Doing It Pho The Girls: The Story Behind SYS Sister Sounds
The concept of SYS Sister Sounds came at a time when I was having a rough moment in my life. Whilst I felt lost, I had noticed that my support group was predominately female friends who related to my pain the most. That’s not to say that my male friends didn’t understand, it was just so hard to be so honest and so raw with how I felt with them. You see whilst I’ve been travelling and working online for five years now, connections have purely been when I have been travelling or online due to my music public relations company. Women from different countries and different time-zones, some I may have never met in real life, sympathised with me and what I did so much so that it pushed me to want to give something back.
It All Started With Being A Boss Lady
I never really saw myself as an entrepreneur, I was just an Australian born Cambodian who did what she loved and worked in the music industry. I started with my blog Stimulate Your Soul, and from there I established my music public relations agency Stimulated Media. As years went by, I had a lot of women ask me about my experiences as a woman in the music industry, particularly how I held myself up amongst the male dominated world. I was offering advice easily and felt super happy when someone listened and took action. It took a lot of pushing but eventually I decided at one point, that I knew what I was doing and I wanted to do a workshop for Vietnamese women in Hanoi. Asia always felt like home to me. The first workshop had 20 Vietnamese women attend, all eager to learn, all so enthusiastic and so grateful for the knowledge and the experience that was bestowed to them. From there I did a few more in Berlin, London and Amsterdam then I decided, when my life was in shambles to uplift myself and other women by creating SYS Sister Sounds. I remember clearly sitting in my apartment heart-broken in Antwerp,Belgium creating the logo, building the website and sharing to the world what I am now proud to call my organisation fuelled from passion and love.
Empowering Women In The Music Industry
After I’d put SYS Sister Sounds out there, people were blown away by the concept. I knew deep down that I had to take this movement to Asia, where my roots are and start teaching women what I knew, from my knowledge nobody was doing it yet. When I moved to Hanoi, a place I fell in love with two years ago, I was a bit skeptical. I didn’t know anyone well enough, and I wasn’t sure how they would receive my idea. So I started talking, communicating and eventually I found a space to run the workshops. The first workshop went off with a hit, I had so many sign-ups but knew I wanted to keep the classes small, so many Vietnamese women were keen to learn how to DJ, and they were eager to learn something new. It was then, that I knew, building these workshops and sharing my knowledge was going to be my way of empowering women. Now, not only do I run Pho The Girls DJ workshops, but I also do a lot of D.I.Y projects such as Podcasting, Radio, how to write an e-book and now I am starting up ‘Mental Gym,’ a workshop that will focus on healing the body mentally through different holistic methods.
The Future Is Female In Asia
I see a bright future with SYS Sister Sounds, women in Asia hold a lot of power, they are boss ladies. Whilst most of my workshops are now held in Hanoi, Vietnam, we will broaden our scope to different countries. It was important for me to start off in Asia, I just wanted women to know that being an Asian women, that it was possible to break out of the traditional roles that are bestowed upon us. That despite our parents wanting us to be doctors or lawyers we too can excel in the creative and music industry. We can do what we love and earn a decent income from it. I am able to do this because I took that chance, I ran into my fears, and more importantly I just tried. I am privileged to work online and travel the world now. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the strong women in life like my mum and my sister Chanthavy Tra - the women who continuously throw support my way. The future is bright for women in Asia and I am so privileged to be able to be part of the journey.