Jessica Abel - Autonomous Creative

We are docking at Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Welcome to Creative on Purpose, conversations about making a better living and a bigger impact by defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make in the second half of life. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach and author of The Art of Encore Living. Ready to play your game and live your legacy? Visit creativeonpurpose.com to get started right now. Let's meet today's guest, Jessica. Welcome to the broadcast. Please tell everyone who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can they go to learn more about you and the difference making.

Uh, well, thank you for having me. My name is Jessica Abel, and I am, uh, an indie cartoonist and author and, uh, teacher. I've been teaching art school for 25 years or so, and I'm a coach for creatives, both on the side of trying to help people really focus on the work that does make a difference, like you talk about, and make sure that work happens in the world, and also building sustainable and sustaining creative businesses. And you can find me at jessicaabel.com, just right down below.

So that's— I love the way that there's some alignment and intersection between the work that we do. I don't know what your experience is like, but I know for myself, I didn't wake up when I was 9 years old and say, you know what I'm going to do when I grow up? I'm going to, I'm going to start a business called Creative On Purpose, and I'm going to help people to find the difference only they can make and turn it into sustainable businesses. Um, so I'm, uh, but I'm not going to bore you with my story, but I would very much be very interested in hearing your story. So how did you come to be doing the work that you're doing?

Um, okay, so I started making comics when I was in my— while I was in college, basically, and then started, um, as making mini comics and publishing minicomics being like photocopied, you know, like self-published, literally photocopied comics when I was in my early 20s. And that turned into making comics with Fantagraphics Books for a while, and then I started publishing with mainstream New York publishers, Pantheon, whatever. So I have a number of graphic novels, a couple of textbooks about making comics, um, and Meanwhile, started teaching along there and have been doing that all along. I currently am the chair of the illustration department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and teach there. Um, and so all of that stuff's going on, and, uh, multiple times through that journey of, you know, books that I'm— are great and I'm proud of, I also found that I got super burned out, like, a bunch of times, um, because I was so— like, the author business is just really, really tough. Like, trying to make a living as an author is practically impossible. Like, as an author, as opposed to doing something else and also being an author, which is what most authors do, right? And, um, but the something else can really snowball into way too much, and I was trying to make too many books at the same time, all this other stuff. And so basically, when I got to about 2015, um, I was finishing my book Out on the Wire, which is, um, a non-fiction comic book about how the best radio and podcaster— narrative podcasters make their work, um, and the storytelling— their storytelling techniques. Um, it's a book I'm really proud of. I think it's great. But the last 8 or 10 months of that was just, you know, like 8 or 10 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, also parenting small children, grinding out comics pages, you know, because it's 220 pages or whatever, and I had less than a year to finish it in, in that, you know, for the drawing portion. And I just, I was like, I can't, I mean, I just can't, I can't do this. I can't keep doing this. It's not that I don't want to, you know, be a cartoonist or, you know, don't love comics, comics or whatever, but I cannot make this the way I'm trying to make my living. Because, you know, I was really like— I was just finishing, and I made a narrative podcast of my own also called Out on the Wire about storytelling, which was a fantastic creative project but sucked up all of my time for 6 or 8 months. Um, and I should have already had book proposals in the pipeline if I was going to have the next book, you know. It's like right back on that treadmill. And so through the process of creating the podcast Out on the Wire, it is, it's a narrative podcast, so it's fully scripted, fully, you know, scored, all that stuff. But it was also kind of a hybrid where there was, I also appended interview sections to the end of the inner, the episodes where I would then talk to somebody about one of the issues that came up in the episode. We had interstitial episodes that were workshop episodes where we would— so there was a pedagogical angle to it. So each episode has a lesson about storytelling, and then the challenge is like, try this. And then we had an online group where people could post their work. We would choose people from the work, from the group, have them on to a podcast episode, talk to them about the— what they were doing, and then, you know, go on from there. So we had this online group that was growing. Um, the book this is right around the release of the book and it had a lot of press and people were really talking about it. The podcast got— this was, you know, early podcast days in some ways, so not that— not as hard as it would be now, but we got into New and Notable for a couple weeks and, you know, we were like really getting a lot of traction. So the group was pretty vibrant, you know, it wasn't huge, but it was, I don't know, 800 or 900 people or something like that. And As I'm thinking about like, what are my next steps going to be? I basically surveyed the group and I'm like, what can I make for you guys? Like, what can I do here? And I had an email list as well, and I asked there as well. And I really expected, because I'm like immersed in storytelling, I mean, this is, this is the book, by the way, Out on the Wire here. So, you know, I'm like really immersed in high-level storytelling at this point, and I figure I was gonna be like, oh, let's learn about, I don't know, character development, or let's learn about you know, something else along those lines. But what I got back was a very powerful cry from the wilderness of like, I am stuck, I'm not making anything, I'm procrastinating, I'm dithering, I am stuck with perfectionism, you know, why can't I do the things that I love doing? And as somebody who had at that point, you know, created like, I don't know, 10 books and like a bunch of other stuff, and you know, I know how to get big projects done. I always ended up putting myself in charge of collaborative groups because I was like the only one who could make it happen. So I launched a very small pilot of a course that became the Creative Focus Workshop, which is still something that I have and continue to do and has evolved a ton from there, obviously. But it was a little email you know, course where I just sent stuff out in email for a week. And it just was so fun. It was so powerful, really. I mean, some of the people who were in that group 7 years ago now, I still have them in my group today, you know. So the, the way that the, the focus on, um, paying yourself first with your time, making sure that there's time and space in your life for the work you love and the work that you— I— is like your identity, um, and not just, you know, circling the drain all the time of like the endless to-do list. Um, that really was very powerful, and that's all I did really in the business for several years. And I've added a couple other things. Most recently, I've added a business coaching program called The Incubator, Autonomous Creative Incubator, which is focused on like creatives who are— that's their life, you know, they're mid-career creatives, but they've just kind of never figured out business. They have clients, but they don't— it just hasn't clicked. They haven't figured out how to make it really work. But I still have this whole thing, and the focus of the incubator is related in some ways to the Creative Focus Workshop in that my goal is to have everybody flip everything around and say, like, what What is the most important thing? How do you take care of the most important thing first? Make sure that's what really happens. And then let's build out from there. Like, what are the things that are in conflict with that? Let's try to resolve those things. Let's try to reduce your commitments and all those kinds of other things. And with the incubator, what typically is the problem for the kind of people I work with, people who, you know, they've— they're highly respected in their fields, they do this thing, but they're struggling financially. You know, for years and years and kind of can't figure out why. Very frequently they're doing what I was doing, which is to have way too many jobs trying to fill the gap financially with like this, that, and the other thing. And, um, so trying to— what I, what I focus on is figuring out what their, what I call their enough number is, which may sound like we're kind of underplaying, you know, like it's not— but my point about enough is enough is not scraping by. Enough is way more than scraping by. Enough is feeling like a lack of anxiety day to day, week to week about money, and feeling a sense of, you know, you can focus on your work and then that your clients and the stuff that's in front of you because you're not worrying all the time about, you know, what's going to happen with the rent. Um, so establishing that and then building from that as the foundation, building out for what is the business model, what's the offer, who are the— what's the audience, who are the clients, starting from your needs. Not I have a thing I want to make, how can I sell it, but I need this, how can I build out from there. So it has that same kind of pay yourself first feel to it.

Nice. Well, there's a lot of things to, to, to tease out from, from what you just shared. One, one of the things that you you shared is that you've experienced, and it sounds like your clients experience too, is this idea around burnout, which I find is, you know, was something that was getting a lot of attention during pandemic times, for obvious reasons. But one of the things that I've noticed in the work that I do with clients, or one of the things that has been revealed is that Burnout is, is less a disease and more of a side effect or a symptom. And so we use this thing called a Zespirometer. And the Zespirometer is how excited or exhausted are you on a, on a long-term basis doing the thing that you're doing. And if, if you find yourself feeling a little depleted and exhausted, then it's time to decide or investigate, am I doing the wrong thing? Or am I doing the thing wrong? And I'm just curious if, if that resonates and, and how, how, how do you help people? Because I, I love what you, you were saying about define what they really want, define the essential steps or strategy that's gonna get them there.

Mm-hmm.

And so it, it sounds like those, those two ideas kind of, um, go together. Like if, if you don't know exactly where you're going. Well, then any ship can take you there, as opposed to, you know, having a point on the horizon that you're not completely attached to. Because I think there's, you can get exhausted by putting the blinders on and grinding your way towards a destination that actually was not your best. So just any reflections on, you know, some, some of those ideas?

Yeah, for sure. I love that formulation. Are you doing the wrong thing? Or are you doing it wrong? That's a really great way to think about it. So Yeah, thanks for that. I think that we do get confused about those things. I'm actually doing— I'm going to be doing— I'm like developing this workshop that's going to be, I think, really fun for using a weighted priority matrix to try to work out like— and so it's really in my head right now is what I'm— what I mean to say is like there's, um, in a weighted priority matrix, the first thing you need to ask yourself is what are the criteria you're deciding on? That you're using to decide that is. Like, what are the things that are actually important to you about whatever this thing is, you know, when this list of priorities is that all feel like they're equally weighted, they all are the same to you, you're like, so every time you look at your list, your vision swims, you're like, I don't know, this, that, ah, you try to focus on something and instantly something else is like, yeah, but what about, and you're drawn away to that. When you get clear on what the, what the criteria of success and what your value are to you, specifically to you, again, starting from your own needs, your own framework, then you can essentially just rate the ideas, the project, on that basis, and things will rise to the top. I've used this twice in the last week in my own life, and I forgot about it for a while, and I was like, why am I doing this for other people and not for myself? So I did, I did two priority matrix matrices about big decisions I needed to make. And it was immensely helpful. Because once you know that you're deciding based on the criteria that actually matter to you, you can trust that, you know, you can really trust that decision, that, that it is the right thing. And that self-trust is what allows us, I think, to— it's what allows us to focus and move forward. And also, most importantly, to say no to other things. Because the main thing is we're just really overcommitted, and there are only so many minutes in our lives, and we have to make choices about those things. Um, if you're not able to make those choices, you know, you're going to be screwed one way or another.

Well, I love that because I, I think that the, you know, the clarity is, is less a destination and more of a a path or a process. And so, but when you, you have to start with some sort of idea of where you're heading. And I love that idea that you wove in of trusting yourself, because one of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Goethe, which is, "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." And so often, you know, I think, I think that almost for myself and almost everyone I've worked with, the biggest challenge that we need to get over first is our own inner dialogue around our own worthiness. And that, but when we have a goal that we're heading toward, that is not just for us. So like, I don't, I prefer not to frame goals around a money number, or a productivity number or anything. Like, for me, remuneration and status and the things that we usually chase— fame and fortune, that's what we're taught to chase. That's the pursuit of happiness, right? Those are more often side effects of doing the thing that you should be doing and doing it, you know, making sure that you're doing it well enough every day and The fame and the fortune become kind of naturally occurring side effects along with purpose and passion. And these things become renewable resources you can start to bake back in. So I love that. But you also hit on something that I think is extraordinarily important, which is getting to what we want and, uh, and, and getting there with the least amount of risk, with the least amount of effort and the most amount of possibility is more a process of pruning and saying no than it is. A process of fertilizing and saying yes. So I'd be curious if you have any insights or any, any other kind of hacks or principles that you use for, like, how do you hold something up and say, am I saying yes to this or am I saying no to this?

Well, I'll get to that in a second. But first, I wanted to give you a yes and, which is Yes, I think it is true that money goals can be distracting and are not necessarily the real thing. But I do know that with the people, the population I tend to work with a lot, which is people who are, you know, they went to art school or liberal arts school and they're doing something really creative and they do spend their time pursuing that thing. And it does not turn into money magically. They don't somehow end in the— because that's the expectation, I think. And I think that you're saying something slightly different, but I think that the, it's really easy to misread what you said as, you know, it's all fine, like, it's whatever, like, you'll get there, everything will happen in the way it should happen. That's what artists and writers and other creatives believe. They believe that if they just keep working on the thing, the thing itself, that somehow a stable middle-class living will result from that. And It will not, like that does not happen. You have to have strategy around, you know, especially pricing, you know, pricing to make sure that, you know, the amount of time you're putting into something is something that you actually, you're getting paid for that and not just putting into the project itself, but all of the work of your business and your life needs to be priced into each offer, each exchange. And for people who are working solo or in very small businesses, Mostly people need to be working with individual clients, you know, or like, you know, individual businesses, few clients at high pricing. And there, there's a, there's a narrow band really of where doing creative work and finding an audience that can pay the prices that you need them to pay, um, that those things match up. And so I really, like, in my own, in my coaching, in the way that I write and everything, I put a lot of emphasis on this. And, like, it's not, it's not your fault that you don't know this stuff. It's not your fault that you don't know how to design a business model that is, can potentially provide sufficiently for you and your family, and more than sufficiently, you know, abundantly. Nobody talks about this. Nobody told you that there are pieces that go into that. There's strategy behind it, and the strategy is doable by anybody who's a just normal, everyday, you know, smart, creative person. But it is important to have that strategy, because if you just go into it like, "It's all going to be fine," and like, you know, "Law of attraction, if I do something really great, you know, everybody will show up," does not happen that way. Does not. I just really, really feel that strongly, and so important. And I think that it's not That's not what you were saying, but again, as I said, I think that people can easily misread what you— the way you were saying that as like reinforcement of that dream that somehow if I just get good enough at this and do it for long enough, that magically everything's just going to happen for me. And that's essentially what I believed before I started my business. I was like, somehow this is all going to fall into place and I'm going to start making enough money that I can slow down and focus on a book at a time and, you know, work a normal number of hours and it's all gonna be good. And it, that just was not happening and would never happen under those circumstances that I was in.

Yeah, no, I, I, uh, I appreciate you, you, uh, highlighting that. And for, for sure, I'm, my approach is, um, if you are going to be a responsible creative, responsible to yourself, responsible to the people that you're responsible to, to, Responsible to your financial obligations to others and responsible to the audience that you serve. You really have to take care of— I mean, it's still pretty basic. There's 3 things you have to have. You have to have an offer, an art, whatever it is that, um, that is irresistible to an audience that is specific, identifiable, and eager for the thing that you are offering. And you have to have, um, a sales success strategy. You have to have a way of putting that offer in front of that audience in a way that generates, um, sustainability through getting paid, uh, you know, what your work is worth. So I think, um, yeah, just to, just to clarify.

Yeah, like you, like I was saying, like, I'm sure, like, you didn't mean it the way I was hearing it open.

Um, if you build it, they will come is a very, uh, nice premise for a movie and a disastrous premise for a life as an artistic or creative person. So would never, never recommend that. Um, I guess I would— one of the things that keeps coming up for me is, you know, because it sounds like you're doing work with, you know, people who are creatives in the way that we think we usually identify or think about what a creative person looks like or does. And then you're doing this other thing with people that are maybe in a more business or kind of corporate type of environment, which we often don't associate with creative endeavor at all. So I, as we're winding up, just a couple last questions. I'd just like to learn more about how do you think about creativity? Like, what, what is creativity?

Great question. I I feel like one of my greatest creative projects of my life is starting this business and trying to figure out how to make it work. So I don't think of creativity in a limited way in the sense of, you know, it's just if you're making paintings or writing novels or whatever at all. I think that's very, very human impulse. It's in everybody. And entrepreneurialism is a very strong expression of creativity. It's a thing you want to create in the world. And so the people that I work with in general— uh, well, not in general, the people I work with, they're trying to do something, um, that's on nobody's agenda but their own. They're trying to make something big and not— or small, just they're trying to make things that are on their own account, self-generated work that is not— there's no deadline for it, there's no, uh, you know, there's, there's no reason it should exist.

And this is—

that gets back to the self-trust thing. There's no reason it should exist except that they want it to exist, um, which isn't to say that you can't be creative within the structure of a job or whatever. You can, you absolutely can, um. Creativity to me is whenever you're creating something whole cloth out of your head. And even whole cloth is an exaggeration. It's not never whole cloth, that you're taking pieces and putting them together, but you're putting them together in a new way. You are, um, recombining elements in a way that's unique to you, that's unique to your vision. Um, that to me is creativity. And so it doesn't— medium is irrelevant to me in that sense. I really— the people I love to work with most are people who are just— they just need to get their teeth into something. They really, really need to do the thing, whatever whatever the thing is. And that passion is what I connect to as a coach and what I love to help people express in the world, you know.

Yeah. Well, and just a little follow-up on that. Do you find that, you know, I think I totally agree that creativity is just an inherent human capacity that we we start executing or acting on from the moment we're born. We largely turn ourselves into talkers and walkers and readers and writers and bike riders and sandwich makers with far less instruction than you might imagine. So, you know, we, in many ways, you know, our building of identity and all that is a creative project. And institutionalized education and occupation largely does not, doesn't encourage or cultivate or just outright tries to mute that capacity. And one of the things I notice in the work that I do is having to help people reconnect with or just recognize themselves as creative beings who have always been able to solve difficult problems and, you know, create and develop impossible things simply by virtue of this human capacity. I just wonder if that's a part of your process, or if that's something that comes up frequently in your work?

Um, I don't— I think the people who I end up working with, they usually self-identify as some— they're trying to do something, you know, whatever that thing is. Um, and so that initial piece, I think, is something I don't encounter that often, but it pops up over and over and over again, the, uh, trauma really of going through institutional education and sometimes corporate— the corporate world and what that does to our sense of self-trust, our sense of value in what we're creating. It's always being compared to, you know, the inner critic voice is so frequently the voice of like a third grade teacher, you know. Also, you know, third grade teachers are awesome and really help people be creative. So no, no shame on third grade teachers. They're awesome. But like, there are some who are not awesome and who really, they, they hold kids up to a certain kind of level, and like, if you don't hit this level, then you're, you're just not good enough. And there's— and, or just by comparison or whatever, you know. And it really, really does, man, that, that voice, whether it's a parent or whatever, that inner voice is just so, so challenging. Um, that's what I see more than, am I actually creative, is the the, the slapback of childhood trauma on, um, trying to continue to make something when it, when it is so challenging. And it will be like, there will be repeated moments when you're in that dark forest and you just don't know what happened, what's going to happen, and how you're going to get there. And you have to learn to— you can't overcome your inner critic, but you have to learn to communicate with and, uh, have a relationship with your inner critic that will help you move forward. Through those times. That, that's a really huge thing that I deal with.

Yeah, for sure. My friend and mentor Seth Godin talks about, frames it as dancing with fear, dancing with the inner critic or the imposter or what have you. And I love that analogy because, you know, Steven Pressfield talks about the war of art and having to go slay the dragon. In my experience, I've not been able to slay that dragon.

And it's not slayable.

Yeah, it doesn't, doesn't, doesn't remain dead. It wakes up every, every morning. We're at the end of our time, but I always like to end with just, you know, one final tip, maxim, exercise, principle, practice from our guests. You're speaking to an audience of people that are invested in, or either aspire or wish to advance in developing and delivering the difference only they can make, largely through, you know, a creative process of some sort. If there was just one idea or exercise that you could share that would help someone take a slightly bolder step into their potential and possibility as a creative person making a difference in the world? What would you share with them?

I think I would want to share, I mean, given that we just were talking about the inner critic, I think a sense of— one of the biggest things that I've discovered is that the most powerful tool that when people take it on, that it really has an enormous effect is self-compassion. So when the inner critic pops up, compassion is your most powerful, uh, tool to dealing with that. Thinking, wow, you know, this inner voice is really afraid, I can take care of it. And having compassion for this part of you that's really afraid and really struggling, um, even though it sounds so like commanding and in charge, right? Or, you know, getting back to the thing of being totally overcommitted and, you know, I'm so late on this, I'm so late on that, you know, especially self-set deadlines, you know, they just slide. Constant, constant self-forgiveness about that because that time is gone, like, that's gone, you know, there's no— like, one of the things I do, um, I teach everybody to do in my groups, I don't know if they actually do it or not, but if you have to-do list or whatever, and things go red, you know, things go like past due, whatever. Go take all those things and take them off past due and put them on either never— like, don't assign them to yourselves, that's number one. But number two, set the deadlines in the future sometime when you have some chance of being able to do it. Past due doesn't tell you anything except that you suck. So don't You know, like, don't let yourself tell yourself that every single time you look at your project management software. It's irrelevant and it does not help. All it does is sets you up for in a shame spiral where whenever you look at that thing, all you want to do is run, run away screaming. That doesn't help you do the thing. If you want to do the thing, get it out of a shame relationship by deep and continuous self-forgiveness about whatever you thought was going to happen and didn't happen, because life is life and you're a human being.

I love it. Yeah, shame is an invitation you do not have to accept, for sure. Want to thank everyone for tuning in. Uh, Jessica and I really appreciate the gift of your time and attention. We hope today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility, to keep go-go going with defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. You can visit creativeonpurpose.com. And if you're watching on social media or YouTube, leave a comment, share a question, or just simply share your biggest takeaway from this conversation. If you're listening as a podcast, please leave us a 5-star review. It helps more of the right people collide with the content, these conversations, and the nuggets that are being shared by our guests. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and go play your game all in and full out. Jessica Abel, thank you so much for the gift of your wisdom and time today.

Thanks for having me, it was been, it's been really great.