"I was sitting in my fishing boat with my pole in the water and I had no bait on my hook."

Following up with Lynette Reed from February 2022.

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My February 2022 interview with Lynette Reed is one of my favourites. Not just because she’s so inspiring. Or because she’s been both bankrupt and a millionaire. Or because she’s the only interviewee (so far) to say the words “I love money”. But because of this:

I hope to transition from working to art full time by the end of 2023. I only need about $150k year from art if I continue to live in Italy to have all I need.

Read the original interview here:

Earning money, losing money, loving money

Whenever I would check on old interviews to see if it was time for an update, I would wonder if Lynette had hit her target.

When eventually I emailed her to ask, she said she was super busy and I said there was no rush and after a couple of months she said it would be quicker if she could record it and I said fine and then one day last week I was sitting by the beach, waiting for my 15yo and listening to a podcast, and Lynette’s email, with audio, popped into my inbox.

I already had my headphones in, so I hit play…

I’ve added the transcription below in case you’d rather not listen, but I do recommend listening. Lynette’s got a great voice!

What’s changed?

Lynette:

When we last spoke, my financial goals were to be able to quit my day job and do art full-time. 

Am I there yet? No, because things always take a lot longer than we think they're going to take and I'm a very impatient person. So as hard as I've been pushing I'm still not there, but a lot of really cool things have happened. 

So art continues to thrive and grow and is going off in different directions. I now have a publisher in Seattle, on the west coast of the states. They're a wholesaler, so they sell my art to retailers. And it's not a lot of money, it's - you know, because royalties are never very much - usually between like three and seven percent. 

So I've got that. I also signed with another print house that sells retail called iCanvas so you can buy my art as prints through iCanvas and that generates a little bit of income, not a lot again.

And then I will have a show coming up in October. Art sales have been slow this year. Not for me, they've actually been okay, but I'm hearing from a lot of artists that sales are down right now. 

Being that I'm, you know, a foreigner or an immigrant in Italy and I don't speak the language very well and I don't really follow what's happening that much in America, I know there's inflation and prices are going up everywhere and I think people are stressed about money and art is one of those things that seems to go first. 

But what came to me at the beginning of this year of 2024 was I wasn't approaching my art business like the business person that I am. I was sitting in my fishing boat with my pole in the water and I had no bait on my hook. 

And I've been sitting out there for a while and it really hit me how and I don't know why I wasn't handling it like a business person like the entrepreneur that I am and I had to think differently.

And I think we get brainwashed a lot by other people 'Oh if you do prints you're not a real artist' or you know 'Oh, if you when you're doing commissions and they want it to be green to match their couch and you do that you're not a real artist.' 

Well, you are. I am. I am a real artist. And if you want me to paint something that matches your living room, I'll happily do that and I look at it as a challenge. And I can go be creative and and do whatever I want in my art at another moment, but still there's not gonna be a painting that leaves my studio that I don't love. I've done paintings to match people's pillows and that is no joke and they came out phenomenal. So, I have really kind of broadened my view and I have broadened my search. 

And I think one thing that really happened that's kind of been a game-changer for me - because you know I've still got my job at the candle factory - and one of my big clients there does a lot with a massive worldwide retailer. And I've worked with this client for a while in candles. And they have been watching my art career and said, you know, we'd love to do something with you because they also do a ton of soft goods. So pillows, table linens, that kind of thing. And I've told them I don't know how to do that. Like, I don't know how to make a painting work to be produced in fabric and then on pillows. And, you know, I just didn't know how. 

And then I saw this course online for surface pattern design. And I took the free course. The free course was five days, it was like 20 minutes a day. And I learned enough in that to understand Illustrator, and how to create my art or art - it's not my paintings, it's very different - but art in Illustrator, and turn that into repeating patterns that can then be printed on fabric and made into things. 

So I reached out to them, I said, 'Hey, if you're still interested, I figured out how to do this.' And I put together a presentation for them. And they're doing a brand, they're branding me. It'll launch in March of 2025 and it'll have my name, my face, my story on it. And if all goes well, it will be in hundreds if not thousands of stores. So that's super exciting for me. And I think that's gonna be a big game changer and that will come out next year. 

So it's been a lot of hard work for the last six months. The person I took this short course with, she does a big in-depth course. It was three months. It was super intense because Adobe Illustrator is not an easy program to learn. And I just dove into it and learned it.

And this is while doing my full-time job at the factory and my art career. So it was exhausting. And at 62 years old, it was really challenging. I started taking naps for the first time, like those 10-minute afternoon naps. But it was worth every penny. It was expensive. My husband and I didn't have the money to do it, but we figured we're going to, we just, we have to do it. So we did it, or I did it, and with his loving support. And so now this is happening. 

And on top of that, I got a call from Illume, the company I started 30 years ago. And it's the 30-year anniversary this year of Illume. And they wanted to talk and we had a big talk and it was an emotional talk for me. And they asked if I wanted to do a collaboration for the anniversary. 

So this coming Monday, I leave for Atlanta. And they're launching nine products with my art on them. So I think that's also going to give my art a lot of exposure, but that's a licensing deal as well. 

And then my son, Harris Reed, who is creative director for Nina Ricci in Paris and also for his namesake brand in London, he saw these flowers I've been painting recently and he reached out and said, 'Hey, Mama, get those scanned for me.' They're considering using them on the fabric for the next collection. 

And then this really high-end Italian homeware company, like really high-end, like furniture and decorative objects, she reached out to me and she wants to do a collaboration. 

So all of a sudden there are a ton of things going on. And I always think of this... 

Oh yeah, and then there's one other, there's one other. I had a meeting with a director and a writer last week who want to do a movie that's loosely based on my life. Which this... I really think this is a total long shot.  

So there's a lot going on. I'm working so hard making no money because none of these things are paying me anything yet, but I know that they will, it's coming. I can feel it coming.

And I knew, I knew it would happen this year. Like this year is an eight year and eight is my lucky number. And I told my best friend at the beginning of this year, I said, you just watch things gonna blow up this year. I can feel it. And I can feel it. 

I have this theory about throwing spaghetti. If you just keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, eventually something's gonna stick. And I feel like right now I'm just tossing spaghetti all over the place and I feel like lots of things are starting to stick. 

So that's where it's at. I am not financially any better off than the last time we spoke. Actually, I might even be worse off because I lost one of the part-time jobs. They have no need for me anymore - well, very little need, so they cut my salary by about 80%. 

But I think next year things are gonna change drastically. 

Read more follow ups here.

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