21 Questions On Kawaii Dessert, Ice Cream And Inspiration With Sarah Lim
What’s your vision for work? For life? For your community?
This spring, we're touching base with our members and friends about the meaning of vision. ✰ ꩜
And today creative, reformed photographer and baker Sarah Lim shares the story behind OMG Squee, her macaron shop in Austin, Texas.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Lim.
ABOUT SARAH LIM AND OMG SQUEE
Sarah Lim is the co-owner, founder, and lead arthritic hands of OMG Squee, a gluten free, Asian inspired dessert shop in East Austin. Burnt out by 10+ years as a freelance photographer, she decided she needed a new career. Commercial agencies often found her work too “quirky” to sell to their clients.
So instead of trying to convince them, she created a vision for her own brand, took a self-taught crash course in baking, and started OMG Squee out of her tiny home kitchen in 2017.
While the business has evolved in a short time, her work at OMG Squee still echos the same fun, quirky, and colorful sentiment as her work as a photographer, while also paying homage to her Asian-American culture.
21 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FROM SARAH LIM:
1. What’s your day-to-day mantra?
To get shit done. Everyday is a big hustle.
2. Sarah Lim in 3 words?
Creative, hardworking and a little crazy. But, I think a little crazy can be good. You have to be a little crazy to wake up every morning and have the audacity to spend your days doing something that no one's asking or expecting you to do.
3. What is your vision for OMG Squee?
Building on my photography career. I've had a vision for this business, since before I started it.
I’m also heavily influenced by my experiences as a mixed-race Asian American and third-culture kid. 90’s animes and PBS cooking shows flooded my Saturday mornings before my family visited our local Hong Kong Supermarket, where I'd stare at both the snack aisle and cute stationery vendor until it was time to leave. Food, pop culture, and art have always had a big influence on me.
4. The thing you most wish for your world is…
Immediately—a day off. 😅 Over time, I want to get back to running the business and developing new ideas. I enjoy the creative, problem-solving aspects of growing the business most.
5. What would you love to see more of from small businesses like yours?
I’d just love to see MORE small businesses, in general. Small businesses tend to put more money back into local communities than big businesses, who tend to take money away from local communities.
I also think there's a lot more space for variety and creativity with smaller scale businesses versus larger corporate entities. It's easier to move a smaller ship.
The strong support from the Austin local community in favor of small business makes it possible for small businesses like mine to thrive. But I hope that doesn't change with how rapidly Austin is changing.
6. Favorite macaron design that you’ve made?
Even though they're finicky, time consuming, and give me arthritis, I generally enjoy making pop culture, portrait macarons. It's really satisfying to see people get to enjoy their treats with both their eyes and tastebuds. I’ve done quite a few over the years, including: Janelle Monae, The Fab 5 and The Obama's (to name a few).
7. Why is collaboration important to OMG Squee?
Nothing happens in a vacuum, and collaboration generally makes ideas better. But finding the right collaborators can be really difficult. It's good to have people to bounce ideas off of, who both challenge and inspire you. By the end, hopefully everyone will have a million million-dollar ideas.
8. No. 1 muse?
I’m always reading or watching videos, so I'm constantly learning new things and gaining inspiration from a variety of sources.
9. You can never leave your house without…
A shirt, since I forget a lot of things, like keys, phone, wallet, water….
10. What have you let go of this year that’s made a positive change in your life?
I'm starting to let go of a lot of physical things I don't need anymore. It's forced me to evaluate what I want my life to look like from here forward. My life is different than it was even a year ago and VERY different than where I was 5 years ago.
Marie Condo-ing all that extra stuff is helping me look forward and focus on the path my life is currently headed and where I want it to go from here, instead of holding me back in the past of where I thought I was going.
11. You want the future of Texas to look…
More diverse.
12. What’s one thing you learned about yourself recently?
I’m endlessly surprised by how much I handle. Sometimes I think I’m taking on too much. Sometimes I manage to get things done. But I've definitely reached a few personal thresholds in the last years, and I'm learning to listen to the voice inside me that says, "OK, you've had enough for now."
13. Something you treasure?
My friendships and relationships with people. It’s special to find people you can trust and admire.
14. CURRENTLY READING…
5 different cookbooks, including one Hong Kong cookbook, two by pastry chef Dominique Ansel and a book about eggs.
15. How do you stay inspired?
I’m constantly reading, learning, talking to people. I get inspiration from all over the place and love fresh ideas.
16. How would you describe your creative and production process?
My creative process is an organized mess consisting of little piles of things in my brain (and often my desk), that don’t make sense to anyone else, except me. If people stick with me to the end, though, I think I eventually make sense to outside people.
But when it comes to production or doing the work, especially with baking, the process is all very particular and technical, so it all requires lots of planning and working clean.
I'm constantly running two programs between organization and chaos, so the two combat each other a lot.
17. Best advice you’ve been given?
There's sort of two things that work together that I think of often:
One photography professor said, “If you’re still doing this in five years, there’s no way you can’t keep doing it if you want to.” It inspired me to do photography work for at least five years. And then I gave another five.
Another piece of advice that has carried me throughout the years is from an acting workshop I was shooting, hosted by Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor, who said: “Don’t let people fuck with your confidence. If something fucks with your confidence, cut it out of your life or address it." I remember I stopped shooting the workshop and started listening instead. So, I’ve just been plugging away at work over the years, as confidently as I can.
17. What does a day-in-the-life of Sarah consist of?
Lots of stuff. The early part of the week consists of planning, prepping and all the logistics. By the end of the week, we start full production to open for the weekend.
I generally work about 12-15 hours a day, at least 6 days a week right now.
19. Proudest milestone?
I just finished paying off our buyout of the coffee shop business that was here before us.
20. What are you most excited about in life right now?
I’m excited to get our shop fully operational and have more people working here. Right now, there are just three of us. We've been slowly renovating our space all last year part time, so we're excited to finally get that work done this month.
I’ll be happy to start moving forward—professionally and personally—after a hard year in pandemic survival mode.
21. What do you want people to feel when they buy/use your products?
I just want people to be very happy and feel excited about what the dessert looks like and how it tastes. We named our business “OMG Squee” partly because we had an old dog named “Squeegee” aka "Squee." But also, because “SQUEE” is an onomatopoeia for the sound you make when you’re very delighted.
We always say we're going to "double rainbow happiness." There’s an older viral video of the double rainbow guy, who's screaming tears of joy about a beautiful double rainbow. We want our customers to feel like that guy.
Want to stay involved with creators like Sarah Lim through Future Front Texas?
Keep up with what we’re up to—from virtual events to membership—here.