Female Founders: Quynh Mai of Moving Image & Content On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

Life is more like a sprint than a marathon. It’s a series of sprints to get you further and farther but in between, you need time to recover and reflect. This is the only solution to burnout.

Female Founders: Quynh Mai of Moving Image & Content On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

Quynh has established a reputation as a seasoned thought leader on the nexus of fashion, marketing, and technology — an expert on marketing to the enigmatic Gen Z — and has been a keynote speaker twice at Fashion Tech Forum and Melbourne Fashion Week, a panel host for Advertising Week for four consecutive years and has contributed opinion pieces to The Business of Fashion and WWD.

Quynh Mai is the Founder & CEO of Moving Image & Content , a digital creative and marketing agency known for equipping their clients to confidently embrace the near future, helping brands such as Sephora, Nike, H&M, Google, COTY Group, L’Oreal Group, Yeezy and Uniqlo.

As a part of our series about, “Why We Need More Women Founders,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Quynh Mai.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory?” What led you to this particular career path?

As a Vietnamese immigrant, fleeing the country with my parents and just hand-carried luggage at the end of the war, I never thought that I would have the chance to work in the advertising industry, let alone working with some of the biggest brands in the world.

As a high-schooler in San Jose, CA, I was able to attend a magnet school that offered incredible arts programming and a whole new world opened for me. While the Asian immigrant track was to work in law or medicine, I fell in love with the arts and had the audacity to major in art history at UC Berkeley — to my Tiger Mom’s great disappointment.

My first job out of college was working for the legendary dancer / choreographer Bill T. Jones who was exploring the themes of identify, sexuality and racism back in the mid-90s. With his dance troupe, I was able to travel the world and experience cultures that really shaped the rest of my life. Through him, and because I was tired of being broke, I started working with photographers — first Annie Leibovitz and later Mario Testino, which propelled me into marketing and advertising.

From there, I had a great ten-year run in Advertising and Marketing working with the top brands, artists, and celebrities. I always wanted to “work at the top” of my industry, so was so fortunate to be one of the only female Asian women to break into that category working with brands like Burberry, Diane Von Furstenberg, Smartwater, Equinox, etc.

Eleven years ago, when I was ready to start a family, I knew that to have the flexibility and the financial freedom I wanted, I needed to start my own company and had an exceptionally clear vision that digital would dominate the future. I was right, so here I am!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Covid was a disaster for our company, as it was for many, however in many ways it also gave me a “second lease on life.” Many people say that when they have a near death experience, it changes them and Covid did that for me as a leader and business owner. You do some soul searching and realize what you want and need — and the difference between them.

Navigating business changes throughout Covid sharpened my vision and goals. It aligned my dreams and values with my company and those around me. I was able to be vulnerable and saw that my team was there to support me. I feel like in 2021 I was able to rebuild back in a smart, thoughtful way that now sets us up for so much success.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

As a business owner, rarely do you see your mistakes as funny — usually they are tragic or enlightening.

You hear this a lot, but people say if you are working in the business, you cannot work on the business. It took me almost ten years to understand and embrace that notion. I was so good at “my job” managing the day-to-day business that I didn’t want to let that go — at a huge detriment to my company’s and my team’s growth.

It’s best for a Founder and CEO to focus on vision and growth, if you want to have a company that scales. That is a real full-time job because it requires persistence, connections and incremental decisions that get you to your final goal.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are so many people who helped me along the way, however the biggest constant support was from my team. I remember some of them so fondly who were smart, dedicated, and had deep integrity for their work. They taught me as much as I taught them and many have gone on to great, fulfilling careers.

My two children are also a great influence on my success as a female CEO. They remind me to be caring, thoughtful and listen. But they also remind me daily to be the invisible support system they need to thrive. I must be in the background, always ready to support and cheer, while allowing others to shine.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding women back from founding companies?

Fear and family are the two things that come to mind.

Fear that is so ingrained in us from a very young age to be the support, not the lead. To not brag or be brash. Our constant self-criticism and self-restraint keep us from taking risks. I think the younger generations than mine (Millennials and now Gen Z) are breaking those narratives we tell ourselves, but women are still struggling with that self-censorship.

Family is another big factor. We all hear about start-up life, working 24/7, and for women who want to have a family and be an active mother, the idea of that is daunting. It’s no surprise that when you read about a female founder, she is so often supported by a caring and financially wealthy partner or family money. That way, she can do both having the financial stability of childcare and the ambition of business.

So, when a woman starts her own business, on her own, she really is on her own. It’s such a big risk financially, but more so emotionally to her family.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

It all starts with capital. Women need access to capital that isn’t tied to their own personal (and therefore family) financial health and safety. When I started my own company, I had to personally guarantee the loan which means I gambled with my home, my sons’ education, our family financial stability. It’s really terrifying to take the risk of starting your own company this way, so most women decide to work for someone else.

Society has never embraced female leadership in my lifetime as they do today. We have more opportunities than ever, even though it’s still not fair. But we need that capital issue to be resolved so that the seed of a company is within the grasp of the average middle-class woman and not just those who come from money.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder, but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

Being the boss means that you have the freedom to live and care for your family in ways that are inconceivable as an employee.

But, let me be blunt and tell you my three reasons:

You will never have financial independence working for someone else (unless you strike gold in a tech startup).

You get to be your very best badass self without fear of alienating or intimidating others. That attitude is expected from a CEO.

You get to hire and nurture other women, especially other women of color, in a way that other male founders cannot.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?

Many believe that when you are the boss, you get to make all the decisions, but that isn’t true. Everyone has a client or customer, and delivering a great product or service requires consistent dedication, even after the work is delivered. You must build trusting relationships and make decisions with your customer in mind.

On the flip side, work has become much more collaborative, so decisions need to be made in partnership with your team or with them in mind. Could you be the boss and simply dictate what employees should do? Well sure, but that would create bitterness and eventually complacency.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

I believe there are two distinct types at the top: leaders and managers.

Leaders bring in big ideas, have a vision and set a company on a path towards the future.

Managers make sure work is done well, that there is operational efficiency and organization.

Rarely does one person embody both skills and, in my experience, every company needs both. However, many companies are led by savvy managers who know how to grow a business through market share, efficiencies, and pricing. These are the companies that often acquire other businesses to grow. Companies with true Leaders are the ones that really break ground and create the future for us all.

Being a founder takes a lot of guts and a little bit of blind optimism too. You risk so much to start a company: your physical and mental health, your savings account, your time with family, your reputation, and your personal and professional connections because when you start all you do is ask for favors. But as you are putting it all on the line, you must have a blind optimism about yourself and your idea, believing with your core that you have a vision that is worth pursuing.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Listening and learning is just as important as leading

Life is more like a sprint than a marathon. It’s a series of sprints to get you further and farther but in between, you need time to recover and reflect. This is the only solution to burnout.

You will be incredibly lonely because your team and clients cannot be true friends, and you must work so much that you don’t have time for your own friends.

Being vulnerable brings your team closer to you, and they will want to aid in a shared mission of success

The best teams are those who complement a leader’s skill set

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Being a minority, female founder has allowed me to be in position to hire, cast and shine a light to talent that was once ignored by the mainstream. In my work, I have been able to break beauty conventions, hire a diverse team but also offer work to a cast and crew who help us create our work from all different backgrounds, cultures, and identities.

It’s so important to “see yourself” in media, and in every campaign we create, we strive to bring in diversity and inclusion.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

In my own life, I felt that I made a greater impact through deep, personal acts: adopting my two children internationally, sponsoring a few orphans from childhood through college in Cambodia and mentoring a struggling mom through the organization Nigs & Littles Mentorship. By caring for a few people, but deeply over a long period of time, has been more meaningful for me and, I hope, a greater impact on their lives.

If I could start a movement, I’d like to create a slow movement in giving. Give deeply, meaningfully and with commitment and time.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

This is a long shot, but I would love to meet Oprah Winfrey. Of course, we all know she is a total bad ass, but she is also compassionate, vulnerable, kind, and brilliant. She has owned her pain, given others a platform to share their pains and triumphs so that we may all learn from them. She has paved the way for women of color who have dared to be bold, entrepreneurial, and candid.

I would want her advice and guidance, and I’d be delighted to talk to her about how she could connect with younger generations, especially Gen Z, as they can learn so much from her. However, she is not quite on their radar and her accomplishments have not translated as well as they could to the world of social media where Gen Z lives.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.