Cartoonist and graphic recorder Lisa Frühbeis has made bold moves that have led to an incredibly rapid career trajectory in the last few years, starting with pitching a comic strip to a newspaper straight out of school...and then parlaying the end of that strip into a book deal, and then much more.
But Lisa isn't bold because she's free from fear. Far from it. Although she long felt a strong pull to become a professional artist, she was held back by an intense fear of the financial instability that comes along with that path.
What helped her overcome that fear and do the thing?
Lisa learned to use some strategic tools, not to stuff down and ignore her feelings and needs, but rather to leverage them to make decisions in the full confidence that she's doing the right thing.
And those deeply-rooted decisions are what make it possible for Lisa to, for example, renegotiate a with an international cultural agency to support her dream personal project.
What are these amazing tools?
Negotiation, a weighted priority matrix (?! Hang tight: We explain all), and...
Envy?
Yep.
Lisa's story reveals that the secret to taking big leaps and inventing new paths to success isn't freezing your soul and becoming an art-making automaton, but on the contrary, using passion, inspiration, and even negative emotions as guides and anchors to what really matters, and what to do next.
More from the episode...
Lisa Frühbeis is a comic artist and author. Her first book, the feminist comic strip collection "Busengewunder", appeared at Carlsen Bonnier in 2020 and won several awards. Her current webcomic "a fraction of time", about a single mother who works in the creative field, is available on tapas. She also teaches illustration at university and works as a graphic recorder (live drawing of word-image protocols) for sustainable companies. Lisa has been a voluntary board member of many associations, including the German Illustrators' Association, which she also represented as the German representative in the European umbrella organization EIF.
Connect with Lisa Frühbeis
https://lisa-fruehbeis.squarespace.com
https://instagram.com/lisa.earlybite
https://facebook.com/lisa.fruhbeis
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