Meet Koya Tyson and Michelle Gowdy of Southern Sweets Magazine

Today we’d like to introduce you to Koya Tyson and Michelle Gowdy.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Koya and Michelle. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Michelle and I met in 2008 while working together at Georgia Tech Research Institute. We quickly bonded over our shared passion for interior design, food, and travel. Our passion for design even spilled into our workplace, as we started decorating our shared office. We were the only student employees in our lab with a decorated office. As we got older, we started living on our own and would spend our workday consulting each other about our planned home decor and designs. We didn’t think much of it until about eight years later. We were both doing very well in our respective careers and in life. Michelle was married with two beautiful kids and had purchased her second home. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a home of my own.

We had traveled internationally together and quite frequently explore local eateries together around Atlanta. This sent my creative juices into overdrive. Michelle and I had not worked together in over five years, yet we still spoke daily about our home projects, travel plans, and what we were cooking for dinner. While talking one day, I half-jokingly suggested that we start a digital magazine. Not only are we both very creative and knowledgeable about home decor and designs, but Michelle is a graphic designer and I’m a software engineer. We have the skills needed to create digital content and we could fuse our talents, creativity, and love for life in such a way to connect and inspire others. It’s like the perfect setup. Michelle shockingly thought that a digital magazine would be a great idea and that was the birth of Southern Sweets Magazine.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The first year, we decided to have monthly issues. We would plan the issue’s theme, research, and write the articles. We would schedule photoshoots to obtain images for our profile shots and various articles. We had to create each issues’ layout, create and update the website, and create daily social media posts. We thought that if we planned well, then we’d be able to get everything done efficiently and consistently to meet our monthly deadlines, but then life happened. We both experienced death within our families back to back to back. Both experienced several back to back unexpected home (nightmare) maintenance issues that sometimes come with being homeowners. It was not possible to continue working our 9 to 5, deal with family issues, and create quality content as frequently as we initially wanted. At the end of the first year, we had a long meeting to discuss how to improve our process and how to make things move more smoothly, even when life seemed to get the best of us. One of the solutions was to move to quarterly issues and automate our digital content as much as possible. We’ve been able to successfully maintain this new process thus far.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Southern Sweets Magazine is a home and lifestyle digital magazine. Our magazine informs, inspires, and shares DIY projects, interior design, traveling, culinary arts, and lifestyle tips. Every issue includes a home section to highlight interior design, seasonal home maintenance tips, DIY and renovation projects, first-time buyer tips, or even home décor suggestions. We provide recommended traveling tips and share information on a variety of travel destinations for all budgets for families, solo trips, and friends. We include recipes that range from healthy, quick, and easy dishes to the fattest of comfort meals. Our feature spotlight article allows us to showcase and share other people’s talents and creativity to bring awareness, positivity, and inspiration to our readers. Our magazine aims to offer some light, motivation, and positivity into your worlds and help show you ways to bring that into your homes through design and décor. Bring those you love around the same table. Experience the international beauty and culinary flavors this world has to offer. We want you to take a seat at our table to experience that from home or afar.

What were you like growing up?
KOYA: Oddly enough, I have always had a strong interest in home designs and the culinary arts. As a kid, my family and I would always watch the cooking and home renovation shows on PBS. Watching Yan Can Cook, Julia Child, Iron Chef, This Old House, Antique Roadhouse, and Martha Stewart was a typical rainy Saturday afternoon in the Tyson household. When the weather was nice, my mom would drag my sister and I out shopping or have us help with her next decorating or renovation project. The projects never ended. As soon as we finished one room, we’d move to the next. My other interests included nerdy things like math, science, and history.

MICHELLE: As a child, I’ve always loved art and had an early interest in home design. I remember as a little girl, I had this yellow and white dollhouse my parents gave me and although it came with the little standard family doll set and basic doll furniture, my cousin and I completely renovated the dollhouse. We would color and draw designs on poster board, cut it out, and glue it on the walls in the dining room or a bedroom to create wallpaper accent walls. I would even take scrapes from real wallpaper samples my mother brought home for our own house to use for my dollhouse. We would color on bathroom tissue paper, roll, cut it, and glue it on as curtains or pillows for rooms in the dollhouse. We used markers and paint to color over existing furniture pieces like tables and chairs. We even designed and cut out new clothes for the dolls to wear. Fun fact is that I still have that dollhouse over at my parents’ house. On the weekends, I loved to watch the Bob Ross art show and do watercolor painting. I grew up in a very family-oriented household where family dinners were homemade cooking and important to have everyone sit at the table and eat together, we traveled a lot, played games, I helped my mom redecorate our house a hundred times. So now, a lot of those things we did growing up and what was fun and important to us, I’ve incorporated into my own family.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.SouthernSweetsMagazine.com
• Email: SouthernSweetsMagazine@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southernsweetsmagazine/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southernsweetsmagazine
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sou_Sweets_Mag

Image Credit:
Taji Harris Sr, No Limit Exposure

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