Listen to our Autonomous Creative Incubator alumni tell their stories:
Celebrating 6 new creative businesses!🎉🙌
From riding the rollercoaster to piloting the plane—how one artist brought joy and financial stability back to her business
Sewist overcomes burnout to stitch together a stronger business model
Frustrated filmmaker overcomes a crisis of confidence to find rapid success
Finding the Venn diagram of the work that pays well and the work you want to do
From Burnt Out Artist to Joyful Creative Coach: The Power of the “Perfect Fit” Business Model
Announcing 12 new sustainable creative businesses: Time to celebrate! 🎉
Are you on the hamster wheel of being overworked and underpaid? How one neurodivergent artist created a path to success
Read about what they've accomplished with The Creative Focus Workshop:
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The Autonomous Creative Incubator
The Incubator is the artist-centered program where self-employed creatives design a sustainable, profitable business rooted in their creative expertise.
The Autonomous Creative Incubator is not currently enrolling.
You can get the same results working 1:1 with Jessica Abel on building robust business foundations and getting amazing clients who will happily pay to work with you. Click the red button above to explore your options!
What happens when you design a creative business on purpose?
Find out directly from our students!
“By the end of the year, I should be able to pull in enough to run the house on just my money.”
“I was feeling very guilty about not being able to bring in what I felt was really just my market rate. I'm not even asking for a lot. I just wanted to be paid for the skills that I had. And even that was not happening.
Now I'm at a place where I can very easily see that by the end of the year, I should be able to pull in enough to run the house on just my money.”
Avantika Hari-Agrawal
Filmmaker and marketing strategist
From $10,400 in 2021 to $24,000 in 2022. And the year isn't over yet.
“In 2021 I booked somewhere around $10,400 in portraits. This year I'm in the $24,000 range. And it's only the end of August, so who knows what the end of the year will bring.
I have a plan for my business now and that sense of... control isn't the right word, because control feels really tight, but a command of this information that I can use to make better choices, use to make better decisions, use to create strategies.”
Sarah Marie Lacy
Artist and portrait painter
From needing help with studio rent to fully funded through the end of the year
“My studio rent will be paid right through the end of this year, which is just mind blowing for me. I have gone from this slightly humiliating position of having to ask my husband, can you put money in my business account because I have to pay my studio rent? To that business account actually having funds coming directly from my clients. That's never been the case for me before, so it feels really good. I'm finally growing up, making a living.”
Deirdre Colgan Jones
Artist, mother, and coach
“By the end of the year, I should be able to pull in enough to run the house on just my money.”
“I was feeling very guilty about not being able to bring in what I felt was really just my market rate. I'm not even asking for a lot. I just wanted to be paid for the skills that I had. And even that was not happening.
Now I'm at a place where I can very easily see that by the end of the year, I should be able to pull in enough to run the house on just my money.”
Avantika Hari-Agrawal
Filmmaker and marketing strategist
From $10,400 in 2021 to $24,000 in 2022. And the year isn't over yet.
“In 2021 I booked somewhere around $10,400 in portraits. This year I'm in the $24,000 range. And it's only the end of August, so who knows what the end of the year will bring.
I have a plan for my business now and that sense of... control isn't the right word, because control feels really tight, but a command of this information that I can use to make better choices, use to make better decisions, use to create strategies.”
Sarah Marie Lacy
Artist and portrait painter
From needing help with studio rent to fully funded through the end of the year
“My studio rent will be paid right through the end of this year, which is just mind blowing for me. I have gone from this slightly humiliating position of having to ask my husband, can you put money in my business account because I have to pay my studio rent? To that business account actually having funds coming directly from my clients. That's never been the case for me before, so it feels really good. I'm finally growing up, making a living.”