Welcome back to the show.I am incredibly excited about the conversation today.We're going to talk about the role of humor in business and specifically in marketing through a medium that gives us the permission to laugh, cartoons.
Today I'm joined by the one and only marketing cartoonist, Tom Fishburne.Welcome to the show, Tom.
Thank you so much.It's such a treat to be here.
Such an honor to have you on the show.So I know that you describe yourself as a marketoonist, which is very cool.It's that beautiful crossover between marketing and cartoons.
So let's hear a little bit about you and how you got to be the marketoonist.
It started out a bit accidentally, and then it's turned into this wonderful creative expression.I started doing it initially a little over 22 years ago out of business school, working at General Mills.
I started this weekly cartoon strip poking fun at my day job, basically.And initially it was a hobby that I would just do every week as a way to keep my creative juices flowing.And then after eight or so years, I'd reached a point where my audience
was large enough and I saw enough potential to actually start a business around it.So my wife and I started doing it full-time, gosh, almost 15 years ago.
Basically, thinking of Marketoonist as a creative studio to help other businesses communicate through the unique medium of cartoons.
And then along the way, I started doing a lot of speaking at events and talking about the power of humor as a leadership skill.And now that's a big part of what I do.Travel around, kind of inside companies and bigger conferences.
and trying to remind everybody that we all have this innate sense of humor that we can tap into.It can be a really effective way to communicate and connect with teams and just to express ourselves.
Yeah, that's incredible.So I did see 2010 is when you started the company with your wife?
She actually made up business cards that say VP of everything else.
It started out, you know, like any small business that you have to do just about everything.And so she had come from a sales background, so she does a lot of licensing and syndication, but she was also generous enough to learn accounting.
And so that whole side of things as well.And we just, we collaborate pretty well together.And so she's usually the first person I show any creative work I'm working on with, and then, and Conquer and all the rest.
So she's the quality check.Does it get all off with her?Then it's like, okay.
first and most important screener.
Of course.And so obviously, yeah, you have been doing this as like, you know, I said it before, but I'll say it again, like the marketing cartoonist in the industry for almost 15 years.
Did you imagine that this is what you would be doing day in, day out for a gig 20 years ago, 25 years ago?
I definitely didn't at that point.I always loved cartoons.And as a child, I dreamed about being a cartoonist, but I didn't think it was a serious, like, career choice.And so I kind of parked it to the side.
Weirdly, it wasn't until business school that I actually started publishing cartoons and sharing them with other people.Before I went to General Mills, I was in business school, and we had a student newspaper.
And a friend convinced me to start drawing cartoons about student life.And so for two years at business school, I had this weekly cartoon about student life. And that I thought was, again, just a hobby.
But some of my professors started to commission me to draw cartoons for them as teaching aids.And that got me thinking that maybe it's something a little bit more than that.
When I was at General Mills and didn't have a student newspaper anymore, I missed it.I missed having that in my life, this weekly practice of trying to find an insight somewhere, find a spin on it, and then create it as a cartoon.
And so I just started it and sent it out to a few co-workers with a sign-up, and then it just kind of snowballed from there.I realized pretty early on one of the nice things was that
The people who were reading the cartoons would get back to me, and it gave me a sense that we're all going through a lot of the same things at the same time, whether we're in different countries or companies or big or small.
There are a lot of common issues that we're all often going through when we work in business in general and marketing specifically.And I really liked that side of it.It made it feel like it was a communal thing.
And I feel like because marketing is one of those disciplines that changes so frequently, particularly if I went back to the cartoons I was drawing 22 years ago, you know, it's just marketing has evolved.There've been so many rapid fire changes.
And so it's always changing.And I think if we can laugh at ourselves as we go through those changes, it helps us talk about it more openly and talk about how to handle some of the challenges that come up.
almost like the principles of marketing stay relatively similar, but the methods that we employ, marketing skills or where we do our marketing is changing.
But at the heart of it is kind of similar principles around really creating something compelling for a customer that meets their needs and then is communicated in a really persuasive way.
It kind of feels like there's a lot of volatility in and around how that happens and where it happens, right?
Yes, I love how you put that because that's one of the jobs I sometimes see of my cartoons is to hold up the mirror and remind us that actually the fundamentals haven't changed.
Sometimes we can get really excited about the shiny new thing, but absolutely not.Marketing fundamentals, there are a lot of evergreen principles there for sure.
So slightly sad question, but what is your favorite marketing principle that hasn't changed that is at the heart of what makes a great marketer?
I love the idea that maybe this comes out of my background of working in brand management, where we would have some sort of P&L ownership, and marketing was almost a form of general management.
So you got to see the full purview of the brand, and you got to think about not just marketing comms, but the whole thing.
So I think there's a general principle that it's valuable, even if you are working marketing comms, to at least think about what the overall brand experience is, all the different functional groups that make up a brand, because you can come up with
so many more interesting creative executions that way and inspiring a team to think of themselves all as part of this overall group building a brand.
It can unlock a lot of exciting ideas that are just a little bit out of the bounds of what traditional marketing comms might be.
A lot of that to me came through brain management and then later working in smaller challenger brands where it was a small enough company that you really could have much more direct impact in all those different pieces.
But it carried through to other brands I've worked in, big and small, where sometimes it's overlooked ways that you could think about, you know, somebody in the supply chain group, how is what they're doing relevant to marketing execution, for instance.
Yeah, definitely.Like looking at, at Jason or, or, you know, like cross-functional team responsibilities, really understanding how the different pieces of the business pie comes together.
It's definitely something that's really well and stringently taught at General Mills.
So I know I mentioned this before we started recording, but I did a stint in marketing in General Mills in Australia, and obviously you led the Haagen-Dazs brands in General Mills, if I'm not mistaken.
I did.I was the brand manager for Haagen-Dazs, but strangely, and this is kind of, it's so funny how large companies operate.Haagen-Dazs brand globally is owned and run by General Mills, except in the U.S.
where Nestle has the license to run it in the U.S.So technically I worked for Nestle while I was the brand manager.
I remember with General Mills in Australia, our favorite part of the week was when they would bring out the excess Häagen-Dazs ice cream that they just had to get rid of.And it was like these giant tubs.
People would bring in their containers from home and like eat as much as they could in the office and then take the rest of it home.It's something really wonderful about consumer brands and marketing for consumer brands where
People get personal joy out of the products that they're marketing and selling to other people.There's such a pride in that.
A hundred percent.And so tangible.My kids still give me a hard time for being so small when I worked not with us because they were too young to fully appreciate it.But absolutely.
It's exciting, exciting to be a part of that where you can actually see tangibly what you're creating.When I was working for Häagen-Dazs, it was something that everybody in my extended family understood completely when I did.
I could talk about being in an ice cream tasting exercise and coming up with a new flavor.Whereas some of the other types of brain experiences I've worked in, you sometimes have to explain a little bit more.
But it's an interesting spectrum of marketing responsibilities that you have.We were just talking about a really great product and a great brand equity that, that we as marketers get enamored with.
And then on the other hand, you have what you were touching on before, where you have this commercial aspect of the brand and the full P&L ownership and really understanding the full supply chain value proposition and even cost reduction initiatives that you sometimes would be leading.
So. There's a lot of responsibility that a marketer has.
And I love that.I love that full extension.You know, going back to Haagen-Dazs, one of the main factories was in the Central Valley of California.
And I tried to make it a point whenever we had a new flavor startup to be there at the factory, to be there on the line.
Sometimes it would be four o'clock in the morning, so you'd get there the night before, you'd wake up at the roll of the night, you'd show up.
It was both a reminder of everything that goes into what you're building, but also the extended team that's a part of it.
And they absolutely appreciated it when you would make the effort of traveling all the way there to be there for a flavor startup.
It made it easier the next time around when you're trying to do something a little trickier, like having a flavor that might have pieces that were non-standard to equipments.You had to be creative about how you could get that in the pints.
If someone had been next to you on the line with a hard hat and a hairnet, they'd seen that.It was easier to work through some of the obstacles together and find creative ways to get through it.I found that helped a lot.
One of the challenges I found always as a marketer was that Going from idea to execution, the path of least resistance is sometimes to make it as safe as possible.
And the safest ideas were never the ones that were most remarkable that would actually stand up against competition.So it was a constant effort to get everybody inspired to try to keep pushing.
The better insight you had into when everybody's different job was along the line, the better you could do that.
The bit that I miss the most from being in marketing is actually spending time on the factory floor with the people making the product and kind of seeing what challenges they face and, you know, taking a little sneaky piece of chocolate and things like that.
What do you miss the most about being a brand manager with your hands on the product and the brand?
I think that was, it was. And that moment for sure, the other moment I loved was being able to be around the product or brand being experienced when they didn't know that I was a part of it.
Either I was walking through a supermarket aisle and watching somebody shop, or I would go to somebody's house and see a Method hand wash on the, when I worked at Method for a long time, Method hand wash on the counter.
Like feeling that kind of ownership where you see something that you've had a role in and how people are actually experiencing the brand on the other side.Those were great experiences.And now it's just a little more arm's length, but I love that.
And so now your responsibility is to share reflections of those experiences that marketers go through or the challenges that they face.And I love how you said in one of your interviews, the truth can be funny.
And I feel like that's what's so compelling about your work is that it is funny.It is humorous.Like you definitely have a chuckle, but you also just go, Oh my God, yes, that's very true.
So how do you stay connected to marketers and their challenges now that you're kind of a little bit removed from that?
Yeah, that's a great question.Well, I get to work with a lot of clients in a lot of varied industries.
I've now worked with over 200 different organizations in some aspect of marketing campaigns where the cartoons are part of the creative for the marketing campaigns.
So I'm talking to marketers all day, every day, and I'm hearing those experiences and it's from a lot of different industries that I'd never worked in before.
So that's been interesting both to see some of the differences, you know, pharmaceuticals, for instance, thinking about all the risk landscape there and how you navigate that, that was something totally new to me.
And yet there's some fundamental similarities too.So I tap into that quite a bit.People email me a lot or just hit reply to my cartoon newsletter or leave comments.And so I find having the practice of needing to publish a cartoon every week
You know, for the last 22 years, it's forced me to always be on the lookout for a point of view on certain things that are emerging.It's been almost like a creative exercise for me.
And the best part of that is that with an audience, people will always share what they're going through or struggling with.So I kick up quite a lot from that.Sometimes people forget that I'm not on NDA.
It's amazing what sort of details people, people send what they're going through. And I always try to generalize it and it just gives me an easy kind of peek into what their day to day work life is.
And I generally find that there's some insight there that would be relevant to a larger audience.
Yeah, definitely.Well, I think you really hit the nail on the head with your work and I can imagine that you'd be inundated with the different things that marketers want you to showcase.
Also, probably because it feels like you have the permission to poke fun at an industry or a field that they operate in.It's almost like when you like it or when you share it or when you comment on it, even when you see it.
It's something that gives you a little bit of freedom to recognize that some of the things that we go through and that we deal with every day are really silly, sometimes stupid.Sometimes we take ourselves way too seriously.
So if I can't say it and I can't say it to my boss, then at least Tom will create something funny that I can share.
Yeah, I think that there's sometimes, there is an emperor has no clothes effect.Sometimes we're all observing something, but we can be a little uncomfortable to say it.
I think the more comfortable we are being able to say it, the better a culture is.Early at General Mills, actually, a lot of my co-workers thought I'd get fired for drawing these cartoons because it was sort of highlighting these things.
And you're kind of rocking the boat a little bit.And I got called into the office of the chief marketing officer. I thought I would be sort of given a talking to about not doing it anymore.And instead he said, I'm so glad you're doing this.
I'm so glad you're calling attention to some of these things because we need to be talking about these things more.So that gave me a little bit of permission to feel like it's good to laugh at ourselves.
It's good to laugh at ourselves at some of the things that we're going through.I always try to, with the humor I think about in cartoons, I never want to have it be a poison pen where I'm going after a particular group, you know,
you know, in a harsh way or aggressive way.Usually if there's a butt of the joke, it's me.It's something I've struggled with or I've tried to make sense of.
And I always try to approach it that way because I think when we can laugh together, a common situation, it just helps us talk about it openly and talk about how to move forward.So I think there's a useful role to that, actually.
It does feel like over time, especially recently, there's been a greater adoption of vulnerability in the office and in business.
So the ability to ask questions or to say that you don't know the answer to something, or maybe talk about the elephant in the room in your TEDx talk, actually, which is awesome.I'll link it in the show notes.
One of the things you say in the opening is that you have this blank cartoon with a speech bubble and you ask the participants to add in their own personal corporate context kind of challenge, which I love.
And I kind of wonder, like, what if we did that publicly in the workplace?Would that actually be more accepted now than what we realize?Have things actually changed?
I'd like to think so.I think it's company by company.
I'm always surprised, and I talked about this in the TEDx talk, how certain companies are very prolific with that contest when I come to speak, and others are very reserved, or I get a lot of side messages asking if they can be anonymous or have their names attached to it.
So I feel like the leadership could set the tone from the top on how permissive it is.I think there's a growing appreciation and awareness that
the more vulnerable employees feel comfortable sort of being their true selves at work, the better it is for corporate culture.But it's not that way everywhere, and there's work to do.
So I think making it public and making it happen more openly has tremendous benefits.I find when I go to speak to a company, we do that type of caption contest ahead of time.And then when I'm there on the day,
We do a lot of work with humor with the room, and I can almost tell the energy level change over the course of a session where people feel more comfortable toward the end, and it kind of sets a symbolic, positive cultural value in a way that, hey, we can laugh with each other.
However it's accomplished, it's something that has some value for a company to set that tone.
Especially if they're trying to push that sort of call to change through the organization.
I know that like sometimes you go through sessions like that where someone external will come in and pose something that really helps us to get closer to that vulnerability.
And then you kind of walk out of the meeting and go, Oh, I wish so-and-so had been here because that's the person that really needs to change their approach. But it's kind of, you know, that kind of culture change happens in pockets, right?
Like it's not something that you can really push top down completely.Like the top down is the permission, but then it's bottom up that really needs to grow quite organically.
I agree, it takes time and the permission structure is important for people to feel comfortable to kind of bring it up from beneath.
I had a chance to be a part of a new course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that was the first ever MBA level course on the power of humor as a leadership skill.And that was really fun to sit in on that class.
The professors asked me to be their cartoonist in residence to draw cartoons throughout the session and see students learning how to be vulnerable with each other and these future leaders basically learning how humor can be an asset.
And sometimes it started with, sometimes it was something like a big grand gesture.How do we set a tone for an offsite?
And sometimes it was something as simple as look at the most recent email you've written, a professional email you've written, and now try to rewrite it with a little bit of humor.
And it doesn't mean you put in a bunch of jokes to be a stand-up comedian.It just means you ultimately sound just a bit more human
When you take a step back and read the way we often speak in business, it can feel very robotic, use a lot of buzzwords and jargon.
And it's just a certain way of communicating that when you take the time to think about how to approach it a little bit differently with a little humor, a little wink, a little bit more humanness, you can communicate the same thing in a very different way.
So I feel like in some ways it's a lot of, a lot of small gestures that can, that can add up over time too.
And I really like that as well, that kind of reviewing how you come across, even how you come into a physical meeting, right?
Are you in there like, let's get to business and so that we can get out and go to the next meeting, or are you taking the time to be a little bit more personal and create a connection with the people that you're with?
That's kind of what humor does, I think, so beautifully is that it kind of brings us back to being human beings because humor is so, what's the word I'm looking for, where it kind of strips away a lot of the layers
that we put on, it just kind of connects us with, yeah, being a human being.
I love this old vaudeville expression that laughter is the shortest distance between two people.It's kind of this moment where you're, when you can laugh at the same thing together, particularly if it's like a shared experience.
You know, that's where I learned when in business school, having this cartoon, the first time I ever I went into my next class and my professor put it on the screen for all 90 of us students all at once.
I had this moment of terror, but then people started laughing because I was joking about something we were all going through together, and it was great.It was just such a bonding, connecting type of moment.
So I think sometimes when people think about your work as being reflections of what's happening inside of the industry and touching on that point that we were just talking about, where you're kind of going into slightly more vulnerable spaces, like calling out something that maybe is a little bit silly or OBS.
Um, like I know that, you know, you mentioned buzzwords before.One of my favorites from you is the chief buzzword officer, because there is a title in there that says director of vagueness.And I feel like that's basically my job.
They come with foresight.It's like, what's in the future?Well, let me tell you all these vague things that might happen.They may not happen.They might happen.So I love that so much.
It's kind of, in a way, it takes so much risk for you to even call out like charades almost that we put on in the marketing world where We're very kind of showman-like.
We're definitely trying to demonstrate the importance of what we do and the work that we do as being amazing and award-worthy and all of these things.And your cartoons are able to almost call that out in many ways.
Yes, for sure.Well, humor in general and my cartoon specific, I do try to hold up a mirror of sorts because sometimes within the marketing community, we could just start to breathe our own exhaust.
There's the ivory tower effect where we sometimes forget how we would often think about our own brands or what we did if we were actually consumers as opposed to part of this part of a career that has been soaking in this.
And so I think it's important because it can inspire us a lot more.That example of being on a factory floor on an ice cream production line, you know, I found that some of the ways I was used to talking about my brand just didn't translate.
I was putting too many layers on it.And if I tried to take away the buzzwords, speak like a human, you know, it ended up just being so much more effective for anybody I was trying to talk to. But it just also, it helped me in my broader life.
It just helped me see a little bit deeper into what I was doing that wasn't just the buzzwords and the academic marketing.
And so sometimes when you dig a little bit deeper with humor, you go to slightly contentious spaces and there is kind of this conversation currently taking place around humor or comedy being kind of watered down because you don't want to offend anybody.
Like humor has to be politically correct, but that's kind of what comedy is.It is kind of incorrect because it's calling out the things that you shouldn't be saying.So how do you straddle that line?
The one way I think about that, I've heard there's an academic, I'm blanking on his name right now, but he kind of defined four broad types of humor.And he put them on, if you can imagine, like a two by two matrix of sorts.
There's laughing at ourselves to laughing kind of at others.There's sort of a spectrum from being kind of an aggressive form of humor to one that's more affiliative.
And I think that a lot of where humor can be a challenge, particularly in business environments, is when it goes too far on the aggressive end of the spectrum, as opposed to the affiliative.
Aggressive meaning you're poking fun at a group or a person or whatever.Affiliative meaning we're laughing at ourselves as something that we're struggling with.
So I think that you can have affiliative humor and still call out an unexpected truth that somebody's talking about.
I try to focus on affiliative humor because it more naturally fits my humor type generally, but I think affiliative humor can be helpful to a lot of people in business thinking about how do I apply humor.
It doesn't mean suddenly being a shock jock comedian or rattling cages in that way.It could just mean finding an observation that you've seen and that you think others see and then finding a way to
Maybe exaggerate it or take it to extremes for comedic effect.But I think you can do that without bordering in the area of being aggressive.
Yeah, I really like that.
It's a really nice, clear distinction because it does feel sometimes like the humor that goes too far is a little bit like you're trying to rattle a cage versus just kind of poking through and getting someone to giggle and disarm.
The lesson that can sometimes be taken is that better too serious than sorry.Right.Oh, humor, risky, let's not go there at all.
And I think that there are ways to do it very effectively that are a low risk in business environments that we could really benefit from using a lot more often.
So I try to, you know, that's not to say that there isn't a time and a place for more aggressive humor in different places, but when you're thinking about particularly a business environment, which I do, affiliative humor tends to give you a fair amount of room to play in without some of the risks that people sometimes worry about.
So on the better serious part, we do sometimes at work encounter people who, I don't want to say they don't have a sense of humor, but they do very much think in a more traditional way that humor doesn't really have a role in the workplace.
So like, what's your advice for that?Do you keep trying or even just keep being yourself in front of those people or should you adapt?
Yeah, there's usually a spectrum.It's usually not as binary.Although I kind of found early on my cartoons became a little bit of a litmus test for where the types of cultures where I personally felt most comfortable working in.
And I worked in a pretty wide range.I did have a manager tell me soon after I joined his team, you know, quote, if I ever end up in a cartoon, you'll be fired.I thought he was joking.I don't think he was.
I then joined another place later on where I was sharing that story as part of my interview, and my new manager said, well, if I don't end up in a cartoon, you'll be fired.
And so that became almost a little bit of a litmus test of the right environment that was right for me. I tended to thrive in environments where I wasn't self-editing as much and where I felt comfortable being my true self.
So I think that, you know, there's a spectrum.I think a lot can be affected in a culture by a few people who are willing to be themselves.
Particularly if someone's in any type of a leadership role, they can create such an impact on the culture by just showing it's okay to laugh at ourselves.
When this chief marketing officer, General Mills, told me it was okay to keep drawing the cartoons, it really set the tone for me.And he tried to do that in other ways.We even had a...
We had, I don't know if you remember this, even though they did this in Australia, but there was a yearly award ceremony where they would give out awards for advertising.
And on the back of that, some marketers created a whole satirical spin where they would basically poke fun at some of what we were doing as marketers within General Mills.It started to
started to kind of raise some eyebrows about whether it would be OK.And the chief marketing officer personally stepped in and sponsored it because he thought it was important to create a culture where we could do that more often.
So I just think there's a lot of upside.And sometimes the resistance just it doesn't it doesn't see what can actually be achieved when you do have a bit more humor at work.
Yeah, I love that.We do have marketing awards as well at McDonald's and they're a really big deal.Like they're awesome.Obviously the work that we do around the world is amazing and it is actually award-winning and highly effective, et cetera.
So that's my disclaimer. But they do this grand stage award ceremony, and I would actually love for you to come in and participate in that as well.Because the awards are important, but they don't necessarily do the whole job of a marketer, right?
And I know that you were recently at Cannes and you were invited to go there and do daily cartoons, if I'm not mistaken.
With the CMO podcast team.
Yeah, it looked like good fun.And that podcast episode as well was great.And the work that you produced out of that was really funny.
Did you find it was a little bit ironic thing that you were like, everyone was still behaving in the same way, but you were allowed to poke fun at it?Or was that, is that kind of a nice transition now?
It was, it was, um, it felt really natural, actually.It was very interesting to be, I mean, so much of what I do, I observe from afar, unless I'm at an event.And to be in Cannes, it's just such a gathering of so many marketers all in one place.
So for me, it was a dream to walk around with a sketchbook and just to eavesdrop and observe and see what I picked up.I tried to poke fun at, you know, things like, but ultimately things were all kind of working through together as marketers.
And their response was really positive.
That's awesome.And I think the more that we can do that as well at some of those more serious award ceremonies, the better.
We've got South by Southwest coming up and everyone's clamoring to get into that, but also it would be great to poke fun at it a little bit, I think.Absolutely.Always helps.
So when you mentioned sketching before and sketching daily, and I know that you said that this all started for you doodling in meetings and things like that.
I was doing like a little bit of research on the history of cartoons and kind of where storytelling through simple drawings started and.
I think what's really maybe understated is the amount of skill that's required in turning a simple sketch, which isn't necessarily just a drawing of something simple, you're really telling an entire story through something that's quite kind of contained.
So I can imagine that when you are sketching and you're thinking about ideas, it probably starts quite long and contextual and detailed, and then you have to slim it right down into something that's really short, sharp and simple, for lack of a better word.
That's the key act.You're absolutely right.It's the simplification stage.I look at some of my earlier cartoons and I had a lot more going on.I was like, Oh, I add this joke and I do this observation and you just cram so much into it.
And if there's too much there for the reader, it'll take them a while to puzzle it through and you just lose the humor.And so it is, it's distinct from illustration in a way because the illustration can tell stories, but a cartoon tells a story.
They tries to get a laugh at the end.So it's all about. setting up the environment as simply as possible.It's words and pictures and ultimately the reader putting the two together and unlocks what the joke is, is the real hook.
So for me, it's very iterative.I start with observations.I start with things that are just little things that I find discordant or I think could be something.And I just work in stacks of index cards.
I just go through them and refine them and play with them and put them in different situations. I usually have a stack of index cards completed for any finished cartoon.
But toward the end, it starts to get to a place where I'm like, oh, there's a simple representation of this.There's something that kind of works.And then I'll just workshop different captions.I try to add shorter versions with a little more context.
Oftentimes, I'll share with my wife kind of a quick A-B test.What do you think of this one versus that one?The goal is to get to the fewest words possible and the simplest drawing possible to get across the joke.
Yeah.And that's, that's such an interesting process as well.Like I love that you say you start with a stack of index cards.Part of the reason I raise this is that storytelling in business or in marketing is so important, compelling.
short, sharp storytelling, you know, the elevator pitch idea, we still see it so often that particularly younger people in the industry, they do tend to put more on paper than what they need to or feel like they need to show everything or say everything.
And, you know, the skill of being able to create something that's really, really simple, where you can, you understand the work that's in the background, but you don't need to show all of that. It's so important.
So do you find that you end up editing yourself quite a lot?Like you end up cutting out a lot more than what you start with?
Sometimes when I cut out, I think, actually, there are two good ideas here, but there are two ideas.I'll do this one as this cartoon, and another one as a totally separate cartoon.That can happen a lot.
And that can be difficult, because I like where both of these things are going.I want to do it all.That can happen on every type of creative project.
If I've ever worked on every ad, I'm sure anybody who's worked in marketing can relate to having a concept and having go around for review and people say, don't forget about this benefit and that benefit, and also try to also mention this.
And then you freight it with so many messages you're trying to get across that it's impossible for the viewer to get the single most important one.I think that's the challenge for any type of communication is to strip it out.
So one of the things I love about cartoons as a serial medium is that you don't have to tell every story all at once.
And usually when I do commission work, we work with at least 10 cartoons in the series so that we can break them up into small little bite-sized insights and then keep each one as focused as possible on what we're trying to communicate rather than try to cram too much into it.
I think you did mention on a podcast that you did where you were commissioned to create a cartoon series of, I think it was a newsletter or a publication that was quite long and intensive and wordy and they just needed like people to read this thing.
So that's a really great idea is kind of leveraging also the visual medium to be able to communicate something because we are visual creatures.
In the end, right, we can interpret so much just from a simple visual aid versus reading an entire copy or something.
Absolutely.I do a lot of work with big consulting companies like Deloitte.Or actually, my most recent project, I'm working with one of my old Harvard professors who is publishing a book.
We're going to use cartoons, kind of a cartoon for each chapter to synthesize one key insight to make it easily shareable.And it goes well to go with
as deep as you want to go in the narrative, but also something that's a little bit more focused as a quick bite-sized insight that you can easily share.It works well as a nice balance.
Yeah, I love that.Okay.I guess the question that I do want to ask you though, and I know that this is an entire podcast episode in and of itself.
So speaking about trying to strip away so many different ideas and try to cram too much into this episode, but what I really love is the process that you went through of actually starting your business and taking something that is quite creative in nature and making a living off the back of it and taking the very bold step in backing yourself.
to do that full time and thankfully with, you know, your VP's support.But that whole process I think is just so inspirational for so many people that they can actually create a career out of something that is maybe less safe, less traditional.
Any tips that you would have for people who are maybe considering that as well as how do I do more with this thing on the side that maybe I'm really passionate about?
It's a great, great question.I've thought a lot about it because it was definitely a soul-searching decision to get to the point where I was finally ready to jump.I'd say the first thing is don't be in a rush to jump and make it your full-time.
Like, it was eight years for me.And I feel like had I tried to make it as profitable as possible in year one, I would have and everything that I loved about it.
It took me a while to kind of find my way, find my voice, find something that I like to do, to ultimately get to a place where I could experiment with different ways to actually have a financial return on it.
And so, that was the first big lesson is remind myself of why I was doing it to begin with.It's very easy to take your hobby, make it your job, and then you suddenly start hating your hobby.The second thing I think I
I had to take time and experiment with different ways to make it to have some sort of business side to it.And I gave myself a lot of little experiments to see what would work for a period of time.
When I finally got ready to make the shelf, I found this analogy really useful.A friend of mine who's an entrepreneur shared that when he always gets asked, when's the right time to quit your job and start your business?
And the analogy he used was of a plane on a runway getting ready to take off.And there's this point called V1 speed where you kind of hit the point of liftoff and your plane takes off.
And so his recommendation was, you should draw what your V1 marker is.Imagine what would have to be true in order for you to jump, to make the big jump.And then write down exactly what your V1 marker is.
And so that helped me, and I wrote down a few criteria. about what I wanted my revenue to be, and wanted to have my wife's support, and I wanted to have a home equity line of credit, and I wanted to have a few other things.
And then once I got to the point, I was like, oh, wow, I'm at my V1 marker.It's just time to do it.It took away the emotion out of that decision a little bit.It was just sort of, oh, I'm here now.It's time for me to make the jump.
And then the last thing I'll share is something you touched on that being in a way riskier.And I found that it's not necessarily riskier.It is nontraditional.But in some cases, my career path has been less risky than what I was doing before.
Some of the organizations where I worked would go through rounds of layoffs, and then you go from 100% of your income to zero.
Whereas by having a lot of different ways that I grow this business, I've had clients go away for one reason or another, but it's never a binary, it's on and then it's off.
So in some ways, by having my own destiny with a little bit more under my own control, it's actually given quite a bit of freedom to go in a lot of different directions.So those are the key things I would say.
The last thing, and I guess one additional thing is that What ultimately will look like was probably different than what's in your head right now.So be adaptable and open to that.When I took the job, I imagined a certain thing to be true.
I never imagined that keynote speaking would be a part of what I did.And then I started to get invite to give talks.And now it's about a third of what I do.And I'm realizing it's one of my favorite parts of it all.
And I'm looking to try to tip the scales to about two thirds of that in the next five years.And so that's been learning as I go what actually fires me up and be open to changing.
There's so many different aspects of what you do that probably have become a little bit of a surprise for you along that journey.
By the way, once you get to that point where you're like, okay, it's time to launch my business, it still takes a lot of bravery for you to be like, okay, let's do it and actually press the button.
And then, you know, the human aspect of leadership and business and tapping into comedy and storytelling, there's just so many aspects of what you do that I think are great lessons for people and for the business world.So.
Thank you for everything that you do.So Tom, this was amazing.I can't believe that that was the quickest 40 minutes of my life.So inspirational.
I do have one last question for you, which is what your go-to is when you're trying to get your head into a different space and look outside.
Having the routine, which I've had since a child of having sketchbooks and just going out and observing somewhere, that's still the best thing I can do.Particularly if I drop myself into an environment I don't know very well.
I love being in a place and not feeling tempted to take out my phone, but instead take out a sketchbook and sketch whatever I see around me, whoever I see around me.By drawing, it's like a little bit of exercise on paying attention.
And I find that by doing that, I'm always surprised in some way or another by what I observe around me.So that's always my go to.
A little bit of people watching and like really being in the moment.So, okay, actual final question for you then, which I've been dying to ask you is what is your favorite cartoon that you've drawn?
Ooh, probably one related to that.The week where I finally quit my job to do this full time, I drew a cartoon on making the leap.
And it's a little bit with that analogy of the V1 marker, but I'm sort of running down this runway with these wings sort of attached to this weird contraption where I'm bicycling and I have wings.And I'm thinking, what if it's a crazy idea?
What if I should test it some more?What if it's, what if I'm wrong?You know, what if you make fun of me?And then the last panel I've off the cliff and it says, what if, and I was like, They'll say, where did the runway go?
It was a very kind of personal cartoon when I was actually making that jump.
And I think about that sometimes because I find that being on the other side of the runway, there's this whole thing about jumping and kind of building your wings from the way down.
Like, I feel like I'm always continually sort of building my wings and figuring out what's going to keep it afloat, what's going to keep me interested, what's going to keep it growing.
And I have to be careful of my own inner monologue that tells me that I've committed career suicide and I should go back begging for my old job. Because I find that so much of it is an inside job and just being willing to stick it through.
Yeah, definitely.I love that that's your favorite one as well, because it's very much touching on everything we talked about in this episode.So thank you for sharing your journey and thank you so much for coming on the show, Tom.
Thanks for listening.If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, or share the show, and I will see you next time.Until then, keep looking outside.
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