PRIVATE COACHING WITH JESSICA ABEL
Make the side thing the real thing
Your creative work belongs on center stage.
PRIVATE COACHING WITH JESSICA ABEL
Make the side thing the real thing
Your creative work belongs on center stage.
You know exactly what you want to be doing.
And you spend most of your time doing everything else.
Helping your kid with college apps, waiting for the refrigerator repairman, unappreciated labor for your condo association.
Keeping unreasonable client requests at bay, traveling for a speaking gig you didn’t want to do but somehow said yes to, a part-time assistant who’s more work than the work they’re doing.
Heading up a nonprofit board, mentoring worthy students, feeding the social media beast.
All of it feels like it comes first, like you have to “earn” your time for your own work.
So you try to claw back time by saying no to personal time, time off, downtime. You do your best to protect time for your work. And then yet another something else takes it anyway.
That’s how you wake up five years later having given up hours, days, weeks of time with your family and friends… with nothing to show for it.
You can’t solve this problem with clever calendar systems. You’ve already proven that any capacity you carve out will instantly be backfilled with other people’s priorities.
I felt so light. It was wonderful.
I had a story in my head, and it was going to be this monumental thing, and I just couldn’t seem to get any traction. I would panic. Like, now what, now what I do I do? Where do I begin?
I completed this thing that I had been carrying around with me.
And wow, I felt so light! I felt like I’d lost 15 pounds. It was wonderful.
Melissa Eddings Mancuso
Art professor and painter
Momentum System Coaching alum
I feel so powerful at this moment, it is unbelievable
Before, I felt desperate. I would not produce anything without an external deadline. And even with a deadline I usually did not manage to finish anything more complex than illustrations or single-page comics or cartoons. For years I have aborted all projects of multi-page comic stories.
It’s amazing, the progress I’ve made.
When I chose my One Goal, I pushed to make it the most ambitious thing I could think of. And now I’ve done it! Amazing! I feel so powerful at this moment, it is unbelievable.
Michael Wittmann
Cartoonist
Momentum System Coaching alum
I will be your snowplow
When you have the opportunity, you will open it up and fly. But right now, acting decisively and building momentum can feel impossible. When you have specific skills and talents you want to put at the center of your life, you may feel like you’ve got no one who understands, and the people you do talk to just don’t get it.
They mean well (most of the time), but they see things filtered through their own risk tolerance and preconceived notions about what creative work can and can’t do. They can’t see what you see, and they don’t know the potential your work holds.
The Advice-Industrial Complex is no better.
All the books, programs, productivity systems are built for a different kind of work, a different kind of motivation, and a different kind of brain. They can’t meet you where you are, with your expertise, constraints, and ambitions.
What you need is someone with the full context on both the creative and business side who can understand your unique vision and the decisions before you, and who can project that vision forward into a concrete plan of action.
That’s where I come in.
As an artist, coach, and business owner, I see my job as clearing the path for you to do your best work.
I’ve seen it all. I can usually spot the patterns before the end of our first call: the waiting to be discovered, the scattered focus, the inability to choose, and the punishing capacity crunch most of all. With my clear, practical approach, I can help you put all that mess behind you.
We will define and make those hard, grown-up decisions that open the door to clarity and action in a coaching container that always protects the work. I will reinforce your good instincts, and serve as a backstop when you’re faced with pushback.
Working one on one means I’m in your corner, always.
I will help you hold the vision instead of making crippling compromises that keep pushing it off to someday.
Here’s how we get it done
Get clear on your priorities
We use the 3 Cs framework (assessing your capacity, criteria for success, and commitments) with a robust decision-making process to simplify your commitments and open the path for your work.
Give your best work the best of you.
Build a Flexible Container
Get a step-by step plan to implement your decisions, with my support to see them through. The Flexible Container process bakes in your actual energetic, health, financial, and personal needs and realities from day one.
Follow through with support
I’m there to support you as you face the daily decision to keep walking out on that wire. Since nothing ever goes exactly to plan, personalized attention makes all the difference in stressful moments.
“Being able to just email you and you responding really fast was so huge. I feel like I had you with me.” — S., painter and coach
Private coaching with Jessica Abel
Four months, eight sessions: Get the support you need to clear a path and finish the work that matters most.
Every engagement starts with taking the measure of your reality. Your creative practice, your capacity, your commitments, and what you want your working life to actually look like. From there, the path depends on where you're starting.
If you have a specific project you're trying to finish, we get clear on what's actually standing in the way, make the decisions that need to be made, and build the structure to see it through.
If you want to protect and grow a consistent creative practice, we figure out what's eating your capacity and redesign your commitments around what matters most.
If the money piece is tangled up in it, we address that too, whether that means restructuring how you earn, simplifying your offer, or addressing negotiation and pricing for the work you’re already doing.
Creativity and money: It’s complicated
You don't have to want to build a creative business to work with me—I love working with creatives on finishing big deadline-free projects that don't need to bring in significant income.
But often, the key to finishing anything at all is saying no to other things. And those other things often are there because they (ostensibly) bring in income. So if you're so busy you can't see straight, don't be surprised if we start talking business model design in our second session.
Here's what you'll get with your enrollment:
One 90-minute Kickstart Strategy Session
We start by mapping your current reality: your capacity, your creative non-negotiables, and what's actually standing between you and the work. This becomes the foundation every subsequent decision is measured against.
Seven additional 1:1 coaching sessions
50-minute calls every other week where we work through priorities, decisions, and whatever is standing in your way. We go in a customized order to address your issues, without a preset curriculum.
Finish Line Strategy Dashboard
A shared workspace that tracks your plan and next steps so nothing falls through the cracks.
Curriculum
You’ll receive curated content from the Creative Focus Workshop and the Business Design track as needed, not as homework for its own sake.
Asynchronous support via Voxer
Message me any weekday, response within 24 hours. So you're never waiting for the next session to get unstuck.
Weekly Reflections
Every Friday, get a short check-in to help you reflect, celebrate progress, and reset your focus. One client called it “genius. I can resolve my issues when I view them as a friend's problems.”
90-Day Goal Setting Check-In
At the end of the engagement we review where you are and set your next priorities, whether or not we continue working together.
The investment for Finish Line Coaching is $4900.
A three-month payment plan is also available at $1715 per month.
You're going to see your life transformed.
I've always had a lot of ideas. And really early on in a project, I have great inspiration and huge momentum and I get a lot of stuff done.
And then, of course, reality sets in. You get sick, or your kids get sick, or you're overloaded with other work. And the momentum kind of dies out. And then you're left with a whole bunch of really exciting, potentially awesome projects in the same state, with nothing really finished.
What you will find out, like I did, is that you can read about this as much as you like. But not before you're having Jessica to lead all of this—that's where you're going to see your life being transformed.
I look back and I realize that my God, I was working so differently six months ago. There are things I do and tools I have that make every day really, really much better. And that turns into a good week, and that turns into a good six week sprint, and that eventually turns into a finished film.
André Hedetoft
Film director
Momentum System coaching alum
One of the best investments I've made all year
I felt absolutely overwhelmed, and I had too many ideas to really get focused in on what I needed to do, and no way to consistently sort them. I felt guilty all the time, I felt like I never deserved a break.
And it felt like I was never going to be able to grow out of it.
Now, I have given myself a promotion. It's amazing how much my firm has grown and how much clarity I've gotten around what I do. I'm able to go and sell projects now that I would never have even attempted to follow up on as a result of what I have learned.
This is one of the best investments I've made all year. Jessica sent out an email calling for early registrations and I opened it and I opened my wallet, clicked on the link and signed right back up.
Jenny Trautman
Strategic consultant
CFW + Momentum System coaching + AV alum
Hi, I'm Jessica.
I’m a cartoonist and author who’s published a pile of books, won awards, gotten great reviews, and built a creative career for more than 30 years. I've also taught hundreds of students at art schools and universities, and coached over 1,500 mid-career creatives to help them create comics, podcasts, novels, films, courses, academic publications, and businesses.
What makes me most proud isn't the resume. It's that I've made creative work the center of my professional life for more than 30 years while raising kids, staying married, and getting enough sleep. The work feeds me, both literally and metaphorically.
I know what it takes to keep showing up for your own work when everything else is competing for your attention.
I also know from hard personal experience that doing good work isn’t enough on its own. The business has to work too. That's why I developed the Ground Truth Framework, and why I’m always ready to support my clients through money decisions when they need it.
My creative life has flipped 180°
Before, I was afraid to commit to my life as an artist fully, and would only work under extremely high pressure. This system led to results, but also to multiple mini burn outs every year.
Now, my artistic life has changed 100% in comparison. I am no longer afraid. Instead, I wake up looking forward to start my creative day. I don't need the high pressure anymore, thanks to habits and rhythms I created. The prioritizing tools I learned, help me sort my thoughts – so I know what to do when I start feeling overwhelmed by my ideas and aspirations.
I confidently predict that the systems and strategies I learned will influence my creative life for decades to come.
Lisa Frühbeis
Cartoonist and graphic recorder
CFW alum
Give your work the attention it deserves.
Doing is transformational.
When you consistently show up for your work, you can feel it: you are the Person who Does the Thing.
No one can take that from you.
You can make clear-minded decisions about what matters. You can establish healthy boundaries with others. You can put your work out into the world without second-guessing yourself.
And you’ll feel autonomy and agency, free to experiment, pivot, implement on the fly, because you trust your connection to the work.
This is the new reality we can create together.
