Speaker 1 (00:16):
My name is Emma Jacquelyn, and I'm a graphic designer based in Missoula, Montana. My business name is Desert Rain Design, and I do branding and web design for businesses. I've always been an artist and loved graphic design. I always wanted to study graphic design, but did fine art and then biology education and did this whole roundabout loop and then eventually got into graphic design during Covid, well, a little bit before, but during lockdown, I really had time at home to invest in my business. I actually had the finances to buy a new computer and an iPad and all the software and finally get things started, and I think that's the case for a lot of people, but I'm very thankful that I was able to start at that point. It was a really rough time for a lot of reasons, but at least I had my work to pour into while I was staying at home.
(01:10):
From a more abstract point, I feel like ever since I was a kid, I was always trying to sell people things. I always wanted to be a salesperson. I would draw little paintings and try to sell them to my neighbors for 25 cents, or every time we had a school fundraiser, I always wanted to sell the most things and raise the most money. So I felt like I had that attitude. But as far as skills that I've developed over time, I think I've had a lot of experience selling my own art, marketing, my own art business. But now that I'm doing more design, I can take that experience to help other business owners who are on that part of their journey now. And having art skills in a lot of different areas, I feel like my design can be very versatile and I can experiment with a lot of different styles and techniques and bring it all together to help someone else's vision come to life, which I love doing.
(02:03):
I think studying biology and science was really cool because the psychology part of it and just learning about physics and the way the world works, people don't think it's connected to art, but it totally is because anatomy is art. Drawing the body and anatomy are connected. Human psychology, like survival of thinking that blue means water and having cover over you makes you feel safe. Those are principles that relate to design. So even architecture, landscape design, if you're walking on a street and you feel like it's cozy and you want to just walk around and hang out with friends there, that's a completely different feeling than being on some concrete giant parking lot that has no cover. That's really uncomfortable. So those psychological principles I feel like really come into design, like color theory, how colors make you feel, so it's all connected. Yeah, so my meeting with Marguerite was really awesome.
(03:09):
She was so helpful with helping me, I was talking about my money mindset limitations. I feel like that's something that I've always struggled with growing up as an artist when people tell you you're not going to make money or whatever. So yeah, it's definitely a lingering mindset issue that she helped me work through and really, it's so helpful having someone else pretty much just explain to you what you already know that you do. But hearing it from someone else is like, I don't know why it hits different. It's more validating and yeah, super helpful. Yeah, so I feel like my finance journey started very slow. I didn't grow up learning much about it, or the opposite. It seems like money is something you're not supposed to talk about. So I feel like a couple years ago I started learning a little bit about investing from Ellevest, which I love.
(04:07):
It's focused on getting women to invest, and that really opened my eyes to all this stuff that I wasn't doing that I feel like I probably should have been. And I also listened to a podcast called the Six Figure Creative podcast that is really helpful with a lot of tips about not only finances, but marketing, finding clients like business offerings. It's really great. I've listened to a lot. I also follow the Brief Collective, which they specifically help designers, and I've invested in their web design course that was super helpful in not only web design, technicalities the technical skills, but in the money mindset stuff and business tools and the community. They have a really great design community. So my business, I feel like I've been doing it for about five years now, graphic design, and when I started, it was slow just taking on a couple projects, like cold messaging, a couple people if I could do design work for them, because I technically got my degree in fine art.
(05:19):
I did study graphic design for a couple of those years, but I think I had imposter syndrome because of that. I was like, I don't have a graphic design degree, but I was like, I know how to do everything. And so yeah, I got a slow start and I think I was afraid to dive fully in, so I always kept a side job or I enjoy talking with people, so I kept food service jobs. I just really liked them. But I think in hindsight, it was holding me back from becoming profitable. But let's see, maybe in 2022, I started to read more business growth books and know that I had to raise my prices and realize how much I was emotionally discounting and wanting to give people lower prices just because I wanted to work with them. And that's definitely a roadblock to becoming profitable.
(06:17):
So actually this year is the first year that I've decided to quit all the other side things and go full time. So I think it's going great. So pricing has always been something super hard for me. As an artist. People expect that because you like to do it, that you should just feel lucky to do it for free or for exposure or whatever. And I think, yeah, in 2022, I started really realizing that I need to raise my prices. One of the books I read said something about goal setting. It said something about goal setting that I found really mind blowing that I wasn't dreaming big enough. I would think, oh, if I charged this much or made this much in a year, that's pretty good. And then they were like, take your goal and double it. So I think I took that and then immediately the next quote I got from someone, or I guess my proposal, I doubled the hourly thing and they didn't even blink an eye.
(07:19):
So for me, always working in food service and basically just graduating college, I was like, oh my gosh, nobody's going to pay that. And then they were like, oh, this is a great deal. So that really opened my eyes to the only reason I wasn't making money at the level that other people are is just because I wasn't asking for it. So I realized that I was the one holding myself back more than anything. And so yeah, I've had not that many people say no because of price. And another design person, another well-known designer who is an educator also in the field said that if the three people in a row say yes, then you need to raise your price. And I'm like, okay, it sounds scary, but if you're, supply and demand, flooded with requests and you don't want to get burnt out, so it can be naturally equalizing.
(08:18):
When I was first getting started, I felt like charging less worked for me because I had a thing on the side and I was learning, and I wanted to make sure I got people their money's worth, I guess. But there was a point where that started to be more hurtful than helpful, where I started to think that the more I charged, the more exactly perfect it had to be. And I was worried that they would be more judgmental of it the higher the price was. And in reality, that's not true. The people I've found who really don't want to pay anything will nitpick everything. So actually counterintuitively, the people who want to pay you what you're worth are a lot more respectful a lot of the time. Yeah, definitely. It is about trust, and I think the commitment to put money into something, they value the worth of it.
(09:12):
I think for me, community is really important. I'm a social person and I love making friends, and I also think that art exists really well in a community, specifically in Missoula. We're really lucky to have that art community. I'm still really close friends with a lot of people that I went to art school with, and especially now with the Missoula Makers Collective. I think that's a whole new community that's really great. So I used to work with Bailey a while ago in a bar, and now we've worked together on a lot of design projects, and she and Rachel have been so great at involving me in that community, and that has led to working with other clients around here around town with their make your businesses, jewelry, ceramics, whatever the thing that they make. And I just feel really happy to be a part of that.
(10:09):
I think we've talked about the finances stuff already, but that definitely has been the biggest roadblock in my business. I felt like my skills with art and design, I've been working on those for a long time, but my business skills were definitely not something I learned in school. So yeah, just the base pricing was so hard to figure out, not only because if you haven't done a lot of projects then you don't really know, but also I felt like the broader design community was kind of secretive about how much they charge, or I didn't really know a lot of other graphic designers either. So honestly, I had no idea what was normal or not. So yeah, luckily after doing the brief collective stuff, they're really transparent about graphic design pricing, and that really helped me a lot. But yeah, it's a whole can of worms too, involve money in anything.
(11:05):
So I think the money mindset and the logistics combined, they're just a challenge that I had to tackle, and I'm still constantly working on it. Totally. Yeah, I love branding and logo development and 2D graphics, but sometimes I also feel like I have to learn animation and motion graphics and a lot of graphic design jobs when you're looking to apply for a company, it wants you to be all of those things, plus a copywriter, plus a web designer email marketer, you have to do everything. And I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to have the time? So now running my own business, it's nice because I do want to keep working on those skills, but it's not like I can also choose to focus down on just a couple of specific things as well. I think I have loved all of my clients, so it's hard to pick specifically just one.
(12:08):
But I think one of the coolest things for me is seeing designs out in the real world. So making a logo for someone and then seeing it on their building or on their food truck or on a sticker on somebody's water bottle, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. Something that's fun about branding that I've learned over the years is when you start, maybe you think of logos as just a logo for a business, but in the last few years I've really worked on how all of the aspects of a business come together and how logos and color palettes and psychology come into shaping the imagery for the logo and typography, I'm a typography nerd.
(13:17):
So there's such emotion in typefaces that maybe you haven't thought about consciously, but they're everywhere. So I love incorporating all of that into a brand visual identity that makes it all make sense and it's really usable and you can put it on all your products, your website, and really make things cohesive and look professional. And with just a logo, sometimes you'll go to design a website or design packaging and not know where to start, what typefaces to use or what colors or what layout. And so I think that's why brand identity design is super fulfilling for me, is to make sure everything fits together, give them instructions on how to do it, how to use everything and literally create a brand. It's like a whole vision coming together. And that's really fulfilling and really exciting. And when I first started, I didn't have all of those elements like solidified, and now I've really worked on my systems and deliverables and all of that, and it's just really fun. Yeah, branding is strategy. So much strategy has to go into it. Before you even start designing, you have to understand the story, the audience, your goals, the competitors, and all of that helps you create something that looks unique, but also is going to resonate with your customers and fit for the market.
