Speaking
Speaking
past clients and events
- NextFab
- CreativeMornings
- NEWInc / New Museum
- Taller Puertorriqueño
- Drexel University
- Temple University
- Duolingo
- Wizards of the Coast
- University of Minnesota
- Rain Taxi
- Americans for the Arts
- Peabody Essex Museum
- University of Michigan Ross School of Business
- Power of Narrative Conference
- University of Bordeaux
- University of Missouri School of Journalism
- Podcast Movement
- Stockholm International Comics Festival
topics
keynote
For any audience of creative professionals
Make a Little Plan: How to Create the Conditions for Flow
When I walk into my studio in the morning, I want to dive all the way in, forget time passing, and not come up for air for hours. That's what I want. I'm betting that's what your audience wants too.
Flow isn't a gift from the muse. You don't need to wait for the stars to align. And getting sucked into constant reactivity, a capacity crunch, and the scarcity trap also isn't a sign of personal failure — they're symptoms of structural problems that require structural solutions. In this talk, we make a little plan to fix that.
audience takeaways
Why the scarcity trap prevents Flow, and how to avoid falling in
Three concrete steps to Pay Yourself First with your time
The Daily Top 3: A 5-minute practice to set yourself up for the focused, deeply satisfying creative work that’s most important
Format: Keynote or interactive presentation, 35–90 minutes
Delivered at: CreativeMornings Philadelphia (featured on CreativeMornings national YouTube channel), BarCamp Philly 2024, Drexel University Rankin Scholar Lecture
KEYNOTE | INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION
For creative professionals, small business owners, and freelancers
Solve for Sustainability: How to Stop Working Nights and Weekends in Your Creative Business
Most business advice starts with what you should DO. A step-by-step plan. An offer. A marketing strategy.
But that's backwards.
The counterintuitive truth is that adding more offers, more income streams, and more marketing is exactly what's keeping most creative professionals stuck. When none of them has enough of your attention to succeed, you end up with 12 part-time jobs instead of one solid business.
In this talk, I walk through the Ground Truth Framework, a systematic, repeatable way to figure out exactly what to offer and what to charge, using your real capacity and your real financial needs as the guide.
audience takeaways
Why adding more is exactly what's keeping you stuck
The Ground Truth Framework: the math that sets you up for profitability without overwork
How to build a sustainable business backwards from what you actually need
Format: Keynote, interactive presentation, or workshop, 60 minutes to a half day
Delivered at: Tools of the Trades Conference at NextFab (2023, 2024, 2026), Taller Puertorriqueño Tramando Project, NEWInc Accelerator at the New Museum (online), CreativeMornings FieldTrips (international, online)
workshops
workshop
For creatives juggling self-directed projects alongside a full life
Flexible Container:
Your Creative Survival Kit
The Flexible Container is a personalized planning approach for creatives that's structured enough to keep you moving, but adaptable enough to survive contact with real life. In this hands-on workshop, participants will build their own Flexible Container from scratch.
You've got a full adult life. The question is how to use the time and energy you actually have according to your own priorities, instead of just reacting to whoever needs something from you most urgently.
This workshop is built around ensuring that the deadline-free creative projects and business goals that are on no one's agenda but your own, claim prime real estate on your calendar, no matter what else is battling for space.
audience takeaways
A completed Capacity Audit: a clear-eyed look at what your life can actually hold right now
Criteria for Success: a decision filter for every commitment and opportunity
A working plan with daily and weekly structures you can maintain
Format: Half-day (2–3 hours), hands-on with worksheets. Can be paired with Solve for Sustainability for a full-day event.
Delivered at: NextFab Artisan Accelerator, Temple University MFA in Poetry Program
WORKSHOP | KEYNOTE | INTERACTIVE PRESENTATION
For organizations of all kinds, including corporate, academic, & nonprofit
The Story Matrix Workshop
Your brand, podcast, blog post, client case studies, nonfiction book, annual report, white paper — all these types of communication are stories that need to draw in a specific audience, create emotional connections, and communicate value.
The Story Matrix is a three-part framework that incorporates the narrative arc, escalation, the story hook, and underlying framing to help you forge any story idea, product, or brand into an inspiring and highly functional narrative structure.
Developed from the research behind Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio and Drawing Words & Writing Pictures.
audience takeaways
A clear roadmap for story structure you can apply immediately
Key differentiating factors that set your story, product, or marketing apart
Tools and techniques endlessly useful for everything from a feature film screenplay to your next email that needs to get results
Format: Keynote, interactive presentation, or workshop from two hours to two days
Delivered at: Duolingo, Wizards of the Coast, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Peabody Essex Museum, Rain Taxi
about Jessica abel
Jessica Abel is a cartoonist, author, and business coach for creative professionals, and the founder of the Creative Focus Workshop. She has published a dozen books — including Out on the Wire, La Perdida, and Growing Gills — and has taught comics, narrative, and creative business at the university level for 25 years, including as founding chair of the Illustration Department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Since 2015 she has worked with 1,500+ creative professionals through her coaching practice and courses, helping them finish their most important work and build expertise-based businesses that generate reliable income without consuming their creative life.
She lives and works in Philadelphia.