🔴 His cartoonist side hustle tripled his corporate salary

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Tom Fishburne left a career as a marketing executive to work as a cartoonist and tripled his income.

Also known as the Marketoonist, Tom turned a creative side project that blossomed during his years earning an MBA into a cartoon read by half a million people each week. His studio has worked with over 200 brands — including Google and Adobe — and he now speaks globally on how humor can enhance our abilities as marketers, leaders, and collaborators.

In this episode:

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

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As a kid, Tom Fishburne dreamed of publishing a cartoon in The New Yorker. He’d heard how it worked: cartoonists submitted ten drawings a week, often for years, before getting a single one accepted. So he built his own path — one that earns him a much better living than the average newspaper cartoonist.

For 23 years, he’s sent an email every Monday morning featuring an original cartoon poking fun at marketing culture. It started in 2002 — a simple BCC email thread to 30 fellow new hires at General Mills. Tom had just come out of Harvard Business School, where a persistent friend convinced him to submit his cartoons to the campus paper.

At General Mills, Tom’s cartoons were a playful take on corporate life shared with a few peers. This was pre-Gmail, pre-social media, when email forwards were still the primary form of virality. His cartoons resonated, and his list ballooned from dozens to hundreds to thousands as people shared them across organizations.

For nearly a decade, Tom kept cartooning as a side project while working full-time in marketing. But his following continued to grow, and eventually, so did the business opportunities. His first paid project came from the Asian edition of The Wall Street Journal, which commissioned a set of cartoons for a promotional campaign.

He initially priced his work based on graphic design rates — until a client offered a crucial correction: “You should be pricing based on the value you're bringing to my business — not on your cost per image.”

The feedback unlocked a completely different value proposition. Tom wasn’t just a cartoonist — he was a marketer who knew how to distill complex ideas into visual storytelling. His dual fluency in creativity and strategy made him a rare kind of partner: someone who could develop a campaign and guide its message. By 2010, income from this side hustle had replaced half his salary. Within nine months of quitting, he’d replaced it entirely.

Today, Marketoonist generates over three times Tom’s former income as an executive. It’s a deliberately diversified business:

Tom offers three licensing tiers: $40 for presentations, $125 for newsletters or websites, and $60 for corporate blogs. Customers can license and download cartoons instantly through his website — no negotiation required.

“I realized early on I wasn’t competing with other cartoonists — I was competing with people just right-clicking and saving the image,” he says. To reduce friction, he’s made ethical use simple, and handles infringement with a gentle nudge rather than legal drama. “Most people mean well; they just don’t always know the rules.”

For client projects, Tom is highly selective. He's built his business around doing work he actually loves, rather than work that simply scales.

Instead, he works deeply with a small number of clients, often companies that already follow and trust his work. “Cartoons are fragile,” he shares. “If you layer on too much feedback, you lose the punchline.”

He’s designed his business around the work he loves most, and designed his days to preserve his creative rhythm. Every morning, he carves out a window for uninterrupted work, puts on the classic Miles Davis album, Kind of Blue, and drafts cartoon ideas on index cards. “It’s creative exercise. I feel better as a human for having that time in my day.” He draws in the afternoons, which he jokingly calls “the dessert of my day” — a reward for the deeper thinking done earlier.

His largest audience is on LinkedIn (over 400,000 followers), but Tom still considers his email newsletter the heart of his business. It’s where he tests new ideas, shares weekly commentary, and connects directly with his audience without algorithms mediating the exchange.

And ultimately, that’s what his work has always been about: connection. He didn’t start Marketoonist with a monetization plan. He wanted to create cartoons to connect with people who shared his perspective on corporate culture — and realized that others shared the same sentiment. Over two decades later, his cartoons still deliver that same spark of recognition.

A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week’s conversation:

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Learn more about Marketoonist.

Tom’s evolution from pricing per cartoon to value-based consulting provides a framework for any creative professional seeking to scale businesses without sacrificing their craft.

Tom's path to creative success bypassed every traditional route. Instead of submitting 10 cartoons weekly to The New Yorker for years just for a chance at publication, he identified a blue ocean for his skills: businesses struggling to communicate complex ideas through humor.

This strategy applies to any creative field. Rather than competing in oversaturated traditional markets, find where your passion intersects with an underserved business need. Tom positioned himself not as "a cartoonist seeking publication" but as "a marketing strategist who uses cartoons" — differentiating himself in a less crowded space.

Tom has learned to identify red flags early in client conversations. The biggest warning sign: "too many cooks in the kitchen."

His client screening process offers a blueprint for creators evaluating brand deals:

When brand contacts mention taking your concepts through "a gauntlet of people you'll never meet,“ walk away. These partnerships become revision cycles where your creative vision gets watered down by committee.

Tom learned this working with corporate clients; creators face the same dynamic with brand partnerships. The brands worth your time hire you for your unique perspective, not as execution-only talent.

Tom’s revenue streams also serve as creative feedback loops. Speaking engagements don't just pay him — they function as real-time testing for his cartoons.

His client work operates the same way. Each campaign teaches him about different industries and business challenges, which become material for future cartoons and speaking content. He's essentially getting paid to research his next creative projects.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: better insights lead to more relevant content, which attracts higher-quality opportunities, which provide even richer material. Tom isn't just monetizing his creativity — he's also monetizing his creative process.