We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie Valentine a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Katie, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I believe resilience often comes from age and growing up. I remember when I was a kid it felt like the end of the world to have to rake leaves to earn enough for a Britney Spears cassette. But every year, with every new roadblock or challenge that comes up, I find myself less phased. I’m still stressed out and anxious a lot but my resilience continues to manifest even in my darkest moments because I know that everything will be ok. It sounds a little high school motivational poster, but it’s very accurate that you’ve survived 100% of your hardest days. Every time I’ve gone through something, whether it be something rather minor, or something that most people would think is traumatic, I’ve always made it through and I’ve always been ok. And making it through some really horrible things makes it easier to make it through new awful situations that arise. I think resilience is often times your past just proving to you that you’ll be ok. For me, my resilience is looking at the grand scheme of things and knowing it could be worse and just pushing through. because I’ve always come out the other side ok.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I own MangoIllustrated, a stationery and gift brand that features my artwork on stickers, greeting cards, art prints, notepads, and more. For most of my life I thought I didn’t have a creative bone in my body and that I couldn’t draw but when I got an iPad and started learning Procreate, illustrating was all I wanted to do. I was working in an incredibly toxic work environment and my mental health was tanking. Since I was a kid, I’ve had a condition called trichotillomania which is where you pull out your hair and is often times a trauma response. After years of no pulling, this job trigged that trauma response and I lost all of my hair. Having illustration as a creative outlet was so vital at that time. It allowed my hands to be busy and got me out of my head and focusing on something that was relaxing. MangoIllustrated is named after my corgi, Mango, as she was the first illustration I shared publicly on social media.
I started making stickers from my designs and opened an Etsy shop in January 2022. In May 2022 I lost that awful job and had a wonderful month of being unemployed before finding my current job which allowed me to focus on creating new designs and adding them to my shop. Later that year, Taylor Swift released her Midnights album and I made some sticker designs inspired by some songs. I’ve been a Swiftie since the beginning and Taylor and I are less than a month apart in age so her music has always been really relevant to my life. I was lucky enough to attend the Eras Tour and I made some “13” temporary tattoos for the tour because I thought using sharpie and nail polish on my hand seemed a little poisonous. That was the pivotal point where my business really took off and the tattoos went viral.
The tattoos were an amazing success and still sell well. They allowed me to invest in new products such as pens, notepads, keychains, and pins. My business went from a sticker shop to a full on stationery and gift brand. This posed a challenge however because I really wanted to focus on surface pattern design and art licensing. For about a year I really struggled with trying to do too many things and feeling spread too thin. I felt boxed into this Swiftie niche when I wanted to be making designs that you find on sheets in Target or on book covers. That was unsurprisingly mentally exhausting. Within the last couple of months I’ve decided to put my full focus into my brand and expanding it beyond the Swiftie niche and getting into more independent retail stores. I realized that my brand allows me to create the designs I want to create while also still getting to make products that I love and use without having to wait on being licensed. I’ve fulfilled orders that have gone to every state in the US as well as over 24 countries. That’s my favorite part of my business. It’s an indescribable feeling knowing that you created art that other people like so much that they want to bring it into their lives. It brings me a lot of happiness to have created something as commonplace as a notepad that brings someone a spark of joy as they write down their to-do list or grocery list.
Currently I am working on refining my line. I’m retiring some designs to make space for new designs and products. I’ll always be a Swiftie but I know the next step for my brand to grow is to expand my line to have more designs for a broader audience. I have a ton of new stickers in production that center around millennial/gen z, bookish, mental health, and other themes. I have created a birthday collection of greeting cards and patterns for gift wrap. I’m working on expanding my greeting card line and introducing new notepads and a new pen set. And with the election coming up, I’m working on a collection to highlight the importance of voting. And even though it’s the beginning of July, the holiday season is always on my work in progress list. I’m really excited about these new projects and I’m excited to put together my wholesale catalog and go full force with pitching to retailers.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say my secret recipe to getting to where I am now is perseverance, practice, and passion.
Being passionate about what you’re doing is key. There’s no point in doing something that doesn’t light you up. All day during my day job I’m thinking about my business and what new designs I want to create. My business is work, but not really because it’s fun and brings me happiness and gets me excited. I have ADHD so I have had dozens of hobbies that last for a month before I move on to the next thing and I was worried illustration would be one of them but the thrill and joy I get from it really cemented that this is something I’m passionate about and worth all the effort.
Practice is cliche but key. Whatever you do or what to do, just keep at it. It’s incredibly rare that someone starts something and is already a master at it. I’ve made a lot of designs that I look back on and cringe. Luckily they’re buried very deep in my feed. But that’s something that should stay top of mind, we always see success but usually all the cringe and beginner work is buried deep in the feed. We all start somewhere but with practicing we not only get better, but we also find out what we like best, what is most fun to do, and what our strengths are.
Which leads into perseverance. As Dory says in Finding Nemo, just keep swimming. You start out and things may not be going to plan or you feel like you aren’t good enough or you keep hitting roadblocks and the best thing you can do is to keep moving forward. Quitting sometimes feels like an easy way to avoid future roadblocks but you could miss out on so much. People often times say that starting a business is hard but I don’t think it is. I think that was the easiest part. The hard part is the middle, the growing pains, feeling like you don’t have enough time and are holding your business back, not having the resources to expand as quickly as you want to. It’s the middle parts that are rough but just pushing through and doing the best that you can with what you have is critical. And that ties back to passion. For me, it’s been super easy to have perseverance because I really love what I’m doing. I know that this is something I want to pursue and grow long term so even when things look grim, like the spring/summer sales slump, I keep going because I’m excited about the future. Sometimes perseverance is just having a tiny tantrum about everything that’s going on and then recalibrating and assessing what you can do right now to move forward that you might be too busy to do later in the year. For me, I do at least one thing a day. It can be as simple as drawing, sending an email, or ordering more inventory. No matter how hard the day is or what’s going on, doing one thing a day that will help you or your business grow will keep up that momentum and makes it easy to persevere.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
I am always open to partner and collaborate on projects! It’s fun to have creative freedom and design what I want when I want, but there’s something special about working on a vision with someone else and working together to create something awesome. So far I’ve loved working on illustrations for other small businesses and creating custom designs for my retailers and definitely want to continue with that. In addition to small businesses, I’m always open to working with authors and publishers as one of my dreams is to illustrate a cover for a published book. And if you work for Target and need a pattern for sheets or an illustration for a gift card, I won’t say no lol. I would love to work with you if you need to commission illustration work or want to collaborate on a shared collection.
If you are a retailer, I would be more than honored to be stocked in your store!
For illustration and wholesale inquiries, you can email me at katie@mangoillustrated.com. You can also shop wholesale on my website or look at my design portfolio by going to MangoIllustrated.com
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mangoillustrated.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/mango_illustrated
Image Credits
All photos are my own.
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
