Category Archives: 12 Week Challenge

12 Week Challenge: Starting As We Mean To Go On

Written on March 23, 2010 by Jonathan in 12 Week Challenge
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One of my main goals when putting together the ‘12 Week Challenge’ was to create a sense of community amongst the participants. To nurture an environment of encouragement, feedback and support.

I’d like to start this off prior to the official start of ‘The 12 Week Challenge’ on the 5th April by introducing everyone taking part in the challenge in a blog post .

So, please could everyone taking part email me with a short bio, an illustration, your website/blog url and Twitter id’s by Friday 26th March?

Thanks everyone for such positive feedback so far - I’ve been blown away by the response and am looking forward to kicking things off on 5th April.

The 12 Week Challenge

Written on March 21, 2010 by Jonathan in 12 Week Challenge
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The thing that I’ve been hinting at for a while now is here and this is what it’s all about…

If you read this blog you’ll probably know that I’ve held a long-standing ambition to be a working, professional illustrator. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and talked about for as long as my wife has known me – we’re teenage sweethearts and have been together for 15+ years now, so that’s a pretty long time.

I’ve had a few goes at it, a few false starts, a few attempts to get it going but for various reasons it’s just never happened (could be something to do with “a creative’s lack of self confidence”?!). But now is the time.

Over a nice hot cup of tea a few weeks ago, we decided that this was it. Actually Lea (my wife decided she’d had enough of me going on about it but never making it and I agreed. And so we both agreed that I would spend the next few months really focusing on getting my illustration career going and that this was my final go at it before giving up that ambition forever (although those were her words, not mine).

And then we decided that if I was finally going to go for it, why not share that journey and that challenge with others…and so, the 12 week challenge was born!

What It Is

The 12 Week Challenge is an opportunity to make amazing progress towards your goal of becoming a full time professional illustrator. But this time you won’t be alone.

Here are a few things we hope to achieve with the 12 Week Challenge:

• Life-changing progress for as many participants as possible
• Community spirit and a collaborative effort to get “there”
• A platform and spotlight for those on the journey with me

Who Can Take Part

Anyone! The 12 Week Challenge is being run across all three of our existing communities at Kinetiva. That includes this community for illustrators at zero2illo, Lea’s community for health & wellness professionals at Vibrapreneur and our joint Location Independent community.

So that means if you’re aiming to become a professional illustrator, a successful health & wellness professional or location independent (or a combination of all 3), why not join us as part of the challenge?

How It’ll Work (I Hope)

This is going to take a bit of co-ordination but what I’m hoping to do is this:

  1. Set a weekly task for all participants alongside recommended resources & tips
  2. Round-up participants’ progress on zero2illo each week
  3. Generate community spirit and encourage interaction and connectivity on each of your sites & blogs, not just on zero2illo.

What that means is that I’ll be setting you a task to complete each week, asking you to feed back to me and let me know how you’re going (so I can feature you on zero2illo) and help & encourage other participants by commenting, following, tweeting and promoting fellow participants’ sites and projects as much as possible.

I’ll be walking you through the steps needed to achieve your goals (for zero2illo, these will largely focus on producing work, putting your portfolio website together and the business aspect & setting up/running your business), sharing our top resources with you and asking leaders in their respective fields to share their top tips with you too. It’s a win-win situation and no-one loses.

What You Need To Do Now

There are a few ways we’ll communicate with you throughout the 12 Week Challenge, so it’s important that you’re signed up or following zero2illo on one of these channels if you want to get all the good stuff:

  • The Blog: I’ll be setting the weekly tasks for the aspiring illustrators on zero2illo, so make sure you’re subscribed here so you receive each task.
  • The zero2illo Mailing List: I’ll be sharing extra resources & a monthly round-up to subscribers to the newsletter so if you want these, make sure you’re subscribed..

There are a few other things you might like to do too, which include:

  1. Mark your calendar now for the start of the 12 Week Challenge: Monday, 5th April.
  2. Tell everyone you know about it, so they can join in too and change their lives.
  3. Display the 12 Week Challenge badge on your site to show you’re proudly taking part to change your life…