Floating With Your Feet on the Ground: Lissa Li on Life as a Solopreneur
By: Justin Porath
While marrying entrepreneurship and art has persisted as the envied achievement of millennials (and their successor generation), for many it sits stubbornly on the horizon, a hazy figure refusing to share its secrets. That it takes courage, hussle, connections, and a fair bit of luck, will come as no surprise to those financing their side-hustle on the back of their nine-to-five. And yet what may raise an eyebrow or two is the unexpected value of grit, levity, and candor in the entrepreneurial quest. Enter Lissa Li.
A freelance graphic designer and illustrator, Li lives in beautiful St. Paul, MN with her husband Nick and their dog, Teddy, embodying the sort of modest ideal that is the envy of anyone trying to hang a shingle in today’s highly competitive landscape. Two minutes with Li, though, dispels any notion that any of this came easy, or by chance. “I love to work,” she admits, “and I’m introverted, so I easily end up working into the night, working straight through weekends, and answering emails while I’m out with family,” which, while she admits is far from optimal, also gives us a broader context for understanding her growth and success as a designer. Namely, and to borrow a line from Hamilton: she works like she’s running out of time, a trait that has seen her through the torrent of unknowns that inevitably come when working for oneself.
At her alma mater, University of Northwestern St. Paul, Li studied art and graphic design, further honing her skills as a designer and illustrator. But long before she was studying the inner workings of the Adobe suite, there were clues to her future that revealed a fascination with illustration and end-user mediums. No sooner than she could draw, for example, Li was illustrating books for family members as gifts and filling her imaginative reservoirs with the likes of Avatar: The Last Airbender (her favorite show at the time), not to mention earning the attention of teachers who saw something in her even she didn’t see. “On one occasion,” reminisces Li, “my art teacher asked me why I thought art wasn’t a career. His passion for art and his genuine care for me and my future changed my life."
“My art teacher asked me why I thought art wasn’t a career. His passion for art and his genuine care for me and my future changed my life.”
— Lissa Li
Fast forward to 2017. After all the caps had been flung and the parchment doled out, Li launched her career—a combination of freelance and part time work—that she would later come to candidly reflect on as “a failure.” “I think I made three thousand dollars in six months,” she said, without even the slightest trace of self loathing that would normally accompany such an admission. One thing that becomes clear after spending some time with Li is that she isn’t afraid of radical honesty and self critique, but she also doesn’t linger there. Instead, she is fiercely solution-focused, tending to use that honesty to drive results for her business and her clients rather than falling into decision-paralysis. This is something, Li admits, she didn’t come by intuitively at first but by way of one of her solopreneur mentors. (Pro tip: get one).
Her advice to young designers? Don’t be afraid to put in the work. Her next job working for a print company fell short of the dream yet furnished her with the skills, customer experience, and industry acumen to eventually strike out on her own. Which she promptly did. Within the span of eighteen months Li’s humility and determination paid off and she was fully autonomous with a scrappy consultancy of her own, built on word-of-mouth and repeat customers.
Today she works with many of those same customers and balances her time between eighty percent client work and twenty percent passive income through her illustration work, which can be found on Etsy, as well as her newly launched coloring page subscription, “Hello Coloring.” Her artistic bandwidth remains broad, ranging from graphic design to coloring pages to custom portraits, yet the usual signs of quality slippage one might expect to find are amazingly absent. Her Etsy shop is canvassed with five-star reviews and her design clients, ranging from non-profits to solopreneurs, are quick to trumpet her praises.
Whatever the pitch of the applause, Li isn’t one to idle with her accolades, but rather continues to expand her skills and offering with no apology for burning both ends of the candle. She punctuates this straightforward work ethic with simple pleasures—running, yoga, good coffee and run-on conversations with her husband Nick about life, business, or anything else that captures their curiosity.
Given what she’s achieved in such a short amount of time it wouldn’t be surprising to detect a certain amount of nose-tilting in Li, but again, no trace. What you find instead is a creative who isn’t afraid to crack a joke, even at her own expense. “I have a very self-deprecating sense of humor,” she admits. Add to this that she is a woman of talent, but also contradictions—for example drawing adorable coloring pages for children while queueing up the latest rap or hip-hop album on her Spotify—and you begin to see why she is so likable, but equally hard to categorize.
When all is said and done, Li is someone who raises the bar (but also the floor) for aspiring creatives who may find themselves staring at the blank canvas of a career in design. If there is a secret sauce, it’s her unflinching focus and love for creating, but also a willingness to laugh and allow one’s failures to become the inspiration for action rather than inaction or towel-throwing. Picasso may have put it best and, unknowingly, provided the perfect summary of what Li embodies in her art and in her life: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
Find Lissa’s work at:
