We recently connected with Kat Tan and have shared our conversation below.
Kat, sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
As the co-founder of People of Happiness, I am a big advocate of mental wellness and taking care of yourself in what fits you and your lifestyle. Yet, I recognize that sometimes it’s easier said than done. Thus, with the balancing act of leading a company, studying for graduate school, and working part time– you can guess that I’ve had my share of anxiety and breakdowns. But through all of this, I’ve learned to acknowledge these obstacles and take the steps that I need to take to be a more healthy individual. Whenever school and work got overwhelming, I would often need to take a few steps back in order to jump forward. This meant turning off my phone and not posting for POH for a few days, or saying no to a dinner date with some college friends. The value of self care time became apparent for me to recharge and redirect where my time and energy goes. Whether it is a weekend of just self-studying or a nice night of movies in bed, being aware and appreciative of my self-care time has allowed me to push forward in working on the things important to me like my business and my friends.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
People of Happiness is a lifestyle apparel brand with roots in the USA and Indonesia. Working with my cousins back home in Indonesia, we have been able to provide opportunities to spread happiness and love to those around us. We’ve been able to raise awareness for minority communities and collaborate with other organizations who want to support mental wellness efforts as much as we do. Recently, to bring more education to mental health awareness day 2023, we were able to partner with a Global Shapers hub and host varying zoom conferences of mental health topics such as “Understanding the Basics of Mental Well-Being” and “Art Therapy and Creative Expressions.” We are so excited for our new collection coming at the end of this year promoting self love and kindness. We can’t wait to share more collaborations and see how you style our products as #happyinPOH.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
First and foremost, People of Happiness is a family owned business. This is why teamwork has been such an important skill since the start. As we worked together and started to bring our ideas to life, we learned that each of our strengths complemented each other very well. With my background and passions in public health, I was able to put meaning to a lot of our mission and outreach efforts– sharing resources and creating content that inspires others. Add this to a wonderfully driven person such as Jane with a background in finance and entrepreneurship to always be organized and provide connections to manufacturers, execute logistics, and create business plans to further promote the brand. Finally, the best addition to the dynamic is Leon, the youngest family member of the team with a culinary degree and passion for creativity and style. As we continued on with People of Happiness, we continued to gain skills and knowledge to better ourselves and our business. This brings me to my next quality I find to be of great importance– readiness to learn. At the start of this journey, I was not the best with social media, content creation, or observing inventory. But as I am the only founder in the US; I have had to be able to learn and accept that mistakes and accidents will occur. With this mindset, I not only started gaining new skills to help my team, but I was able to apply those skills and mindset to the rest of my life. Rather than just allowing something to be unsolved in school, I started to approach projects differently with varying attempts and viewpoints to get to a finished result. While I was doing this, we have been able to grow as a team by acknowledging each other’s strengths and aiding each other with our weaknesses and learning curves to best support the business and our audience.
Finally, all of this would not have been possible without the passion the three of us have for this business and its mission. Our varying interests and backgrounds are always able to come together as we work to promote happiness and mental wellness to people’s daily lives. With this, I believe that as long as you have a passion for something… anything, everything else can fall into place with what your career and life goals may be.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
People of Happiness is always excited to collaborate with other artists, organizations, etc. LIterally anyone because we believe that everyone has a reason to be happy. We’ve collaborated with wellness coaches, local artists, other clothing brands, and so much more. Right now, we have a few collaborators in Indonesia we are working with to create an even greater line of products for our customers. As we are hoping to continue the mental health initiatives, we are hoping to continue advocating for resources and awareness that everyone can access. I’d love to collaborate with more non profits and creative individuals who want to create but might not have access to the resources we may have. I’d love to work with more up-and-coming artists to create apparel that is meaningful and supports our mission of spreading happiness and joy in the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.peopleofhappiness.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peopleofhappiness.us/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peopleofhappiness.us
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@peopleofhappiness.us/
Image Credits
Darshae @darshaezamariphoto Josh @chu_ch1t0 Ryan @ryanrdaugherty
