Why the Marketoonist is the dream indie business - Tom Fishburne

Speaker A: We're giving you a big promotion and we're announcing it like in an hour. And I had to tell them why I was leaving that job to become a cartoonist. I kind of initially thought about it, like, here's what I was making before I took the leap. As long as I at least make that this whole gamble is a success. But it's been at least two to three times that ever since I left my job to do this full time.

Speaker B: Hello and um, welcome back to Indie Bites, the podcast where I bring you stories on, um, 15 minutes or less. Today I'm joined by Tom Fishburne and who is the founder of Marketoonist, a bootstrap marketing cartoon business he started in 2010. Tom started drawing and sharing cartoons in 2002 and it took him eight years to make the leap. Despite having had a successful career in marketing 15 years later, Tom M is still going strong with a business, making more money from cartoon licenses, speaking gigs, brand deals, his book and more. But before we get into this episode, I would like to thank my sponsor, Email Octopus. Now, Tom has an audience of hundreds of thousands of people on his LinkedIn and his email list. So. So if you are inspired by this conversation and want to start something similar, email Octopus are, uh, the way to go. They're an email platform focused on affordability with a very generous free plan and ease of use without the boated features that some other email apps have so you can focus on shipping and growing your audience, which you'll know is essential for growth. So to get started with an email platform that gets out of the way where you can contact up to 2,500 people for free, head to leanemailoctoptopus.com or hit the link in the show notes. Tom, welcome to Indie Bytes. How are you doing?

Speaker A: Excellent, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Now you've got a bit of a unique journey into what you're doing now. The point I want to start on is you moving to the Czech Republic in 1995. Why not go and get a regular job and pursue your career that way?

Speaker A: I think it was the furthest place I could imagine going. I was 22 and I'd gone to university in the same town I went to high school in. I just had this feeling like this is the time of my life to take a risk. So I bought a one way ticket and within a week I'd found a job, a place to live and I'd met my future wife. So it was a good gamble. It's probably one of the most useful things I Did for the rest of my risk temperament, the rest of my career. It gave me some confidence later on when I had to take other leaps. The biggest one, uh, was of course leaving my safe marketing job to draw cartoons as a career. But sometimes when you're in that moment, now that I have college age kids, you know, it feels like those decisions feel permanent. I have to make the right call. And I feel like the danger is it teaches you to be risk averse, which is actually you need to be

Speaker B: the opposite, I think talking to being risk averse. An MBA at, uh, Harvard Business School. Why was that the route for you that seems like almost the opposite of entrepreneurial?

Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was a bit whipsaw. It was a bit of the pendulum swinging the other direction. So I went from Prague, which had this. I was there for a year and had this great entrepreneurial experience. And then I moved to the Bay Area in the late 90s, which was a hotbed of entrepreneurialism and creativity. I was an English major up until all of these experiences with business. So business was total foreign territory for me and was a bit baptism by fire. And I realized that I really liked it, actually. I wanted to learn more about how, what makes businesses tick. And my timing ended up working out okay because I applied in the late 90s and around the time that I got into business school, the whole market collapsed. And so in early 2000, it gave me a kind uh, of an interesting place to be for two years. But to our, uh, conversation about risk aversion, I found myself getting more risk averse the longer I was in business school. It kind of teaches you to think along those lines. But I realized when I was found myself in big corporate, I had this hankering to get back to doing startup stuff.

Speaker B: Now I believe it was when you were at General Mills, you started doing the funny cartoons, commentating on some of the nuances of business, and you shared it with some of your business school alumni, is that right? That's the only outbound you've done for the marketoonist?

Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. We sort of had a class of sorts at General Mills that we'd all start at the same time. And so I just sent everybody in that small 30 person group a note saying, hey, I've been doing this cartoon in business school. I'm starting a new one about marketing. Sign up here if you want to get on the list. And that's the only time I ever did an outbound push. It grew pretty quickly, I'd say. You know, at that point there Weren't really things going viral very often. There was sort of, you know, it was an email newsletter signup, and there was a lot less content going around, and it seemed to strike a chord with people for sure.

Speaker B: When did you start making any money from it and what was the money? Was it brands reaching out? Was it you licensing the cartoons?

Speaker A: I got a few requests early on for licensing things here and there, and it kind of caught me by surprise because it was. At first I just thought it was just going to be a hobby. And then. And I thought, oh, I'll license it here and there and it'll pay for, you know, the cost of sending out these emails. But then the first big breakthrough was when I got a note from the Asian Wall Street Journal. I was just blown away that they contacted me. But I did this project and they paid me. I had this. I think I still have the check somewhere. The first check from Dow Jones paying me to create this cartoon book.

Speaker B: That's amazing. Did you ever have any imposter syndrome when you started doing that?

Speaker A: Oh, 100%. I had imposter syndrome in two fronts because I was such a huge admirer of cartoonists who were doing this professionally. And I was like, I can't believe I'm getting paid for this and that. I had imposter syndrome. Just on the business front that here's my hobby and here's the Asian Wall Street Journal waiting to put it out there. It took me a long time to get to a point where I had the confidence to start asking for more. So at that point, I didn't even see a path to making this my job because, you know, I had a wife and a young family by that point. Like, I couldn't see myself leaving my marketing career path to a cartooning career path because I was pricing myself so low on the cartooning career path, the math didn't make sense. And so it took me a while to realize I could actually charge a lot more. One of the big light bul moments for me happened when 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, uh, what other people are pricing for. And I, you know, in a way that that is one thing that I did learn in business school. I just forgotten it as it applies to myself. Because in business school, it's all about, like, value pricing. It's not taking cost of goods and adding 15, 20, 50%, whatever. It's about, what value are you bringing as a business? And I just wasn't. I wasn't bringing a business mindset to what I was doing because I was thinking about, oh, I get to pay to draw cartoons. You know, how lucky I am to have that happen. So that light bulb moment was the first moment where I thought, oh, I could actually make a business out of this.

Speaker B: So with making the leap, you have told this story on podcast before, and I'm going to try and summarize it, Tom, and you tell me if I've missed anything. So you pitched for the D lectures, which was started by David Hyatt of Hyatt Denman Howeys, to tell the method story, which was the company you were working at the time, but they wanted to hear from the founders, not yours. And it got you thinking, what's your story? You were working for other people, building their story, but what's the Tom Fishburne story? David Hyatt has this V1 marker to take the leap. And yours were, uh, have half the salary coming from your cartoons, a, ah, plan to have the business support in the other half in the year, a home equity line of credit, and support from your wife. And this was the point in which you could take the leap. Is that pretty much how it went?

Speaker A: Pretty much. I think what helps me with that idea of the V1 marker is that it was something in the future. I wasn't saying I'm going to quit my job today. I'm going to 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. And then suddenly things started to come into place where I could actually see that happening.

Speaker B: So taking the leap, huge decision for you, Tom. Um, how'd it go? Easy peasy from then?

Speaker A: No, terrifying. Even on day one, I was sort of like, I was a week from all those criteria being true. And so I was just, I given notice at my job yet, and suddenly the CEO pulls me into a room and says, we're giving you a big promotion. And we're announcing it like in an hour. And I'm like, oh, my God. And I had to have the awkward conversation, tell them why I was leaving that job to become a cartoonist, which was scary. And then maybe a few weeks after that, I had an, ah, issue with some wrist pain, which terrified me because I was like, drawing so much, and I was worried, oh, my God, that I've made this big life gamble and what if I can't even draw? There are a series of things like that, and I think that Happens with every entrepreneur. You know, it's like it helps have a plan, it really does. But the plan will often go out the window. But I found that by being fully committed, by announcing to the world I'm doing this, suddenly some doors and windows open that I couldn't have even imagined.

Speaker B: Now it might be hard to think back to this point, but when people go from full time work to then working on their side gig, how do you feel the time? What are you doing, how to execute on that plan to make up the other half and the revenue? Do you remember back to then?

Speaker A: Well, at first it was, I was doing what I was already doing and then just trying replicate out that with more clients. And I realized I had to actually change my whole system around. I used to sort of wait the wait for the ideas to come to me, but now I have to generate so many ideas every week. I have to have a process to put myself in the best frame of mind to do that. So that was, that was one big fundamental shift to just in my, in my work schedule. And then I had a lot of things I experimented with. My uh, one of my original ideas was that I was going to build like a mini agency with a bunch of cartoonists working with me. And then I found through a lot of trial and error that actually while aspects of that worked in many ways, I became just a project manager and I was getting further away from what I really liked about the business. And so I did some trial and error and ultimately swung back to where I'm doing the primary writing and creating. The first year was just a lot of experimentation and trial and error and ultimately showing up whether or not I knew what I was going to go during the day. Just kind of just put myself out there and see if I can make it all work.

Speaker B: And in terms of the business now and uh, maybe how it looked, you might have different revenue streams. But I'm curious in how you structure, uh, marketinist because we've spoken about the brand deals, consulting for businesses you're speaking, your licensing, you've got your book. How does that split sort of work? How are you building resilience into the business to make sure that each of these revenue streams are rolling?

Speaker A: The majority revenue stream has been brand deals combined with consulting. So partnering with brands to create series of cartoons they use for their marketing or series of cartoons they use for their internal culture change. Or we create cartoons. But then I also consult them on building a culture that includes humor as a leadership skill. All of that. I kind of put in one big bucket. And that's been north of 50% pretty consistently for the whole almost 15 years. Speaking, I'm, um, realizing is one of the things I love the most. And so it's been about a third and last year got closer to that 50% mark. And so I'm thinking as I look forward, I'd like to do more speaking, invest in that, get better at that. And then the book and licensing, those have always been a smaller thing, and they kind of just pay for overhead. So it's, you know, 10 to 15 to 20%, depending on what's going on. It's probably the area where whenever I have time, I like to invest a little bit more time there. And it's just, you know, like every entrepreneur, figuring out where I can put my limited resources.

Speaker B: And I do wonder a little bit for you 15 years in still doing the brand deals where, uh, you have to with clients, which can often be stressful. But the other revenue streams, the ones that my audience would be more familiar with, the licensing, book, online content, which has more scalability. Is that something you worry about or you've been able to increase your price enough that you don't, you don't want or need any more per se, and you're happy to carry on doing the way you're doing?

Speaker A: I had sort of, at the start, I had a couple of decisions I thought about, and one was I had just heard somebody articulate it. You're either fishing for lots of minnows or you're fishing for a few whales. And I thought early on, if I get a certain number of whales every year, that's all I need to hit my threshold. And so I kind of initially thought about it like, okay, here's what I was making before I took the leap. And as long as I at least make that, like, this whole gamble is a success sort of a way, you know, over the years, revenue can, can have peaks and valleys. But it's been at least two to three times that ever since I left my job to do this full time. But I actually, I like the branded client work. I heard somebody once describe, oh, you quit your marketing job to be a cartoonist. But I yet I kind of still see myself still doing a marketing job. I just happen to use cartoons, so I love. 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. So part of the attraction to me really is bringing humor into these business situations. And I want to stay plugged into that. You know, over time I've kind of have this, you know, this belief that's evolved that humor can really be this great unlock for everybody. And I want to. And I want to try to impact as many people as possible through that. And so these brand partnerships and collaborations have been a big plank of that. So I don't want to let it go away entirely, you know, and I would love to carve out some time to write a longer book and have some more of those traditional, you know, content creator income streams. But it hasn't been as much of a priority, a burning priority for me because the other stuff is working pretty well.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. And I will say, having met you in person and listened to a lot of your content, you're very optimistic and you have the right mentality to work with around range of different clients. You're open to new ideas. But I do wonder how you deal with clients that maybe aren't as supportive of the work you're doing. Because it's quite personal, right? You're doing art. It's subjective.

Speaker A: Every client that comes. Because I've never done any outbound sales outreach, every client that comes in somehow knows my work. And that's the attraction that comes through. The dominant characteristic is somebody reaches out and says, I've been reading your work for 10 years. I want to collaborate together. So it already starts on a different playing field. But the other part that I've had to learn, which is a new skill for me, is just learning how to say no. You know, in the early days, I was saying yes to everything just because I was like, sure. You know, the same thing about wanting to price myself too low. I'm like, I'll pay you to work with me. You know, it took me a while to get to a place of confidence where I don't have to take every project. And as a result, I'm just. I get to be choosier about it. And I've gotten better about sussing out problematic situations. And they usually relate to too many cooks in the kitchen. That's just a dynamic where I'm like, I've seen that movie before and I'm not going to go down that path.

Speaker B: Final thing for you, Tom, Um, uh, how have you dealt with competition? Because what you do is quite. It's simple, but it's effective. But there's many, many people who have tried to copy what you do. And sort of similar to that now people can make generative content. How have you dealt with that? Or is it just because you've been doing this so long and you have the reputation, um, for it, that that doesn't affect you.

Speaker A: I've learned over time, like, there's such a value in building a brand for yourself and what you do that it's. That it's unique. It's like the old Jerry Garcia quote. It's not about being the best of. It's about being the only one who does what you do. And that doesn't mean that there aren't those who are using cartoons and all those things, but it's like figuring out what you uniquely do is often an overlapping set of skills. There are a lot of people creating content. There are a lot of people creating funny content. There are a lot of cartoonist creating content. There are a lot of things that are happening that are in my space, but they're not as many who came from a business school perspective into this and marketing and the like. If I owe. 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. So I'm encouraged by that. AI, uh, is really interesting. I find it fascinating. At the moment, I'm finding more opportunity in it than a threat of competition. An opportunity not in terms of using AI to create all my cartoons, but because as society tries to figure out how to make sense of all these changes wrought by AI, we need our sense of humor more than ever. And some of the most successful cartoons I've created, 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 in that area as everyone tries to figure it out together. And that's been both gratifying for me, but also I find it gives me a lot of material to work with. So, I mean, who knows what the future holds? But I find that whenever I stay true to myself and not try to, like, follow what somebody else is saying is a best practice that's tended to be right in the long run for me.

Speaker B: Now I do end this podcast on three recommendations. A book you like to read and recommend to people, A, uh, podcast you listen to, if any, and a founder or entrepreneur you like.

Speaker A: Well, I'll take them in reverse order. David Hyatt is the one I often look to for entrepreneurial advice. A book I'd recommend, Orbiting the Giant Hairball, which is all about how you survive in a corporate culture and bring your uniqueness to bear and then for podcasts, I probably would go to Fly on the Wall, which is a really funny, interesting podcast that focuses on humor with two former SNL comedians and actors Dana, uh, Carvey and David Spade.

Speaker B: Tom Fishman, thank you very much for coming on this episode of Indie Bytes.

Speaker A: Loved being on with you, James. Thanks so much.