to why I needed to not give up on my business and why it was worth continuing forward with it.
At the moment, all that transition wasn’t easy, but looking back, I’m glad it happened. We completely rebranded the company to go from my name, Sara Obando, to Stargazed Studio, our current name. And I say we because my husband joined me that summer and has been working with me ever since. We looked really hard at the life we wanted to have, and we created a business with a mission, vision, and values that reflected the life we wanted to achieve. But in the meantime, we live those values now instead of just striving to get there in the future.
This change of perspective changed so many things in our lives and business.
We also had to change the niche we were working on and realized that aside from wedding businesses, we had been attracting a therapist here, a public speaker there, and an event for women’s empowerment–we looked at what those different leads had in common and decided that the health, wellness and self-development industries could be where we headed to next.
In 2021, following our rebrand, we started working towards this new redirection.
Three years later, we work almost exclusively with health and wellness and the occasional non-profit. Ironically, I had to deal with a lot of health issues during 2022 and 2023, but through the values our business follows, the people we attract with them, and having someone I can delegate to, we’ve been able to move our business forward.
We now like to call our niche “service providers who are trying to make the world a better place”, and we absolutely love working with these people. The work we do as their brand and web designers suddenly has so much more meaning when we know that it’s helping make people’s lives better! I wouldn’t change it for the world.
We are now a team of 3, and we’ve expanded to also creating educational resources for those who are early on in their online business journey. Our story has been a long rollercoaster, but one that I’ve been glad I get to ride!
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?
Definitely not! When you are a small business owner, especially a solopreneur, at first, your life and your business are very intermingled. If you get sick, your business is on hold. If you want a vacation, it feels like a sacrifice to take those vacation days.
When we rebranded Stargazed Studio to be a business that prioritized a human-first approach, we knew that meant seeing ourselves as humans too and accepting that running our business wouldn’t be perfect.
I mentioned how leads were so low during 2020 earlier that I needed to get a part-time job. What I didn’t mention was that my husband had just gone through a health crisis and couldn’t work either, so not only was there the pressure to be the only income for a while, but that all was happening while I was worried constantly about my husband’s health.
And I believe that many of the health issues I had in 2022 and 2023 were triggered by the amount of stress, pressure, and anxiety I felt in 2020. I was diagnosed with diabetes in what seemed out of nowhere. I was put under treatment immediately to help protect my organs, but that treatment made me feel way more sick than the diabetes. I had to cut my work hours to only about 5-10 hours per week because I was nauseous almost 24/7 and constantly experienced brain fog. That went on for almost six weeks. It’s the kind of experiences that really teach you that if you don’t prioritize yourself, you eventually get to a point where you can’t help anyone.
So now, when I talk about helping the health and wellness industries, I can also talk about how I’m living proof of how important it is to stay on top of our health!
Every time I’ve struggled to find leads, every time our bank account got close to 0, every time I’ve considered closing down businesses–I can tie it with a health issue that was happening to me, consciously or subconsciously.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. What can you tell our readers who might not be as familiar with your work?
I am creative, but I also care about balance and functionality. That’s why I’m a designer. Back in college, I was getting a degree in Visual Arts with an emphasis in Graphic Design while working with a group of developers inside an in-house IT department. I like painting and drawing, and I like spreadsheets and balancing books at the end of each month. I’m a strange hybrid of left and right brain.
So I’ve used that to build a business that is all about creating visual representations of what businesses want their ideal audience to feel while making sure it’s functional, lightweight, and optimized for their audience and search engines.
At Stargazed Studio we specialize in websites and website-centered marketing. That means that not only will we build you a website, we’ll create a plan of how that website will be part of your overall business strategy. We make sure we create something beautiful for you, that also takes into account where the audience is coming from, and where they are going after exploring your site.
And just like we balance art and function, we also take pride in using both instinct and strategy throughout our process. We share journaling prompts with our clients since we believe that we often have the answers to our own questions. We are strong believers in “feel good” strategies. We recommend specific flows not just because the gurus say it’s what you need to do but also because it’s what feels right for the situation. That’s why we spend a lot of time talking and researching our clients, making sure we understand their brand, their message, their purpose, and their audience.
Lastly, we are also very proud that we empower our clients with any tools they need to continue managing their websites by themselves. We believe that if you own a website, you should know how to change the content of it without depending on other people. We set up website systems that are very simple to edit once they’re up and running, and we provide our clients with detailed tutorials on how to continue doing website changes.
We’ve often been praised by our clients for our tutorials! And it makes us happy to see that our clients can simply change a heading without having to rely on us or anyone else. If they come back to use for website changes is because they want to, not because they didn’t have a way to do it themselves.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
There are huge shifts coming. I mean, AI alone is crashing like a huge wave into our industry. There have been simpler page builders coming out during the past couple of years that make building a website much easier, and now, with AI, I’m sure it will become exponentially easier to do so with even better results.
But at the same time, I see the human focus of our work becoming even more meaningful.
For example, I read social media captions nowadays, and you can tell who generated their copy with AI and didn’t even change it. I think websites will become a bit like that. And that’s not something bad! I love the idea of people having easy access to creating a website that will help their business, their income, and their family.
And yes, it will make a lot of people not want to pay higher prices for custom work. And that’s fine. I think there will always be people who want to take their website and design to the next level. They will want customized work that really represents their message and purpose. They want something human that connects with other humans. And that is already what I do!
And on my end, I am open to adapting myself to work with new software and new features. As long as I never forget that this work is meant to connect humans and help people find the help they need in their lives, I think I will be able to continue creating the quality work my clients work with me for.
Pricing:
- $15 / month – Online Presence Library
- $150 – Website Evaluation
- $1ooo – Wellness Starter Site
- $6000+ – Custom Website Strategy + Design
Contact Info:
- Website: https://stargazedstudio.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/stargazed.studio
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stargazed.studio
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/stargazedstudio
- Other: https://saraobando.com/
Image Credits
Lee Pectol and Alyssa Tsuchiya
