Building an Impact-Driven Career, with Patti Hunt

Introducing Patti

Patti’s recommendation: The Re-Invention Podcast, by MAKE Studios

Patti is Co-Founder of MAKE Studios, a human centred design company based in Hong Kong & Australia. Using methods and practices such as customer experience (CX) design, Design Thinking and Service Design, MAKE Studios develops new business models, value propositions, products, services and experiences. Patti also runs the Design Thinking Hong Kong community, hosts an annual service design conference, is a contributing co-author to This is Service Design Doing, an organizer of Service Design Hong Kong, keynote speaker and mentor.

Reflecting on your career, tell us about a mentor that still stands out for you 

Our beginnings were a bit unexpected. I was going for a promotion (my boss’s job), and Pete was an external applicant for the same job. He got the job and, naturally, I was really pissed off. I made life fairly difficult for Pete when he first joined the team, but as we got to know each other, I realised that he was genuinely better at the job than I would’ve been. It wasn’t that I’d been overlooked as a female, as I’d originally thought. He had a lot of skills to teach me and I soon recognised how much I could learn from this experience.

At the time, the company was very sexist and patriarchal – men in power across all levels. But I wasn’t the only one seeing it. Pete also took notice. While he got angrier and more frustrated by that culture, I was already used to it and accepted it as the way it was. Pete, however, decided to push back and took me on as his wing person, elevating me into the meetings he went to and involving me in the tasks he was assigned. With his support, I was thrown into the spotlight, highlighting my skills and value. Though not everyone saw things that way. 

At one particular director’s meeting, with about 20 men – all older and all sexist – the big boss went around the table, introducing everyone. My role there was to support Pete with his strategy component. But the boss got to me and said, “Well, this is Patti, and she’s obviously the scribe for the day.” I remember that moment, clear as day. Any ounce of excitement I had about being there was instantly crushed. At the time, I didn’t have the nerve to stand up for myself, and so, I scribed.

That meeting wasn’t just a turning point for me, but for Pete as well. He had a series of conversations with the director about how rotten the culture was and got to the point where he didn't care if he was sacked for being vocal and disrupting the way things were.

I didn't see anything changing at the company, so I encouraged him instead to look for a solution elsewhere. He took a promotion at another company, where he found the environment to be better – not great, but better. He soon hired me into his team as a technical writer. It was a specialist role - writing user manuals, guides, and technical specifications.

At this new company, the team was much more balanced with both men and women. No one was playing favourites and the culture was much more collaborative. After working in very hierarchical male-dominated environments, this was the first job that I truly loved, and so I started becoming more of my own person. I finally felt genuinely valued for what I could bring. I wasn’t lesser than anybody else on the team and my confidence flourished.

What was the transition point when you stopped working for someone else and started working for yourself? 

Through my technical writing role, I started to get a sense of human centred design. It was at my next job where I was exposed to an external user experience company for the first time. The approach resonated with me so much that I eventually ended up working for that external company. We were essentially bridging the user world, the customer world, and the business world.

By the time I hit my mid-30s, my adventure mindset pushed me to leave Australia and head to Asia. I landed in Hong Kong and found a job as a Regional Business Development Director. My boss turned out to be quite the micromanager, which conflicted with my growing confidence. After just one year, I wondered if it was time to start my own company.

The first business I started was based on user experience; as my first business, it was a write-off. My second business (On-Off Design and Technology) did much better, and is still operating successfully in the Philippines today, which makes me really happy.

How did your mindset and confidence change after starting your own business? 

Starting my own business was never on my radar. My first business was just an experiment, really - almost like a hobby. I don’t ever remember thinking, “Oh, I'm an entrepreneur now.” Working in jobs that I didn’t like and being micromanaged was enough to push me into creating my own company to see if I liked that better. 

Starting my own business was the first time I acknowledged that I had real skill and ability in the business space… like being able to rub two sticks together and create a small fire to keep sheltered, warm, and fed. It was the confidence boost that made me believe I could do it again if I wanted. 

To me, starting a business is a very raw and brutal thing to do. When you’re an employee, the company takes the load of your survival; you just have to keep showing up. In your own business, you don’t have that safety net. You find yourself directly facing the world, right at the front line, dealing with every aspect of your business survival. It really teaches you to take responsibility, to trust yourself and build confidence.

It’s a real baptism by fire. It’s not easy, which makes it a really great feeling when you end up creating something viable. When you can sit back and say, “that’s me. I did that.”

From your experience, what impact can starting your own business have on your mental health?

Starting your own business takes a lot of sacrifice, but it’s also a conscious choice. If you've chosen this path, you can't very well complain about the consequences. 

It’s a realisation that you probably don't see at first. Then, over time, you find it all-consuming… and you realise there isn’t much time for anything else. It makes you ask yourself where your values lie: Do you want to go back to a normal job, because it's a lot easier? Or do you value your freedom and being your own boss? 

In the past, I didn’t realise how much it was affecting my mental health. Reflecting now, the sheer slog of starting On-Off (my second business) probably wasn't healthy. I wasn't looking after my health and I definitely wasn't looking after my relationships. To be honest, I wasn't looking after much in my life, except for the business. Even though I’d accepted the choice to do this, there were also changes I’d make next time around… if I ever started another business.

Tell us how MAKE Studios began. 

When the opportunity came to start MAKE Studios, I knew I needed to do things differently from my first two businesses. I couldn’t keep living in an emergency state; I wanted to enjoy the process this time. And so I chose a business partner who I knew would be easy to communicate with and also happened to be in the same line of work: my step brother, Kristian. 

Creating MAKE Studios was actually pretty organic. I was at a point in my career where I had the freedom to take on contract work, and Kristan was starting a freelance project that required a full team. He rang me while I was on holiday in the Philippines, and said, “I've got this contract… Can you get over here and start in two weeks?” 

I’ve always been one to seize opportunities, even if they seem inconvenient. I knew this was the right opportunity to start the business… in some kind of way. So, I said, “yes,” and two weeks later I was working on this project with Kristian. We kept getting more and more work as a team, and about a year later, we formalised MAKE Studios into a company. That’s how it started.

What does it mean to you to follow your intuition and curiosity in business?

I didn’t always trust my instinct. For a long time, I relied on other people to tell me what needed to be done. But over time, I developed a sense for things and learned to trust my intuition.

Now of course, your gut feeling is not always right. So I minimise the risk by adding extra layers that are more objective and less subjective to figure out if something is worth moving forward with. Sensing and instinct are starting points, but they’re not the end all; they’re clues to the right direction.

For example, when hiring new staff, it can be tempting to hire someone just from a really great interview. I've done that before, and within a few weeks, big issues began to surface - and then you’re stuck. So now, even if I think someone is great, I’ll still have other people interview them. We’ll socialise them with the team and make sure everyone agrees to bring them onboard. We’ll also use a contract for the first few months, and then if everyone is still happy at the end of that, we’ll make a permanent offer.

Why is community important to you and your work? 

Community is so important. It can validate your perception of how things are working. People in a community are interested in a shared topic, and they’ll tell you why and what they want to get out of it, so you learn a lot. 

Instead of staying in your own head, you can put an idea out there and see how it resonates with people. You can get feedback on if it’s too abstract, if it landed well and what needs to change. 

Community is also valuable because it offers the opportunity to work in a community mindset, where you think about collective impact. The work becomes a lot more cohesive when everyone is anchored around the idea of social good.

You go from leader to convener, creating a space for people to come together and discuss topics, interests, and directions. People become connected and empowered to create change, which is much more powerful because it's not done in isolation. You really can’t measure the goodwill that being part of a community generates.

What did you do to set MAKE Studios up for success?

Kristian and I both have a lot of experience with companies that encountered financial difficulties. It’s never a good outcome. Businesses (like everything) can be cyclic, meaning they’re more vulnerable in their first few years. So we vowed to do whatever it takes to avoid that situation at MAKE.

We take hiring and cash flow management super seriously. From the start, we worked hard to build up a runway, which is the number of months a business can survive without new work until it goes under, or becomes insolvent. By building a healthy runway, we didn’t have to live month-to-month. We were able to navigate challenging events, like COVID. It still had some effect on us, of course, but the financial resilience we created means that we were able to weather the COVID storm better than others were.  

Another decision we made early on was to not tolerate big egos or disruptive team members. In the past, I’ve hired people who were super talented - but also arrogant. They wanted to be the smartest person in the room, and had trouble hearing other people’s ideas. We work hard to avoid bringing these sorts of people into the team.

We want everyone in the business contributing to the culture they want. It was a deliberate move to give this responsibility to the full team, not just one or two members, so that everyone has a sense of what’s a good culture and what’s not, what's good behaviour and what's not. The goal is for each person to feel comfortable calling out inappropriate behaviour if they see it, and know that they've got the support of the leadership team. 

How has your role at MAKE Studios evolved over the last 8 years?

Once we started hiring people and building MAKE’s brand, my and Kristian’s roles changed. But neither of us like to be too far away from the actual work, even now. 

I like to think of the business in buckets: client relationships, business development, team culture, strategic direction, and operational efficiency. I make it a priority to spread my time across each of these buckets so that I’m not getting caught up in just one, and the business can remain balanced.

What advice can you give to other founders on time and attention management? 

You've got to build up a sense of the overall picture of the business, first of all. That's why community is so important. Next, getting financial health sorted is, of course, very important. It's the blood of the business, so that's never negotiable. And team culture is a third, equally important bucket, because that’s essentially our business; if that's not working, then something is very wrong.

Finally, look at the other things in the business, like marketing and process. These stitch all of those important buckets together, but they're not the business themselves. If you look after the big things first, and stitch everything together well, nothing will be neglected.

How has MAKE Studios’ identity as a business grown and evolved? 

As a founder, you never really see your brand as something that exists outside of your own head. It doesn’t feel like a tangible thing. So I didn’t realise MAKE had taken on its own identity until it was already a thing to other people, which is something you have to learn not to resist, and just let it happen. 

It’s a bit like Maslow's hierarchy. Once you can see your business existing in the market, then you can gradually move the brand up to a higher quality. Not that I think it's ever completely done, but I do know it’d be a mistake to stay down at that base survival layer.

Imposter syndrome is a common experience. What are your reflections on it?

I’ve certainly experienced imposter syndrome myself. I think everyone does at some stage in their career. 

What I try and encourage is a non-apologetic way of showing up as your authentic self. We need to not be too self-deprecating, or we’ll undermine other people's confidence in us. Ultimately, it's not up to you to disrupt the confidence that other people have in you.

Anything you do to disqualify yourself or cause someone else to doubt their confidence in you is where imposter syndrome is playing out. Instead, let's amplify your authentic self-expression in an upwards (instead of downwards) trajectory.

What have been your experiences as a female founder and director in design services? 

It's not something that I personally focus on - the female part of the founder title. I prefer to just show up as a person, regardless of gender. I guess I have an uneasy relationship with it because if we focus on the woman aspect by calling it out, then we might lose focus on whatever else we’re talking about... But if we don't call it out, then we might be ignoring something important. I’m not sure what the right way is, but I have definitely noticed when it's been an advantage and when it's been a disadvantage.

For example, it’s a disadvantage in Hong Kong, where there’s a very traditional business culture. In my early days there, when it was crucial that I play along to make sure my business survived, I would deliberately take a male colleague with me into business development meetings because the other men would – by default – direct most of their conversation to the other males. Over time, I was able to educate them that I was the one behind everything, not the male colleague I took with me. But, as a Western woman, you can’t expect to force your way in and disrupt a centuries-old ingrained culture. Over the years, we’ve found ways to hack away at the patriarchy.

What inspires you? 

Collaborations really inspire me. I recently had a session with STREAT (a social enterprise in Melbourne that MAKE partners with a lot) about ways we can work together. We’re at that fun, divergent stage, where we can do almost anything; that inspires me because it's pure creation. We’re past the stage of rubbing two sticks together. We've already got the fire going; now we’re ready to find a whole new way of offering something to the world.

What is next for you?

Rather than making it about what I’m doing next, I feel like we've moved into this collaborative, community-based thinking space. Gathering momentum around the opportunities we’ve got in front of us with these partnerships - that’s where I want to focus my energy. I’m excited to see what we can do in this space – it’s something that no one’s done before, and it’s a challenge I know we’re capable of.

Find MAKE Studios

Website (Melbourne): www.makestudios.com.au

Website (Hong Kong): www.makestudios.asia

LinkedIn (Melbourne): www.linkedin.com/company/make-hcd

LinkedIn (Hong Kong): www.linkedin.com/company/make-studios-hong-kong

Instagram: www.instagram.com/make_studios_hcd