Creative Sprint Recap: 3X your income as an illustrator
How to get Unstuck and build momentum
At the end of this post I have an offer for you, but first I want to walk you through what we did in the last creative sprint, and what we have coming up in the months ahead!
🏝️ I was back in my hometown of Penang for the week where I split my time between a beach hotel and the heart of town, and as illustrations work slows down for the Bologna Book Fair, I had much time to think and write…
The creative sprint is a monthly 5-Day Creative Challenge for paid subscribers of Ten Minute Artist. This month we went from being stuck to building momentum. And I shared my thought process for tripling my income as an illustrator on day 5
These are the steps we covered!
Identify a negative limiting belief
Replace it and shift your focus on what’s possible
Have a vision for your outcomes
Stack your reasons
I was so buzzed from writing this sprint that I went on to create the next 7 Sprints from the idea of reframing struggling artist mindsets with thriving artist mindsets.
My accelerated journey from industry outsider to securing 15-Childrens book projects in 4 years was an ongoing process of reframing negative mindsets with THRIVING mindsets. And I’ve identified 28 Mindsets that you can change across 7 categories to go from struggling to THRIVING!
These will be the basis for the next 7 Creative Sprints. Here’s an overview of the broad themes:
Financial Sovereignty: Create reliable revenue systems that free you from the feast-or-famine cycle
Creative Alignment: Connect your authentic voice with work that actually pays well
Regenerative Rhythms: Build sustainable creative practices that energize rather than exhaust you
Connected Visibility: Develop meaningful relationships that naturally amplify your work
Psychological Ownership: Cultivate unshakeable creative confidence that persists through challenges
Business Integration: Master entrepreneurial practices that enhance rather than compromise your art
Abundance Perspective: Expand possibilities through collaboration rather than competition
Here is an example of a reframe:
Struggling: "I alternate between frantic overwork and anxious dry spells."
Thriving: "I've developed systems for steady creation regardless of external deadlines or inspiration."
This is followed by elaboration with personal examples and some prompts for you to work on your own mindset shift. Again there are 28 of these mindset shifts in total and I believe changing a few of your mindsets will completely transform your practice.
For the past 3 year I focused my writing on tactics, these 28 shifts are Strategies that you can apply to your own practice!
And here’s my offer for you!
I’ve lowered the annual price of this newsletter because I want more people to experience these mindset shifts and go from striving to thriving artists!
An annual subscription will unlock the recently concluded Creative Sprint, where I share my thought process of tripling my income.
You will then start to receive 4 stratagies a month for the next 7 months of Creative Sprints
I’ve also created a new Tier called Studio Founders, and if you subscribe for that I will do a monthly check in with you via email.
In addition to that what I have done is I’ve formatted the 28 stratagies into a mini-book with chapters that will help you implement these strategies today. So instead of waiting 7 months to do the Creative Sprints in bite sized pieces, you will get the entire Version 1 of this 12000 word ish mini book which is titled Ten Minutes to Thriving
This is a work in progress which is why I call this tier Studio Founders as you will get to go behind the scenes and see what I’m working on months ahead and offer your feedback, and if you share your work I’ll be happy to offer my feedback too!
It’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you, there is a way to pay just $1 above the basic paid subscription to get it.