We recently connected with Em Gallagher and have shared our conversation below.

Em, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

It was never my intention to have my own creative business. I graduated with a double major in Fine Art and Design from the University of San Francisco having secured a job as Chief Creative Officer for an app. I had plans to eventually move from the tech scene to something more tangible- book cover design, liquor bottle labels, or something else that combined my love of art and graphics. In the meantime though, the startup world was exciting. A few months after graduation I moved with the company from San Francisco to their office in the Netherlands and was thrilled by the new adventure.

I returned to California for Christmas, fully expecting to head back to The Hague in the New Year. Instead, in January I received news that the husband and wife that owned the company were separating and dissolving the company with it. So there I was: jobless, less than a year out of school, minimal experience under my belt, having given up my apartment in San Francisco and unsure of what to do next. I applied for every design job matching my skills that I could find in about 10 different cities. I made it far in the interview process for some, but nothing was falling into place.

A good friend of mine that I had met in school reached out to me asking if I did website and brand design. I jumped at the opportunity to do ANYTHING related to design. She was instrumental in me understanding my worth as a designer, and insisted on paying me a fair rate, even as my first client. I expected to just design sites for friends while I waited to find a “real job”. What started as one site inspired another, a friend I had met through my previous company had me craft his site and branding for him not long after.

It took about a year of me freelancing to see that I could really lean into making this my business and not look for anything else. It felt so risky and the opposite of the “secure path” they teach us to seek. In the early days, I stayed with my parents, couch-surfed with friends, and traveled all over while creating sites and brands from my laptop. A life of travel felt more secure with my inconsistent income and allowed me to meet amazing people all over the world.

Those first two trusting friends have continued to be where 80% of all of my clients come from. A beautiful, twisting web of connections all through word of mouth and being tagged in social media posts.

I recognize how lucky I was to have a soft place to land while I leaned into the risk and figured out the first steps of business ownership. I had an amazing support system and cheerleaders from day one, but it took me learning to trust myself and my craft to build Taurean Trade, the branding and site design business I have today. 5 years later and I’m still in love with what I do and the winding road it took to get here.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Now that you’ve heard my origin story, let me share a little more about my craft. Taurean Trade is a branding and website design company founded with the intention of helping individuals and small businesses create hand-crafted logos and bespoke web presences. My specialty is bringing clients into a collaborative branding process that tells a story, finding a balance between more tactile, imperfect art techniques and a refined, sophisticated design process.

I believe that branding and marketing yourself does not need to be a superficial process. You can encapsulate the heart of your business in a visual form and in doing so, draw in aligned clients that benefit from your offerings. It has also been a strongly held belief of mine that branding should be accessible and affordable. Most people are trying to create logos and brands right when they are starting out and don’t yet have the revenue to support big business investments. I have kept my pricing consistently low to be able to work with the types of clients and sizes of businesses I love. It is an incredible joy and privilege to co-create branding for healers, facilitators, coaches, therapists, non-profits, and others doing good in the world.

These days, I design my sites all in Squarespace to minimize the barrier to entry to get client’s offerings online as well. I am able to design sites at a lower rate and teach them how to mostly self-manage and not have to pay ongoing developer fees.

All of my work starts pen to paper and maintains a very hand-crafted feel. I tell clients that entering a site should feel like entering a physical space. As we build this space for people to visit, how do you want them to feel? I try to keep things feeling inviting, simple, beautiful and warm.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of my work as an artist is the co-creative process I am able to facilitate for my clients. Almost every client on the introductory call says something along the lines of, “I’m just not creative”, “I am not an artist” or “I don’t even know what I like”. As children, we never think in this way! It is only in letting go of our innate creative potential over the years in lieu of more pragmatic endeavors that we stop thinking of ourselves as such.

I believe that we all have artistic potential and it will show up for each of us in different ways. Creativity is just a muscle that needs to be exercised. This doesn’t mean you have to put brush to canvas or sit at a pottery wheel. Creativity can show up in smaller, more integrated ways in our lives: how you create your environment at home, how you organize your schedule, what you cook for dinner, the travels you take, and the art you’re inspired by in the world. It is amazing to me how in walking clients through prompting questions and showing them inspiration to see what they like and don’t, how quickly their personal style is able to emerge.

One of the most gratifying moments is when I show a client a round of logo sketches or their site and they share how perfectly it “pulls out what was in their head” or “what they didn’t even know they wanted”. I’m not a magician though, they were able to let me into their world for a little while and show me their own, original style. In the end, their sites and branding are just a reflection of the innate beauty and creativity they have in themselves.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I love what I do and there are so many reasons I have felt compelled to continue on this path, even when things are frustrating. The main driving factor for me though comes down to living a life full of independence and inspiration.

I always thought I would be one of many designers within a big company structure. There have been plenty of moments that have felt lonely and isolating running my own business and not having others to bounce ideas off of or commiserate with when things get tough. The trade off though is this beautiful freedom to constantly recreate and redefine myself. What I do and how I work with my clients can be ever changing and evolving. I am not locked into any tradition, expectation, or path; day to day I am able to decide the best way forward for my clients and myself. This allows me the freedom to meet a client where they are at, and adjust accordingly. Even within the same package or offering, no two client processes look the same.

This flexibility also enables me to create a conversation around what will best serve my community. My offerings, pricing, and more can all be informed by what clients are asking for. I’m even attending tattoo school at the moment to be able to offer my art in new ways. It is important that we not hold ourselves to one path, but rather be open to new adventures as they present themselves.

This freedom also extends into my day-to-day existence. Most of the time I’ve had this business it has been run nomadically. I spent two years traveling the west coast, Mexico, and then around Europe. After that, my (now) husband and I moved into a vintage Airstream I restored myself and hit 38 states. I’ve launched websites from national parks in the desert and taken client calls from the tops of mountains.

I am not confined to a 9-5 schedule, or even working during the normal work-week. As a creative person this is so liberating! I am able to stay up until midnight working on a project when the mood strikes, and take a leisurely morning the next day. I am able to get outside, travel, and seek inspiration which fuels my creativity and my projects endlessly. The more I tried to act like I have a “real job”, forcing myself to sit at a computer for specific hours, the more unhappy I was with what I was making. As a creative individual, you have to find what fuels you and allow yourself access to it, otherwise burnout is inevitable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.taureantrade.com/
• Instagram: @taureantrade