Every now and then I feel an episode of Indie Bites is packed with so many nuggets of wisdom, I feel compelled to note down some key lessons I need to apply to my business. This is a note to self, but I hope some of this can apply to you.
Listen to the episode here:
Tom Fishburne runs Marketoonist, a business 15 years in the making that fulfils its solo founder in ways that a rocketship business never could. Tom has brought humor to the world through his marketing cartoons, and building a business that supports his family and lifestyle in the process.
This is a conversation about building a business that works for you, and not conforming to what anyone else thinks your business should be.
Take risks, decisions don’t have to be permanent
Tom moved to the Czech Republic out of school when all of his peers were moving to Atlanta. He says this set up his risk temperament for the rest of his career (such as leaving his full time job to be a cartoonist.)
“some decisions feel permanent... the danger is it teaches you to be risk averse, which is actually, you need to be the opposite.”
It’s hard to have the appetite for risk, but Tom would not be in the place he is in without taking a risk like moving to the Czech republic.
Price on value
Tom never thought he could make a career out of cartooning, because he was positioning himself as cartoonist, not understanding the value he can provide to organisations through his cartoons.
“I couldn't see myself leaving my marketing career path to a cartooning career path because I was pricing myself on the cartooning career path. I talked to a potential client and he said, start pricing based on the value you're bringing me, not based on a benchmark of what other people are pricing for.”
This might seem obvious, but use this as a reminder to continually check the value you’re providing.
Set your v1 markers
Popularised by David Hieatt (Hiut Denim+Do Lectures) a v1 marker is a set of criteria you set to take the leap into full time entrepreneurship, not just a monetary target. For Tom this was 1) have half his current salary coming from his cartoons, 2) a plan to have the business support in the other half in the year, 3) a home equity equity line of credit 4) support from his wife.
But what I loved about this was not the criteria he set— although this is very useful for most entrepreneurs, it was this:
“that idea of the v1 marker is that it was something in the future. I wasn't saying, I'm gonna quit my job today. I'm gonna say, hypothetically, what would have to be true in order for me to make the leap? And it took away some of my fear around the conversation.”
This was eye opening. We all have some idea of how much we want to be making before taking the leap, but it’s still bloody scary. Actually writing down criteria makes it far more achievable.
Be prepared for the unexpected
You can have the best plan in the world, but sometimes life throws curveballs at you. Such is the life of an entrepreneur. But being fully committed to making your business a success, and being calm when things go wrong, will guide you through.
For Tom, he was offered a big promotion at his day job when he was about to leave. Then when he did leave he started getting wrist pain, which would have been challenging when your new career is drawing. He even had a huge client deal fall through. Stay the course and commit, unexpected things will happen.
You don’t need to grow a team and make millions
Two things from Tom here. Firstly, he did have the idea of building a mini agency with a bunch of cartoonists, but that didn’t work out:
“ While aspects of that worked, I became just a project manager and I was getting further away from what I really liked about the business”
Don’t build a job you end up hating if you’re taking on all the risk. You might love being a project manager, but I suspect you don’t…
Secondly, Tom mentioned his business has made 2-3x his salary. I don’t think that’s in the millions, but it’s enough to support his family and live a happy healthy life. That sounds like the dream to me.
You can enjoy client work
I was wondering why Tom was doing client work 15 years into the business. Client work seems like the stepping stone you use to build your real business. It seems like the real scalability is in the content game. However, Tom had a different perspective:
“ I like the branded client work. Some people say ‘you quit your marketing job to be a cartoonist’. But I kind of still see myself still doing a marketing job, I just happen to use cartoons. So I get to work with some of the greatest thinkers on these projects, and I get to be really choosy about the types of clients I bring on.”
He loves being involved with different brands and has built up the skill of saying no to bad fit clients and because of his audience size has no trouble finding good, interesting people to work with.
Figure out what is uniquely you
Many people can make cartoons that look like Tom’s. But none have come from someone perspective of someone who is a marketing veteran, with 20 years in the industry, with an MBA, who met his wife in Prague.
“There's such a value in building a brand for yourself and what you do, that it's, that it's unique. It’s figuring out what you uniquely do is often an overlapping set of skills.
If I stay true to myself and just try to pay attention to what I'm trying to do that has been a great North Star for me at least so far over the last 15 years.”
Optimism is free and infectious
The final question I probed Tom on was if AI was coming for his cartooning job, and he answered it ever optimistically.
“AI is really interesting. At the moment, I'm finding more opportunity than a threat of competition. Not an opportunity in terms of using AI to create my cartoons, but because as society tries to figure out how to make sense of all these changes brought by AI, we need our sense of humor more than ever.
Some of the most successful cartoons I've created have related to some of the inherent tensions on AI and how it impacts society. And so I'm just trying to focus on trying to be useful.”
So this point makes complete sense, but what I took from this whole conversation that Tom never thinks negatively about anything. He’s always finding the positive spin and it’s truly lovely to be around. I want to be more like Tom.
I’ve had fun writing this. It’s a little longer than I expected but I came away feeling like I wanted to make sure I captured some of Tom’s wisdom. I hope you found it useful too. Here’s the lessons summarised:
- Take risks, decisions don’t have to be permanent
- Price on value
- Set your v1 markers
- Be prepared for the unexpected
- You don’t need to grow a team and make millions
- You can enjoy client work
- Figure out what is uniquely you
- Optimism is free and infectious