By Kalena Reynolds | Staff Writer
Waco business owner Jamie Wong Baesa has combined entrepreneurship with her lifelong love of art to create what is now a successful self-started business.
Baesa, originally from Norman, Okla., spent a large portion of her childhood in Taiwan and eventually moved back to the U.S. in 2014 to pursue an education in middle-grade mathematics at Baylor. She then went on to graduate with her master’s in curriculum and instruction.
From an early age, Baesa knew she loved teaching and that it was the field she wanted to work in. At the same time, she felt a strong calling toward art here in Waco.
In 2019, Baesa was in grad school and working at Cha Community when the owners noticed her innate ability and love for art. This led them to ask her if she would be interested in doing some on-the-side design work for them. Baesa jumped at the opportunity and began designing various items for the store such as T-shirts, menus and sneakers.
“The owners knew that I really loved art,” Baesa said. “I always have since I was a kid, and so they were like, ‘Hey, do you want to try to do some design work for us on the side, like as part of your role here?'”
Cha Community co-owner Jaja Chen said that working with Baesa and seeing her love of art blossom through her business has been inspiring.
“Witnessing that she can do the same for creative, artistic endeavors has been really cool to see that this is something that can be a possibility for folks, even if their background wasn’t in art because her background is in math and education,” Chen said. “So that was super inspiring especially since as an Asian American, oftentimes arts may not be a direction or career pathway that is as encouraged or even as widely embraced or seen as a possibility, especially culturally for Asian Americans, because many of our family members are immigrants, and so they might not have been able to pursue art because they needed a more stable career.”
Eventually, Baesa transformed her love of art into an online store called “Designs With Jamie,” where she sells various products such as stickers, cards, notepads, apparel and more. Every product is personally designed by Baesa, and she has collections like “Taylor Swift Eras” and “Asian Love.”
Once Baesa graduated, she began teaching at Lorena Middle School. With her extra time on the weekends, she eventually created a business for her art.
“I was like, ‘Okay, on weekends and during the summer or during our school breaks, I have all this time,'” Baesa said. “And I realized as I was helping Cha Community there were other small businesses in Waco too, particularly through the farmers market, that were in need of similar services.”
Baesa continued to grow her business while working full-time as a teacher, but soon the interruption of COVID-19 impacted the structure of her teaching career and her side job.
“We were doing remote school for a period of time, so I started to have a lot more time and flexibility to kind of work on design stuff,” Baesa said. “It became a really important way for me to stay connected to the community and other people.”
While Baesa continued building her business and opening pop-up shops after the pandemic, she began contemplating the potential of her business and how she was spending her time once her job reset back to being in-person.
“My passion or my desire for wanting to see where my business could go out grew my time in education,” Baesa said. “That’s kind of why I decided to leave my work and kind of see where this business could go if I could commit more time to it.”
Aside from Baesa’s online business, she paints commissioned murals and has several around Waco, such as at Cha Community, Ramble & Company and Bridge City Coffee.
While Baesa doesn’t come from an entrepreneurial family, she said that building her business has been a process of learning things as she goes and having confidence in her ability to grow her company. In May, she finished her last school year as a teacher and decided not to renew her contract to pursue her art business full-time.
“There’s so many great people out here taking a risk, doing something that they love and just shooting a shot,” Baesa said. “So to me, even if I don’t have any of this business background or I’m still literally building the plane while we fly it, it’s worth it to just try.”
