We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mallory Phillips a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mallory, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I have recently pivoted into the Web Development career from a career in music, so I knew I had a lot to learn in Web Design and Development. I did research on the best way to learn web development skills and found numerous online resources to aid in being a self-taught developer. I learned the basics (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and have expanded my learning to libraries and frameworks like jQuery and React. I’m building upon these foundations every day – one thing I love about this field is the constant state of learning. I love learning new things and testing myself. Everyday I can wake up and know there is something new to learn or create. Something I realized quickly is that my studies in music prepared me more than I would have thought for this career leap. A huge factor in web development is the ability to problem solve – there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer the majority of the time, you have to look at your unique situation and come up with the right solution to your specific problem based on the knowledge that you have (and maybe some top-notch Google searching skills). I had already developed this skill through music – you are constantly trying to solve different problems in your music: how can I achieve this technical passage, how can I bring this out musically, how can I effectively teach this to someone else? I’m so grateful for my background and know it has helped me have a leg up in my new career.

Mallory, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am currently a freelance Web Designer/Web Developer specializing in making custom websites for small businesses and individuals. My background in music makes me especially knowledgeable in good marketing practices for musicians and artists. I know what it takes to create a brand for yourself and how to portray that to potential customers and clients. I received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Music Performance and have spent over 10 years in the professional music business – performing and teaching. I have regularly performed with the North Carolina Symphony and have managed a violin studio of over 25 students. I have always been interested in web development – I enjoyed building my own music website, being creative with building my branding, and researching what works best in regards to marketing yourself and your business. So for the past year I have worked on expanding my skills and I have become proficient in different coding languages and frameworks, and also in different web design practices. My experience in the music industry sets me apart from other developers – I have firsthand experience in building a brand and what it takes to build a business.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For a long time I believe I put myself in a box of what I felt good at, and played it safe by focusing only on that. I was scared to push myself to learn new skills because “what if I’m not good at it” would run through my head. This past year I decided I wanted to change that – I have so many interests and believe I am an intelligent person, so why not learn new skills? I decided to start learning the basics of web development just to see how I would catch on to it. And while I want to say I caught on quickly and everything came naturally and I knew immediately it was my calling, that isn’t the truth. While it is true I loved it immediately and knew I wanted to learn everything there is to know about it, there were many moments where I didn’t trust myself or my ability to learn and wanted to give up and go back to my comfort zone. I didn’t think I was smart enough, or diligent enough. But what has motivated me through this whole process is this promise to myself that I can do it – I am smart enough, I am diligent enough. Learning takes time and patience and I started to be patient with myself. I would have never imagined how much I have learned not even a year later and how much confidence it has awarded me.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think a big lesson I have had to unlearn is that you aren’t allowed to make mistakes. I’m not sure how and why I started to believe this but it somehow became ingrained in me. Throughout my musical career and journey I was terrified of making mistakes. And I do not believe this lesson was unfounded – there are many instances in the music business where it feels like nothing less than perfection is acceptable. A particular example would be musical auditions. I have taken so many auditions and have been told by many teachers and experts on auditioning that one mistake could get you passed on. There are many players that will go before or after you that will not make any mistakes. I did see this firsthand, where the audition would be going well and then I make one mistake and hear the judges stop me and say “Thank you, that will be all.” I am the type of person that takes things to heart, and this particular mindset of “don’t mess up” starting permeating through everything in my life. Through my new journey in web development I have had to unlearn that – the only way to learn new things is to mess up and figure out what went wrong. If I stopped myself from building a project because of making mistakes, I wouldn’t create anything. I have had to have patience with myself and allow myself to make mistakes so that I can learn. There is always a fix, there is always a solution.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallory-phillips-0039a0a6/
• Other: https://github.com/musicnotes93