It’s only when it’s seen, heard, read, or experienced, that your work completes the circuit and lights up the world.

In the real world, what you make could look like anything from painting, to writing, to cartooning, to music making, event planning, designing, DJing...really any physical creation or even set of ideas you generate that’s unique to you that you put out into the world. That is art. (At least in our definition.)

So what will you feel when you spend months—years—on a project, polishing and perfecting every angle, then you release it into the world…to bafflement? Or worse, indifference?

It can lead you to fear your art is not working.
That you're a failure because you’re not completing the circuit.

Maybe you’ve felt that pain when you finally decided you were going to “get serious” about promotion and posted some work in progress on Instagram.

And then, after a few hours of obsessively refreshing the page you’ve got… five likes. (And one of them was from your mom.)

*sad trombone*

Suddenly you feel completely deflated.

All that energy to promote has flown out the window. You know you "should" post every day, but what's the point?

Everything you try feels like a huge time and energy suck, with zero results. But you’ve got to do something if you’re ever going to build a fanbase beyond your mom and your cat. (Though to be fair, going by how often your cat sits on your keyboard, she is a BIG fan.)

So you work yourself up to post something on Instagram again — and the cycle continues.

(Sound familiar?)

When you do amazing work, clients, bosses—even friends—keep wanting more. And that’s kinda the problem:

You are exhausted by showing up on other people’s schedules and doing creative work aligned with other people’s priorities.

You want control over your time and attention. You need the ability to focus on the work you care about most.

There’s the knowledge work you end up stuck doing for other people…

…and then there’s your work. The project, creative business, the body of work you’ve been dreaming of, that should shape how you show up in the world (and get paid!).

You know that if you’re ever going to make that dream reality, you need your work to be VISIBLE.

Because imagine what you could accomplish if it were easy to share — and to draw in your people who love what you’re doing and want to support you...

Imagine the impact you could create if you could build that audience that engages with your work — and wants to buy what you want to offer (no skeezy used car salesman tactics required)...

And it all felt authentic to your vision and your mission as a creator— and not something that detracts from the core of your work.

It’s almost time to emerge from your creative cave, cradling a tender, baby project in your arms, ready to flex its young wings and fly.

Just approaching the finish line has been a battle.

Lying awake at night imagining, planning…worrying.

Eking out spare moments over months—years!—in the margins of your overfull life.

No matter how much time you spend doing other things for other people all day, THIS work is what you “really” do, and you know that if you get it in front of enough of the right people, it has the potential to change everything for you.

But that’s where things can break down:

Will your work get raves in the press?

Will you have fans lining up to get your autograph at the release party?

Will it start making you some real money?

Can you—at last—become known for what you really do?

Or, will this work you’ve poured your hopes and expertise into fall—like so many projects before it—on deaf ears?

^^ This is the first place our brains go when we hear crickets.

We assume that lack of attention equals lack of talent.

We blame ourselves for not producing “better” work — and that forces us into this cycle of creating and practicing and creating...in secret.

It’s understandable: if the problem is that the work isn’t up to par, it makes perfect sense to double down on perfection, right?

But no matter how much we create…

No matter how many times we revise our work…

No matter how much we improve our craft…

Somehow, we’re still not completing the circuit and implanting our ideas into other people’s minds at any kind of scale.

That’s because we’re solving the wrong problem.

While of course it’s important to get better at what we do, no amount of training and practice will magically put your work in the hands of the audience who needs it.

For many creatives, the dream is to “be discovered.”

That’s the story we’re told, over and over, of what the ticket to the creative life looks like.

If the work passes the bar, we somehow will be found and elevated by the “right people” — whether that means landing the book deal, getting accepted into the gallery show, or just becoming internet famous for our work.

It will give our work that stamp of approval that we did something right.

And until that happens, we must sit quietly, laboring at our craft, not seeking attention.

If you believe that undermining myth, it’s not surprising: it’s a story reinforced by teachers, parents, friends, culture at large. It makes every attempt at building visibility for your work fraught with self-doubt.

…It also allows us a handy excuse to avoid the scary, risky move of putting our work out in the world with no guarantees.

We postpone action, and put the burden of building our career on that imagined future gatekeeper/savior. Because we’re also told that when someone swoops down and discovers you, it becomes their job to do the marketing and selling, to talk about the work, and to get it in front of the right people.

Then, we think, everything will be easy…

But often, that’s not true.

Even getting a book deal with a major publisher rarely comes with a substantial marketing budget or the attention of the marketing department that lasts more than a few weeks.

Showing your art in a gallery doesn’t guarantee it will sell.

Being reviewed by someone influential rarely equates to more than the proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

And if you want your work to provide income for you? None of those milestone events guarantee anything.

Even if that magical moment of being discovered comes to pass, relying on any of those institutionally-approved gatekeepers to build your audience for you means you’re handing off control of your career and your future to others — others who cannot possibly care as much as you do.

You’re made passive, subservient. You're infantilized and controlled.

In short, even being “discovered” doesn’t always complete that circuit of creating and receiving your art in a meaningful or lasting way.

But when you decide that, yeah, you probably do need to take the reins and create visibility for your work somehow, it can feel so scary and overwhelming.

You start to wonder if you’re going to have to spend your entire life on social media, on emails, on creating a website or talking to people online… All your precious time that should go to creating is suddenly eaten up posting ridiculous fluff that falls flat and feels pointless.

It feels like a trap. Like you’re sacrificing the freedom of a creative’s life to become a cog in a marketing machine that you can’t control.

You worry that you’ll have to lay bare your entire life in order to be “visible.” That might invite in trolls and haters — and you’ll never get that genie back in the bottle. It seems like there are no second chances online.

But mostly, the fear is that, no matter how much time and effort you pour into building that visibility, you might still fail.

You don’t know how to do it.

You don’t want to do it.

...(And who are you to even deserve the attention?)

You start to feel like a sell-out — when all you wanted to do was make your work and share your ideas.

Shouldn’t that be enough?

What's actually going on is that you're not inviting people into your work. You’ve pulled up the drawbridge, yet are still expecting people to show up for the party.

If you think that you can stand safely inside the wall and expect your fans to build their own bridge to come engage with you and your art?

Right. Never going to happen.

The fantasy that you can simply “build it and they’ll come”...

…The idea that if the work is good enough, you won’t—and shouldn’t—have to make any real effort to connect with an audience…

That’s one of the greatest, most pervasive, and most damning myths of being an artist.

In reality, you’ve got to be the one to build the bridge.It’s your job to complete the circuit between your amazing work and the people out there who need to receive it.

And it doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think.

Jessica is passionate about her work, yet deeply conflicted about what it means to her and what she wants out of it.

She's a mom, she recently completed a PhD in urban planning that she's unsure she wants to use, and she spent all last year feeling like she was "neglecting her children" to write what is essentially a book (about Idol Pop through the lens of Kazakhstani boy band 91) in a series of blog posts.

Which she then posted a few times on Twitter.

It’s amazing work. And it’s virtually invisible.

She wondered why it felt like such a letdown — even though she'd finished the big project she set out to create.

When I asked what she had wanted to gain from the project, she said she had hoped that people would read it, would interact with it, email her about it, start a discussion — but that putting any sort of effort into generating that discussion felt vain, grasping, and made her afraid to finish it.

She even went so far as to say, “I think somewhere along the line I internalized the idea that writing for the sake of writing is the mark of a true writer, and writing for any other goal is… corrupt.”

And she’s not alone.

If you’ve internalized messages about the purity or sanctity of art for art’s sake, it can feel like compromising your integrity to go out and try to drum up an audience for your work.

What if it were possible to create visibility in an authentic way?

What if you could share your work in alignment with artistic integrity, creativity, empathy, excellence — without feeling like you’re screaming into the void?

What if you could build an audience of people who want to engage with your passion projects (and pay you money for them) without altering the core of what makes you… you?

What if you could have a life that’s centered around your most important, most aligned work — and that supports you financially as well as creatively?

It’s all possible — but not if you keep doing the same things you’ve been doing (or, let’s be honest: NOT doing) so far.

Here’s the good news:

Building visibility and success as a professional creative can be broken down into three pretty straightforward steps:

Know what you’re selling, and to whom.
Tell them why you know it’s perfect for them.
Ask them to buy it.

Simple, right?

Sure.

But not easy.

Creatives tell me constantly that they hope to make money with their work. I hear the intensity of their desire buzzing through their words…but when I ask, it’s clear they don’t have a plan around how to make that happen.

Some aren’t even sure what they’re selling, really, in the first place.

You need a strategy to transform the three simple, but vague and open-ended steps above into a clear, manageable, and trackable plan.

That’s how you determine exactly what’s working.

That strategy is the healthy alternative to junk-food tactics like “just post your work on Instagram every day!”

You despair, because you have so much to offer — and no one sees it.
You’re mired in overwhelm, drowning in an endless sea of ethically-suspect advice.
You worry that you’re frittering away your life posting on social media (with zero results).
You’re constantly suspicious of the commodification of art and of yourself.
You feel helpless and trapped, waiting to be saved from invisibility.
You feel like sales are impossible.
And even if you felt you could make sales, you’re resentful of the idea that you need to sell your work at all, feeling as if that were a betrayal of art somehow.

Stop shooting in the dark and see actual results directly related to your intentional actions.
Feel confident in talking about your art, writing, or creative work to any audience.
Build buzz and a reputation so that your platform builds its own momentum.
Customize your plan for your life circumstances and align it with your vision instead of cramming more stuff in your "should do" list.
Create an offer that gets a clear, positive response.
Lose your fear of asking for a sale, and so you’ll sell more, and more easily.
See your work make a difference in people’s lives.

I doubled my subscribers and tripled my followers

I joined Authentic Visibility when I was feeling lost and stagnant in my marketing efforts. One year later, I was able to double my mailing list subscribers and triple my social media followers.

As a result I sold out two editions of my featured print.

My book comes out in March and I now have the confidence to take imperfect action and get the word out about it. A HUGE part in these successes was what I learned in the Authentic Visibility course!

—SARAH LUANN PERKINS

For the first 20+ years of my professional life, I had no idea how to bridge the gap between my dream of a growing audience and more stable income from my work, and the day-to-day things I did.

I put book after book out into the world, hoping it would catch fire, having no idea how to exert any influence over that process. I was just following the time-worn, yet utterly broken path laid out for authors:

✍️ write a book
🧚‍♀️ [magic fairy dust] 🧚‍♀️
💰 bestseller
🏆 winning life

Problem: I got stuck at Step 1, since Step 2 is something I thought I had no control over — and so 3 and 4 simply never happened to me.

Not knowing any other option, I kept making more books, continually cramming more work into the same overstressed life, hoping the Bestseller Fairy would hit me up this time.

No dice.

It wasn't until I consciously committed to studying how to build a business that anything changed at a structural level.

The parents, partners, friends, colleagues, bosses, and mass media figures who say or imply that you aren’t capable of this? That you don’t have what it takes to make your own choices and run your own life?

They’re gaslighting you.

Here's what happens as a result of gaslighting:

You think you’re the problem, and so spend all your time trying to fix yourself, telling yourself that you’re not ready, studying and practicing in perpetual learner mode instead of looking around and identifying who stands to benefit when you’re controlled.
You stay in your lane and keep being “productive,” checking boxes for other people’s projects.
You never get to be fully you, to step out into the world with the life-expanding projects you’ve been hiding in the back room, and we never get to see what the real you could have achieved if you’d been unleashed. Lose-lose.

Your loved ones don’t think they’re gaslighting you. They think they’re “protecting” you.

Sorry. They don’t get to decide what you do with your life. That’s your job.

I wanted to teach marketing in a way that would be ultra-clear and understandable for artists and creatives. I wanted to create something tailor-made to address their concerns and built on your strengths, with safety nets to protect you from your weaknesses.

And to do it without resorting to all the marketing-speak and techno-jargon that enraged me. (Am I seriously being asked to grasp crap like “strategic content verticals,” “SEO-optimized listicles,” and “integrated brand identities”?).

I went to work with that goal: to make marketing not only clear for creatives, but also exciting and maybe even…fun?

As I worked, I came to see that the one thing artists would never compromise, the underlying reason they were suspicious of marketing and sales, the true value that unified them was AUTHENTICITY.

Authentic Visibility is a marketing program for creatives who (think they) hate marketing.

Our approach is aligned with the concerns of artists and creatives, not B-school bros and Instagram influencers.

You’ll learn simple, clear methods to build a relationship with a passionate audience using empathy and creativity, in full alignment with your ethics and values, and clear self-defined boundaries to protect your safety.

With Authentic Visibility, you can:

Build your audience to simply share your work with more people
Take your hobby into the pro zone: start a side hustle or escape your day job
Take a side hustle up a notch and tame the overwhelm
Build your professional identity around the work you’re most proud of
Or build your audience for your existing business

This program is designed to be simple and fast, and to give you a strong mastery of the basics.

You can learn and implement at your own place. Clear instruction and specific benchmarks set you up for success, so that you never fall into the overwhelm trap. And you’ll be able to get answers to all your questions from a community of creatives in every discipline and field who are doing the work with you.

Six months of full access to the self-paced course materials so that you have ample time to implement, as well as motivation to finish! The materials are designed for all learning styles, delivered via eight modules of written lessons, audio, and video. (You’re also invited to extend your stay as an alumni member.)
Designated “rest stops” — natural places within the process to take a break at any time. Work up to one rest stop and pause, or work through all of them — it’s your choice.
A full workbook for each module designed to walk you through every element of the course, step by step, so that you complete a fleshed-out plan for your next steps.
Monthly live coaching calls to get Jessica Abel’s experienced support on all your burning questions, as well as live, on-point peer feedback.
Structured peer-relationship framework to build strong feedback loops and get the support you need.
Facilitated Peer Collaboration. You'll be encouraged and supported to practice visibility and agency by leading a group of your peers in discussion during the course — and we’ll help you with a framework and even the tech piece.
BONUS Minicourse: Sideline Social. Learn a radically simplified, human approach to getting your work in front of more of your true fans…without relying on social media.
BONUS Minicourse: Get Results Faster With the Right Offer to help you get a jump start on finally treating your creative career like a real business.
BONUS Minicourse: Use Your Words: Copywriting Essentials. Learn to write so that people can't stop reading with an introduction to key copywriting concepts, templates, and tools.
MEGA BONUS: Six months membership in the Autonomous Creative Collective for peer support from and community with an outstanding community of fellow creatives.

The problem with marketing courses is that they’re often:

a) full of jargon and business-speak that's there just to try to sound smart and...

b) presented as a HUGE to-do list of "essential" tasks.

I decided to build something different.

Authentic Visibility is a jargon-free, step-by-step plan that will let you choose your own path and how far you want to go at any one time.

The curriculum is designed with natural resting points. If, for example, all you want to do right now is figure out how to talk about yourself and your work, you can do Unit 1 and stop there for now. Or you can go on to Unit 2 to learn how to build an audience.

The point is, I’ve created it with natural rest stops where you can pause, test your work, and gather your wits before you take on the challenge of the next level. Think of it as a built-in safety valve against overwhelm.

Your path to rock-solid foundations and easeful execution 👇

1: Flip Your Marketing Script

Avoid emotional decision making by using facts to guide you so that you can’t be derailed by small setbacks
Avoid feeling overwhelmed by marketing with a simple action plan that will help you overcome perfectionism
Find your own path into sharing your work authentically by articulating the values and life realities that guide you
Find your comfort zone when it comes to sharing your work and being visible in front of other humans so you can confidently build your fanbase without worrying about your boundaries

2: Get the Essentials of Marketing

Strip away the marketing jargon so that you’re able to make clear decisions about how you’ll share and promote your work so that everything you do aligns with your values
Understand how simple actions you take fit into an ecosystem of relationship-building rooted in direct communication with real people
Take stock of all the tools and assets you already have in your corner so you’re working from a base of strength (you probably already have more than you think!)
Set specific targeted outcome goals for your marketing that are aligned with your life, needs, and the way you work best so you have maximum impact while respecting your essential boundaries.

5: Gain Visibility

Get clear on what you want to say and how you want to say it so that you feel confident sharing your work. What are YOUR words? What is your voice?
Easily discover loads of content ideas perfectly aligned with how and what you want to communicate so your well of words and images never runs dry
Generate loads of content ideas perfectly aligned with how and what you want to communicate
Learn to reach people outside your friends and family bubble: find new audiences who will adore you
Build stronger relationships with your existing audience so that they’re ready to buy, and to recommend you to others

*You can choose to rest here, and learn to build visibility for your work online, and IRL!

6: Rally Your Crew

Get clear on the role of engagement strategies and email to rally your crew and get them ever more excited about your work
Use simple templates to write the essential three pieces of content you need to start your email list so you can build long-term connections with your perfect fans
Imagine a free gift that’s a perfect entree to your work to attract new fans
Don’t want to email? Learn what other options exist to strengthen bonds with your crew

*You can choose to rest here and gather a tribe of fans on an engaged email list who will be ready to buy from you when you're ready to sell!

7: Invite Sales Without Sleaze

Get a new perspective on selling, and stop feeling weird and guilty about asking for money for what you do
Learn to build trust in you among your fans so that they’re ready to buy
Learn how to build a sales campaign using the One Big Idea that feels natural and aligned with who you are and how you want to show up in the world
Get access to a template for the most minimal sales campaign ever, and start making sales, stat!

*You can get all the way to the end, and learn exactly how to sell your work in alignment and authenticity!

What particularly appealed to me about this course is that there's a lot of attention put on how what you want to say reflects what you want to do and be in the world, in a sustainable way.

A lot of the material that I've consumed has been around techniques, story structures, hooks. Persuasive things that are going to get people's attention. And those things, from a copywriting point of view, are helpful.

But the fuel to do it needs to come from a more powerful source than just, ‘Oh, I should be doing this for my business.’ I really appreciated the attention put into locating meaning.

— DIANA DE CABARRUS, PERFORMER

Just as you’re ready to dive in and start sharing your work, one big question stares you in the face: “But, which work??” If you’re like most of the people who take Authentic Visibility, you may work in several disciplines and you have many different projects you could offer to an audience…and so where should you put your marketing focus?

This minicourse is designed to help you answer that question with confidence by starting with the end. What results are you hoping to achieve from the work you’re planning to put into marketing? Then you work backward from there to determine which of your work most needs and deserves the spotlight right now.

Discover what, exactly, stands in the way of meeting your visibility and income goals, and pinpoint your next steps to solve the problem.
Find out how to reduce your overload and do less…and still get better results.
The unexpected power of knowing your numbers, and how to use them to take the mystery out of deciding what to do next.

You can be totally clear what you want to say about your work, and who you want to talk to. But when you sit down to actually write the words you want to use…that’s when things can get tricky. And it’s often where people get bogged down.

Let's get you unbogged!

With this minicourse, you’ll get a core toolkit of easy-to-use writing frameworks and techniques that will get your audience taking action.

Discover the single most important framework for finding the right message that will be precisely what your audience needs to hear at that moment.
Get the exact classic copywriting formulas used by pro copywriters to make writing easier and more powerful. Marketers have been using these formulas since Mad Men times for a reason: they work!
Find out how to ethically and easily “steal like an artist” to kickstart your writing.

There’s a reason social media doesn’t work for you. It’s not intended to. Learn a radically simplified, human approach to getting your work in front of your true fans…without constantly publishing more more more.

Learn an ultra-simple 3-step process to turn total strangers into devoted fans.
Discover the secrets to growing your audience without trying to win the algorithm (or even giving a crap about the socials at all)
Plan a completely manageable promotion schedule that nevertheless hits hard (planner worksheet included!)
Gain a toolbox of 10 flexible, human-scaled strategies that put control of your growth in your hands

At the heart of Authentic Visibility are the amazing connections and colleagues you’ll meet inside. In our community, you’ll find a network of fellow creatives who care as much as you do about building a sustainable and joyful creative career.

When you get inside, you’ll realize: You are not alone. You are not weird.

And when you believe you need to devote energy to building a sustainable creative life, you are not wrong.

We bond together to help one another.

That’s why, alongside your enrollment in the six-month course, you also get six months of full access to the Autonomous Creative Collective: the premiere community for creative professionals, when you join Authentic Visibility.

Our students tell us the community is the single most important factor in their success and a huge part of why Authentic Visibility has changed their professional careers and their lives. Tap into the immense value and support of a curated community of creative professionals working with you side-by-side on generating their own authentic visibility.

"The experience makes it stick"

It's just the most amazing thing to have that group on different points on the same trajectory, all trying to help each other.

Realizing that group of all these amazing people that I just thought were totally sorted, they turned out to not be that sorted, or least felt that they weren't sorted.

And having Jessica there, bringing it back down to the ground level and saying, you know what? It's all right, you can do it.

I mean, you can read as many books as you like, but it's the experience that makes it stick.

— PENNY SHARP, ARTIST

Authentic Visibility is a safe space

I can keep going back and go a little deeper each time. I have the tools. But without the ACC, I would get lost.

Another student mentioned how she loved that we were from different disciplines and that's been really important for me too, because writing groups have not worked for me. Maybe because Authentic Visibility is multi-disciplinary, there's no sense of competition, and there's no sense of anyone talking down to others.

What you've created is a safe place for all of us to come.

— CHRISTINE COWLEY, AUTHOR

With the Creative Focus workshop, get the tools, encouragement, and accountability you need to become the Person Who Does the Thing.

If you struggle to find the time and energy to do your most important work (including Visibility work!), the Creative Focus Workshop is for you.

It’s the only program specifically designed to help serious creative people level up their executive function so they can stop procrastinating, and finish the work that matters to them most.

Authentic Visibility and our signature creative productivity program, the Creative Focus Workshop (CFW) go together like chocolate and peanut butter — and if you choose to upgrade to include the CFW when you enroll in Authentic Visibility, you’ll be able to access this powerful course at the lowest price I’ve ever offered.

With the Creative Focus Workshop, you can:

overcome perfectionism
take control of your insane to-do list
find time in your week for your most important creative work
say NO to putting other people’s priorities before your own…
all without blowing up the rest of your life!

You're going to see your life 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.

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 actually in a workshop, doing the assignments each week, having this community around you, having Jessica to lead all of this—that's where you're going to see your life being transformed.

So if you're on the fence, I would say don't think about it, just join. And you can thank me three months from now if you take my advice.

— ANDRE HEDETOFT, FILM DIRECTOR

YOUR COURSE WORKS!!

I still have the fading Post-It note on my wall beside my desk that says “Create Season One of Podcast and make it awesome, and organized, and exciting." I am doing essentially that.

The podcast is called This is Our Time, and it follows the journey of five women who go on the largest-ever all-female expedition to Antarctica. As a result of doing this story, I have been invited to Antarctica on the second expedition, and I leave in ten days!

— SAMANTHA HODDER, PODCASTER

I have given myself a "promotion"

Before working with Jessica, 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.

The Creative Focus Workshop Momentum System is one of the best investments I've made all year.

— JENNY TRAUTMAN, CONSULTANT

Authentic Visibility makes the connection

...between what your work is about, and how you ask people for money. And that's just a hard thing for many artists to connect with and feel good about.

My intention is just so much more than marketing. It's to put my stuff out there, whether I sell it or not. A real business person would call what I do a hobby. They take delight in calling artists' work hobbies.

Artists don't call them that. This is our life's work. It's a spiritual practice. It's not a hobby.

— JOHN LAUER, ARTIST

Authentic Visibility can help you sell your work and have it feel effortless and empathetic. Selling can actually feel like the best thing you’ve ever done for the world instead of a guilt-inducing sea of ick.

You will start to garner the recognition you’ve been craving.

And you’ll finally feel confident that your efforts will actually translate to results.

Authentic Visibility puts the power in your hands to build an audience for your creative work so that you can make more money, spend more time creating, and build the confidence and pride that you’re a professional creative.

My attitude changed when I started with my values

I was surprised at how my attitude toward marketing changed once I started with my values. I think what made me reluctant to create an email list is that it is a very clear demonstration of that commitment to having a relationship with customers, with an audience, and to producing stuff for them.

Authentic Visibility helped me recognize that content is essential toward building an audience and that, if I'm going to do this, I have to make that commitment.

— CHRIS SELLERS, GAME DESIGNER AND CARTOONIST

"I’m super uncomfortable with the whole concept of marketing my work. I feel like marketing is slimy and selling is pushy. How can I feel OK about trying to make money with my art?"

I hear you. I have felt the same way. But there is nothing wrong with being paid for the value you provide. We don’t expect a lawyer to write up a contract without being paid. We don’t think it’s weird for a house painter to expect money.

Why do we think it’s wrong to be paid for creative work? Just because we like doing it? Or is it because we don’t really believe it’s worth anything…?

Your work is valuable.

When you communicate that value to others with clarity, that’s marketing.

When you then ask to be paid for the clear value you provide, that’s sales.

When you really DO offer something of true value, that’s all there is to it. There is nothing manipulative or sleazy or dirty or wrong about any of it when you do it in an open, honest and ethical way. It’s a beautiful thing for everyone involved.

And Authentic Visibility will help you get there.

"Shouldn't my work speak for itself?"

Wouldn't that be nice? If we could build it and they would actually come?

Unfortunately, in actual fact, there are large barriers between your work and its ideal audience.

When you ask people for their money, or even their time, they need to be sure their investment is going to pay off. And this is exactly what you'll be able to assure them when you develop a consistent message...

And that's the core of what you'll do in Authentic Visibility.

Once people have "met" your work, it may well speak for itself, but you've got to introduce it to people first.

"My work is [performance-based, visual art, in academia, 'just entertainment', _____ ]. I'm not sure how it 'helps' an audience. Will Authentic Visibility help me grow my audience?"

Many, I would venture most, students in Authentic Visibility make work that resists the typical bro-marketer selling advice, where you're told to figure out what "problem" your offer solves and then hammer on the "pain points" the audience feels around that problem.

What's the "problem" a painting solves? An electronic jam track? A dance performance or a stand-up routine?

And yet, what in your life have you've spent the most money and time on? What do you love the most (outside of your humans and animals)? I bet among your top 10 are a few cultural products (books, movies, art) that have changed your life.

That kind of life-changing is what your work can do for other people.

Yes. It can.

And in Authentic Visibility we get it: it's HARD to figure out how to talk about your most important creative work, and typical marketing tactics and approaches simply won't cut it. Instead, we have a creative-centered process that will give you the power of building your audience in a way that's authentic to YOU.

People WANT to be inspired, uplifted, challenged, heard, seen, by art. They want to have art that reflects their self-image and helps them project their personality to others.

We must embrace the power of art to change lives.

That's what we'll do in Authentic visibility, and that's what you'll do with your work.

"I'm an introvert! How can I bear put myself out there?"

If you're an introvert, that's all the more reason to get the message and the audience right.

What's the worst thing for an introvert? It isn't talking to strangers. It's talking to strangers when you don't know what to say.

You don't have to glad-hand and hawk merch if you do a great job showing people why they ALREADY want your thing! Authentic Visibility will help you figure out exactly what to say so that people are excited to hear from you and buy from you.

You won't have to talk to people at conferences or fairs (or at all…) although once you connect to your audience, you'll be so thrilled, I bet you won't be able to stop chatting them up!

"Do I have to be visible online? What if I hate social media and want to stay away from email?"

Maybe your work can't exist online, for example, live performance of music, theater, or immersive experiences.

Maybe YOU don't want to exist online, because you hate social media or object to Big Tech.

I will not lie and tell you this isn't a hurdle: visibility gets easier when you can use the massive reach of the internet.

But people who have ephemeral art practices need a committed audience as much or more as anyone else: you've got to get people to show up when you're live! You can use online tools in combination with real-world ones to increase your reach and your impact.

If you're in a field that kind of pretends marketing doesn't exist, like a branch of academia, you'll find that message clarity is immensely important and powerful in getting your colleagues to understand and engage with your work. AND you'll be one of the few out there who's even trying, which is a huge advantage.

And if you don't want to be online, you more than anyone need creative solutions to get your message out. That's why we include the powerful Sideline Social bonus minicourse, where you'll get a whole palette of options for non-social-media, and even totally offline tactics to pick from and build on.

No matter what form your work takes, there is an audience that will respond to it, and you can learn to connect with that audience (online or off) more powerfully when you get clear on your message, and design tactics that are custom-made for your life and how you want to show up.

That's precisely what we do in Authentic Visibility.

"What if I've done promo before, and it hasn't worked?"

There are no guarantees in this world, but I'd hazard a guess that when you've done "promo" before, you were probably throwing spaghetti at the wall, just trying some version of tips you read somewhere.

Most of those tactics fail because they center on what the creator wants to say, not what the audience needs to hear. They rely on the principle of "annoy the many to convert the few" (post more, flog more, sell more) which is counter-productive, exhausting, and feels like crap. They chase tactics and trends that are based more on what some algorithm says is best (an algorithm, by the way, that's designed to maximize success for the platform, not for you).

Authentic Visibility will help you work strategically to understand the value you create for your audience, and then demonstrate that value, so that you will see results. It will help you share and connect in a way that feels human and aligned so that your audience knows you respect them (and returns the favor). It will teach you to choose your platforms and tactics according to what works for you, not some mighty tech giant.

You can keep doing what you’ve been doing.

Keep posting random stuff on social media, hoping something will resonate.

Keep pitching publishers, thinking the right “yes” will fix the problem.

Keep forcing yourself to get pushy — and then feel horrible and degraded.

Keep signing bad contracts with people who make big promises.

Or keep doing nothing, despair that your work will never find an audience, and “don’t quit your day job.”

Or you can choose empathy over skeezy marketing tactics.

Choose authenticity over selling out.

Choose visibility over starving artist syndrome.

You can choose to join us in Authentic Visibility.

What’s the difference between creatives who develop a passionate fanbase ready to pull out their wallets…

...and those whose projects slip under the water without a ripple?

Art is communication. That means art needs other people.

You're trying to take this.

And put it here.

Creative work is what you love. It’s what you’re great at.

But you’re stuck doing a version of it that's sorta-kinda, that's "passion-adjacent."

You’re done treating your most important work like a secret identity

1. “Nobody's paying attention to my work, so I must be terrible at this.”

2. “Building an audience for my work is someone else’s job.”

3. “I’m afraid promotion will take over (or ruin) my life…”

So where is it all short-circuiting?

Meet Jessica (a different Jessica). She finished a ground-breaking longform essay. And almost no one saw it.

What if it were possible to create visibility in an authentic way?

The 3 Steps to BuildVisibility and Success as a Creative

Having a strategic, step-by-step plan boils down to defining your message, identifying who you’re talking to, and knowing how to ask for the sale.

Without a strategic, step-by-step plan:

But once you have that plan in hand, it will help you:

This is about you expressing you.

My art is about communication.

And so is yours.

That’s when I realized: If I leave this job of sharing my work to other people, it just does not happen.

So I started taking it back.

I know what it feels like to hate and fear marketing.

And the tools need to be in your hands.

They’re gaslighting you.

You don't just want to be visible, you want Authentic Visibility.

Build your audience your way with

Authentic Visibility

Authentic Visibility is a marketing program for creatives who (think they) hate marketing.

The Authentic Visibility course includes:

WHAT'S INSIDE

Get immediate access to all the support you need to start connecting with the perfect fans for your work

COURSE ACCESS

24/7 COMMUNITY

LIVE SUPPORT

CHOOSE YOUR PACE

Avoid nagging “shoulds” and overwhelm with Rest Stops

Your path to rock-solid foundations and easeful execution 👇

Unit 1: Foundations

1: Flip Your Marketing Script

2: Get the Essentials of Marketing

3: Share Your Work

4: Discover Your Audience

Unit 2: Implementation

5: Gain Visibility

6: Rally Your Crew

7: Invite Sales Without Sleaze

8: Customize Your Plan

The fuel comes from locating meaning

Plus These Bonuses!

BONUS Minicourse:

Get Results Faster With the Right Offer (value $195)

BONUS Minicourse:

Use Your Words: Copywriting Essentials (value $195)

BONUS Minicourse:

Sideline Social (value $129)

There’s a reason social media doesn’t work for you. It’s not intended to. Learn a radically simplified, human approach to getting your work in front of your true fans…without constantly publishing more more more.

MEGA BONUS:

Six months membership in the Autonomous Creative Collective (value $180)

Get your amazing work into the hands of the audience who's waiting for it

Best Value

Cash-Flow Friendly

PAY-IN-FULL BONUS:

Creative Focus Workshop Quarterly Planning$147 value!

A 6-module course that delivers a complete system to plan your

creative projects over a 3-month span so that you get them done!Choose the Pay-in-Full option and it will be added to your order automatically.

Plus: Choose to bundle and power up with the Creative Focus Workshop at our lowest price ever.

With the Creative Focus Workshop, you can:

What Creative Focus Workshop students are saying...

The Authentic Visibility Guarantee

Show up, be visible, and step into authentic relationships with your true fans.

Here’s what I can promise you:

You deserve to be paid for the value you provide, and other answers.

DON'T SEE YOUR QUESTION?

The difference between the creative who grows a thriving audience for their work and one who never makes a splash is one thing:

A choice to take action.

Join Authentic Visibility now.

Art is communication.
That means art needs other people.

The 3 Steps to Build
Visibility and Success
as a Creative

Creative Focus Workshop Quarterly Planning
$147 value!

creative projects over a 3-month span so that you get them done!
Choose the Pay-in-Full option and it will be added to your order automatically.

Plus: Choose to bundle and power up with
the Creative Focus Workshop at our lowest price ever.