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

Molly, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I imagine many other business owners say this same thing – but going full-time with my business was just about the biggest risk I’ve ever taken! I’m a self-taught graphic designer. Everything I know I learned from Google, YouTube, hands-on practice, and a few semesters of online design classes from a local technical college. At my last job, I was part of a very small management team at a local restaurant/brewery/private event space where I had a lot of leeway to take on new projects and responsibilities that I believed would help the business.

Early on, I realized that having more cohesion in the way we used our branding would be crucial for successful marketing. There was no budget for hiring a designer, though. Although I had no experience in graphic design, I’ve always been pretty tech savvy and design-minded. So, my boss agreed to pay for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and I got to work teaching myself how to use Illustrator and InDesign and then creating all sorts of useful things for the business: menus, posters, ads, table tents, brochures, signage, you name it. I eventually overhauled our website design as well.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the time I spent working on graphic design was my absolute favorite part of my job, and that I wanted to pursue a design career full-time. With no formal training or past design jobs on my resume, though, I was getting nowhere trying to apply to graphic design jobs. Out of dozens of applications sent in, I only managed to land one interview. But, I knew that I was a competent designer and that I had enough experience to excel in the field. I had taken on a few freelance clients in my spare time and, while those freelance projects went well, they were so few and far between that I didn’t think I could possibly turn that into a full-time job. Frankly, I stayed at my last job way too long, and in my last year or so there I was pretty miserable and feeling really dejected about my prospects for ever breaking into a design career.

Eventually I reached a breaking point. I felt like no one was ever going to take a chance on hiring me, so I finally decided to take a chance on myself. So, I quit my job to pursue freelance design clients full-time. It was terrifying. I knew that if I quit my job, it would free up so much time and brain space for me to find more clients and projects. But all the same, that little nagging voice inside my head chimed up constantly to tell me that I was going to fail, that in a few months I would have to go get a job waiting tables to make ends meet because there was no way I could make it work on freelance projects alone.

Luckily, that wasn’t the case! It’s been 3 years since I quit my job and, while growth has been slow and I’ve definitely had some lean months, my business *has* grown. By now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Molly, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a graphic designer and the founder of Parson Lane Design Co., a boutique graphic design studio that focuses on branding & web design for small mission-driven businesses.

I offer all-inclusive brand design packages that are rooted in brand strategy. I create brands that are tailor-made for my clients, and that speak directly to their ideal customers – no cookie cutter logos here. My process is collaborative and very hands-on. I’ve put a ton of thought into my client experience, and I pride myself on being able to make the brand & web design process as efficient, fun, and stress-free as possible for my clients!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Referrals, hands-down. It is so crucial to make sure that you focus just as much (if not more) on providing an exceptional service to your existing clients as you do on finding new ones. If you can really impress and over-deliver to your clients, they notice! Take care of your clients and they’ll take care of you by shouting you out to their peers every chance they get.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think there are a lot of stereotypes around creative work that hold people back from entering creative fields, or even entertaining the idea of it. I never considered myself a creative as a kid or in college, because I couldn’t draw or paint or write poetry, nor did I have any other talent in the fine arts. But I absolutely had a creative eye. As a young twenty-something I would always get complimented on my interior design skills or my sense of style, and I loved interacting with art and design in any way that I could. Yet, I wasn’t an artist, so I never believed that a creative career was in the cards for me.

I still don’t consider myself an artist. Working in a visual medium, I think that sometimes people struggle to understand how that can be the case. The things that I create as a graphic designer are made to serve a purpose, to express a concrete idea visually. They’re not really made as a way for me to express my own thoughts and emotions, my own worldview. That, to me, is the difference between design and art. But making art is just one of countless ways to be creative.

You can learn how to paint. You can learn how to write. You can learn graphic design. The important thing is having the desire to do it, having a creative mind. That’s something you can’t learn, something you have to tap into within yourself. And really, just having that desire is what makes you a creative. You don’t have to be an artist. There are so many ways to create in this world and if you find one that you love, then congratulations! You’re a creative.

Contact Info:

• Website: parsonlane.com
• Instagram: @parsonlane
• Facebook: @parsonlane
• Linkedin: @mollyfdrake

Image Credits
Studio Aray