In the last episode, we talked about systemizing your business in 3 easy ways. In today's episode, we have the pleasure of having Tammie Chew, an actress turned fempreneur, to talk about how she systemises her time to fulfill her goals.

Listen to the Episode below:

In this episode, you'll hear about:

Time management using lists
Focusing on the why
Believing in yourself

Huda:

Welcome to Fempreneur Secrets where business secrets are revealed.

Today we have with us a very special guest, Tammie Chew, who is an actress, host and an entrepreneur. So Tammie, thank you so much for being here.

Tammie:

Thank you for having me.

Huda:

So tell me a little bit more about yourself and what your job role really entails since you have a few job roles?

Tammie:

The public mainly knows me and an actress. I have a few prominent roles I’ve done before and I do a lot of hosting as well and private shows and road shows, wedding dinner, D&D and so on.

And, I produce — usually I have my own production house, Hooray Pictures. So, that is the part where my entrepreneurship comes in. My new role today, lately this year it’s going to be another new entrepreneurship which is a new brand, Lyfestyle. We do skincare and wellness.

Huda:

How many years of in this industry experience you have seen them in the industry?

Tammie:

I think this turn 19 about 10 years that I’ve been acting. For my production house, we’ve been around for about two and a half, almost three years. So as a producer about two plus.

Huda:

What is the difference in the roles, like you certainly enjoyed?

Tammie:

Oh, I certainly love being an actress because it’s a very different scope. We’re very much taken care of as compared to everybody else on set. I, we have break times. You would make sure we look good. We are fed, we are cool. You know there’s going like, but um, as a, as a producer or as an entrepreneur we will do everything 24/7, we work like dog.

Huda:

Yes we do (laughs).

Tammie:

But we love it though, I love both. It’s just that on, on acting. So it’s an easier task. Yeah.

So as rule as a producer, what kind of project work on?

We do a lot of our corporate videos, training videos, marketing videos, all on social media. So you know, and like Facebook’s have some ads or youtube, the annoying ones you want to skip? Yeah, probably from me.

Huda:

Maybe we can enlighten our listeners and viewers. So what does the role of a producer do?

Tammie:

We do from pre production to filming day to production post production for example; where to shoot the location? Which actors to cast? Which the script where you need it to last? So the client, whether it matches the branding or the marketing of the company, that brings out the message. All the way on the doing the shoot date at which time you should do what see, oh do I do when you end it and you need to lie us with the writer and the editor make the whole thing. Okay. When you had the end product, you was lie us with the client. Are you okay with the end product? No. That’s do it all over again. Yeah.

Huda:

Why did you choose to be in the media industry?

Tammie:

Oh, for me it’s a very natural process because I’m an actress, right? Being an actress in Singapore, it means that we’ll have very unstable income. Like when I do a drama, even if I’m in lead role, it takes three roles. How many lead roles get in one year. So I wanted something to fall back on. And let’s just do media. I know all the actors. I know the producers, I know all the directors and everyone, let’s just go into this. And I used to be an aesthetics trainer. I train beauticians, so I know all the skincare stuff or the products and stuff. So I’m just like, Hey, I’m done with production. My company is kinda sell running. I don’t have to too so much on it. So let’s move on to something else that I love, which is I’m skincare and I have knowledge about it, so why not? And also building this for my mom when my family, cause my sister, my mom has been in the skincare industry for about 20 years. Let’s do something also for them.

Huda:

For these new skincare, you’ll be the big boss?

Tammie:

I have partners, yes. And I’m hopping my mum in. We have a platform where we can create a system. When it eventually run, then I can let it just go and my mom can just do the things that you like and all income.

Huda:

Before this, were you doing anything different before you were doing media and being an aesthetic trainer?

Tammie:

I’ve done a lot of things before. I’ve done a boring office job for work. I simply don’t like it. That’s why I want my freedom. I like to try things and figure out what’s what’s there like, but until that means that every single day I try I was at.

Huda:

That, that is kind of like a, a main issue with a lot of entrepreneurs and so once you have the entrepreneurial mindset and the blunt to do it, you tend not to stay in like jobs for long because you already have the mindset. Okay, I want to make it big and I want to do it. Yeah.

Tammie:

Yes, we think so. We want to do and we try out with freedom much.

Huda:

Well let’s talk about your personal life. Like how is it like juggling three job roles with your personal life and your family?

Tammie:

I have a very strict, strict schedule. I would say.

Huda:

Okay.

Tammie:

A certain system that I have like before I sleep everyday, I would make sure I know exactly what I’m doing next day. Like on my hand phone, I have this three lists that have of to do things; one is for my personal, one is for my company, one’s for my artist’s side, and I had one more additional one, today I must complete this ones. I’m in very schedule in that way. So I think that’s my, what I can do to like kind of time manage a little bit. Yeah. Sacrifices is in a blast.

Huda:

Is this always been a practice that you have?

Tammie:

Technically it happens only because I have a very bad memory, so I need to have one piece of a to do lists to write down so that I don’t forget. And then one piece became two to missing the three and now four.

Huda:

Okay. That is good in a way. You know how to structure and plan around your cuts in a way.

Tammie:

Thank you.

Huda:

That’s something, I find that it’s useful for women entrepreneurs out there because when you are juggling with your business and with your personal life, it tends to get a toll on you if you’re not able to, you know, plan properly. So I think this is a good tip, you have four list.

Tammie:

Four List: Personal, your business, family, yeah.

And something else. Oh no, the fourth list is to do all this things.

Yes, that’s my fourth list.

Huda:

So everyone knows that the journey to become an entrepreneur is challenging, it has this own sets of challenges. So are there any particular moment in the edge of journey as an entrepreneur that was, you know, as striking as, as you were growing to become an entrepreneur?

Tammie:

I always feel it being female and being an entrepreneur, we have certain challenges that a lot of my other male friends do not experience. For example, society expects a lot from us. If say you have a family and you have a career, they will always expect you to, “Hey, you’re a woman you should focus”.

It can, if you want to be an entrepreneur, go ahead. But if you do anything that is not to the standard for your family, they feel like you should consider going back. That we always have that pressure on us and only let that say you; you handle your family very well, you handle your career very well but you look very haggard or they’d be like, “You should take care of yourself, don’t work so hard”. You know, things like that.

But you don’t see that with men. Men is like, you can live with your entire family with your mom if you’re not married or to your wife, if you’re married. It’s okay “you’re a man, go ahead”. They don’t put that on you or like say you are like with a big belly or if you’re like really haggard and wrinkles, “Oh! It’s okay, you’re being a successful man. It’s okay”. They don’t, they don’t like, “Oh, take care of your looks, you need to be look good”.

You know, we women, we get that a lot. So it becomes a lot of pressure to, to meet, to be able to juggle family, to be a juggle career and looks at the same time. And it’s something I felt a little bit unfair to us. Yeah. But then again, uh, after all I learned, we don’t let them say whatever they want to say.

Huda:

Balancing and itself, the journey is of course very challenging as a woman entrepreneur. It has this own set of challenges that you’ve mentioned and has any kind of like, um, was there any difficulty when you were going through your journeys as a woman entrepreneur? Any um, particular challenges that strike up to you?

Tammie:

Challenges I face is as an entrepreneur itself, like a lot of self discipline thing you need to go through and working with people was something I really learned throughout this entire journey to choose the right people to work with, how to um, respond and react when, when situations arise and still keep that friendship. It’s a, it was quite a learning, learning path for me and be able to adapt to changes because when you set your company a certain direction initially doesn’t mean it will always go the way you want. It might not work the market wants.

Huda:

When it comes to your business and even yourself, I’m sure it’s not easy. When you were starting out as an actor, actress even, how do you brand or market yourself?

Tammie:

I remember once I was talking to my manager, I had an artist manager back there. She asked me. So tell me, what do you want to be known as? Like what’s the image you want to show? Like they see Tammie, what would they think of? I didn’t know what to say actually. I only know what I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to be the girl next door cause I’m getting a lot that rule. I didn’t want to be known as just the person who can act. I want them to be to the one that I’m more than just a pretty face. I can do several things and acting with hosting. I could read languages in that. So I think for, for friends who all want to to brand themselves. You need to think of what you want the public to know us and whether it, um, but it will bring you to the eventual results that you want. This maybe I want them to, one like this this way does brings out one on sales that we need to look quite quite a lot into that or my um, skin care, wellness company Lyfestyle. We brand ourselves as the one who gives you a holistic approach of I’m looking at not just external, we also have internal that you can eat and I believe that being beautiful, it’s not just on the outside as the whole lifestyle also including exercise and diet, things like that. So that’s how we brand ourselves.

Huda:

That’s really a holistic and comprehensive and then I hope that in a Woman Entrepreneurs that are listening would be able to take a little bit of from there. I think that’s really useful. Branding yourself based on what you want to be perceived as and also what you want to do in terms of your business goals. Yeah. So you’ve got to make more money on a set then aspect of business focus on that. Right? That’s what you’re saying. Yeah. So that’s really nice.

Tammie:

Kind of summarizing.

Huda:

Also the thing about this is that um, I’ve shared a lot in my previous episodes about the importance of niching yourself down. So going down all the way down into sub sub sub, get the girl you really soon. So I think this is really important in the brand. Do you have any experience in that as well?

Tammie:

Um, I, I agree that we need to know our own USP, our niche. I do also feel that as a person, maybe not as a company, as a person, we need to be able to multiple skills to the rare things that we fall back on. But having multiple skills also means that people won’t remember you. You do everything. So you need to know that, that one or two or three maximum three USP that you have. But at the same time I also do everything kind of, I feel. Yeah.

Huda:

Yeah. I think as an entrepreneur you have to do everything. You have to experience everything because if not, then you wouldn’t know what areas you want to give up or delegate on. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we’ve been there. Yeah.

Huda:

Okay. Let’s talk about your offering. So you mentioned a lot about your asking Can we do that start that on set?

Tammie:

Um, uh, we, we worked with a manufacturing, actually we are the manufacturing plants that we OEM two different, uh, big brands. SK something. I cannot say things like that. But now we decided to have our own brand since we had the products. Why not also do it ourselves? So we have, um, our own range about 20 plus product in sample. Now we have about say five main ones to bring in use. You mentioned also we need to have that niche. So we’re going to start off, we have US plants.

Huda:

This would be the focus for 2019?

Tammie:

Uh, at least for the next couple of months. Okay. That’s cause I believe in, when we do a business, I, I’m not sure whether you feel the same. I like things to run on, run on. It’s always, we haven’t lived the time, so I take this a couple of months to build at least a system out, a team that eventually can choir myself. I don’t want to be a seven point percent. I want to be at business school.

Huda:

Nice. Yeah, we’re just talking about this topic actually in like last episode. Yeah. We were talking about Robert Kiyosaki’s, the four quadrants. So just talked about how it’s important to move from the employee to becoming a business owner now because there’s been nights, 5% of wealth is yet, and you are on the right track.

Tammie:

Of course.

Yeah. I also, I feel that it’s important to build systems and to put in a lot of our processes in place so that your business can run effectively. In that sense, we dealt with you even being there because a lot of women entrepreneurs struggle with that because we tend to want to do everything on our own.

Huda:

Yeah, we have that tendency.

Tammie:

Yes, we have that tendency and I mean, I don’t blame women entrepreneurs on one thing who did it because it’s in our nature actually. This mother instinct.

Everything was so we would take and put into our own responsibilities, but sometimes you just have to learn to let go, go. That’s the most important.

Huda:

So tell me, how can our listeners and viewers get in touch with you?

Tammie:

You can find me on Instagram @tammiechew. That’s T, A, M, M, I, E, C, H, E, W. And if you’re interested in lyfestyle products, we have lyfestylemuch.com which is L, Y, F, E - lyfestylemuch.com.

Huda:

So if you want to get in touch, with Tammie, you can follow her on Instagram, @tammiechew, and then you can also visit her website is lyfestylemuch.com we will put all this links on the show notes, so thank you so much Tammie for your time.

Tammie:

Thank you!

Huda:

Such a pleasure to have you on our show.

Huda:

If you loved this episode, be sure to leave a review on apple podcasts. It will help me know what type of content we produce for you. Also, if you have any questions that you would like me to answer in our podcast, go on over to fempreneursecrets.com/podcast to drop those questions. Keep learning and keep believing in yourself because the world needs an inspiration, just like you. I’ll see you in the next episode of FempreneurSecrets.

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