FINISH LINE PRIVATE COACHING WITH JESSICA ABEL
Refuse to choose between your best work and paying your bills.
Your creative work isn't the obstacle. It's the point.
FINISH LINE PRIVATE COACHING WITH JESSICA ABEL
Refuse to choose between your best work and paying your bills.
Your creative work isn't the obstacle. It's the point.
real people, real results
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
Incubator business coaching alum
The permission to design a business around what I would like my reality to be: That's been huge.
Designing the business around my reality and the permission to design a business around what I would like my reality to be: That's been huge....There's a structure. These are the moving parts, this is how they work together, and they've gotta work around me. That has been pretty mega.
Rauni Higson
Silversmith, artist in metal
Incubator business coaching alum
You've got a vision for how you want to work, how you want to live, and the impact you want to make in the world.
Your vision for your future dangles the promise of the three magic ingredients for rewarding work:
Autonomy
Taking a midday walk because that’s what your brain needs.
Actually being there for dinner with your family instead of sending another “sorry, running late” text.
Mastery
Bringing every iota of your hard-won expertise into play solving problems worthy of your skills.
Doing the work that makes you think “this is what I signed up for.”
Purpose
Creating ripples that turn into the waves that reshape someone's whole world.
And once you taste that, it's not something you can walk away from and just “get a job.”
It's under your skin.
But bringing that vision to life can feel impossible in the face of…
...your kraken-like day job that wraps its sucker-lined limbs around every spare minute
...your free-range clients, heedlessly breaking through the boundaries you thought you'd reinforced with barbed wire
...your to-do list that seems to double each time you blink
...your kids' orthodontist, your partner's grad school loans, your ancient HVAC system's death rattle
...your mental bandwidth that feels like a nut in a cracker, about to pop
That’s when the future you’re trying to build endlessly recedes like a mirage in the desert.
If your business isn't built around your work and your reality yet, it’s fixable.
There are three different situations with the same underlying problem:
1. You've built serious expertise, and you’ve been rewarded the way the best in your field are.
Residencies, master classes, awards, commissions, great reviews, and the occasional great-paying gig.
But none of it adds up to the kind of stable income you need to ensure your creative longevity.
You want to find a way to leverage your expertise in a business, but you're not sure what to offer, or how to price it, or whether what you're imagining is even viable…and the looming fear is that if you get into this, your colleagues will look askance.
2. You have clients. You're making money.
But the kind of work you’re doing is the lowest-common-denominator version of what you’re great at.
And on top of that, the numbers just don't add up. Too much time, not enough money, and far too little control over your time and working conditions. The way you're working isn't sustainable.
2. The business works. It pays. But it’s taking over.
It’s starving the work it was supposed to support.
It’s not profitable enough to reduce the time you’re putting in, and it’s keeping you from pursuing your best work.
You built this thing; now it's time to rebuild it around what matters most.
HEAR FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING IT WORK
From $10,400 last year to $24,000 this year. And the year isn't over yet
Last year 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
Incubator business 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
Build a future you can trust
You can do much more than simply escape what's not working. Instead, let’s build a business powerful enough to transform your whole relationship with work and creativity.
Bringing in a healthy income is life-changing, not because the number in your bank account hits some arbitrary level, but because you'll be able to...
Take care of your health. Finally get that dental work done. See a specialist about your neck pain. Buy the organic veggies without checking the price.
Take care of your people. Pay off the plumber so your partner can relax. Get your kid those ridiculous sneakers she's been begging for. Hire help for your mom so she can stay in her home.
Stand tall professionally. Feel confident with clients and peers. Fire toxic clients and work with people who value you. Know how valuable your work is, and get paid accordingly.
Create real time freedom. Spend time on your creative work without guilt. Design your schedule around when you work best. Take an actual freaking vacation.
Creating an offer this grounded in reality and this aligned with who you are is not something you can figure out in the frayed margins of your busy life.
But when you get the help you need to design that offer—which becomes the foundation of a profitable and flexible business—that’s when you start living the life you have always known was possible.
Choosing your projects.
Setting your schedule.
Doing your best work and getting paid for it.
One 90-minute Kickstart Strategy Session
We start by establishing your Ground Truth: your Enough Number, your real capacity, and your creative non-negotiables. 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 the steps of the Ground Truth process and then build the fundamentals of your creative business.
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.
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.
Hi, I'm Jessica.
I’m a cartoonist and author who’s published a pile of books, won awards, gotten great reviews, and plenty of attention for my work. My comics career, from the outside, looked like it was working.
Behind the scenes, my book advances averaged out to less than minimum wage, and the royalties just weren’t coming. I taught, I edited, I drew for cash, but no matter what I tried, I kept teetering on the edge of burnout and struggling to reach financial stability.
The work was good. It’s the business model that was broken.
At 45, after two decades in my field, I wrote this note to myself: “I don't know what I have to offer that's worth any money.”
That's when I got serious about understanding why hard work and great work weren't enough, and what actually connects creative expertise to financial stability. The answer became the Ground Truth Framework, and it's the foundation of everything I do with clients now.
I've worked with 1,000+ creative professionals since 2015. I spend hours every week on my own art. That's what a business built around your real needs and capacity makes possible, and it's exactly what we build together.
HEAR FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING IT WORK
Step-by-step support for building a business from creative work
Jessica has provided me with invaluable support on my journey, drawing on her wealth of real-world experience. She showed me how I can build a business from my creative work, one step at a time, every step of the way.
Chris Sellers
Game designer and publisher
Incubator business coaching & 1:1 alum
Jessica understands both the art world and the business world.
Your background made me feel like, this is someone who understands both the art world and the business world.
I can come with my specific set of problems and not have to explain all of the backstory of what the art world is like and why someone's nice tidy solution won't work…
Sarah Marie Lacy
Artist and portrait painter
Incubator business coaching alum
Don't be an accidental business owner. Design your business on purpose.
You're not an apprentice anymore. You've got the expertise. Now it's time to build a business that matches your brilliance.
When you build a business that's worthy of you...
Everything changes.
You can finally breathe, knowing your income is reliable.
You can raise your rates without guilt, because you know exactly how your work creates value.
You can say no to projects that drain you, because you're not desperately chasing every dollar.
You can think deeply about your work, because you're not constantly putting out fires.
Most importantly, you can trust your judgment, believe in your expertise, and have confidence in your ability to build something that actually works.
This is the future you deserve. And together, we can make it real.