Artists: Laura Lamn and Suzanne Fossey; Royal Tunbridge Wells, England

QUESTION:                         What were your challenges?

Suzanne Fossey:               For me, it was focus. Flexing my time, prioritizing my time and confidence.

Laura Lamn:                        Yeah, confidence.

Suzanne Fossey:               It’s interesting because I’ve managed to run a business, a creative business for the last 17 years.

QUESTION:                         What hurt your confidence?

Suzanne Fossey:               It’s being told that you’ll never earn any money being an artist, don’t be ridiculous.

QUESTION:                         What created your limiting beliefs?

Suzanne Fossey:               I think it’s a generational thing. I think it’s a generational thing and probably the people that you generally come into contact with. The majority of my friends have jobs, the majority of my friends I was at art school with have jobs and they weren’t able to see it through. Some of them are teaching art, which is great, but it’s a tough thing to get your head around when you listen to that argument.

QUESTION:                         What have you learned about your limiting beliefs?

Suzanne Fossey:               The Code To Joy was quite a revelation. Just understanding how much the subconscious is in control, and those thoughts are in your subconscious mind going “ohh you can’t do that’.

QUESTION:                         What were your challenges?

Laura Lamn:                        Overwhelm. It’s the same thing, lack of focus, feeling overwhelmed and confidence, not having confidence. Having had my confidence knocked by so many different, particular things in the creative industry that knocked my confidence is such a big way. I thought; I don’t want to be creative anymore because I can’t put myself out there again and be knocked back like that.

Ann Rea:                              Yeah!

Laura Lamn:                        That’s what I love in the Napoleon Hill books on the reading list, it talks about not mistaking temporary defeat with permanent failure. That’s the thing, I’ve had a number of temporary defeats, but they are all lessons to be learned and they’re all things taking me in the right direction.

QUESTION:                         What has helped?

Suzanne Fossey:               Realizing that you’re not alone. I mean obviously we had the course and the program to follow, but it took me probably three months to actually get out there and ask for a study partner. In fact I didn’t even ask, someone approached me.

QUESTION:                         What has happened?

Suzanne Fossey:               First thing I did with my first study partner was the remembering process, which is probably one of the most complex and personal things. That really helped me get over myself. It really did. It really helped a lot. From then on we were meeting every two weeks, and then I had other study partners too. It’s amazing what you can learn from each other inside and outside the course.

QUESTION:                         Were you shy?

Laura Lamn:                        That wasn’t my problem, no. I really loved the study partner thing and I’ve loved connecting with people all over the world. I’ve got a study partner in Canada, in Los Angeles, in upstate New York. It’s really nice to connect. It’s something I want to go back on now and get some new study partners because it’s so much fun to meet new people and get inspired by different people’s journeys and I love that part of the program.

QUESTION:                         What’s changed?

Laura Lamn:                        And reconnecting with my mission yesterday and also rewriting the second part of it. You said to rewrite it as a problem and we did that together as an exercise today and Suzanne rewrote hers as well. We both felt so much more inspired, it helped us so much more with planning our project because we kept going back and we were saying, is this solving the problem? Is this solving the problem? Because it feels good to solve the problem.

Suzanne Fossey:               Yeah it gets you out of your own way.

QUESTION:                         Why is mission important?

Laura Lamn:                        It matters because it adds value above and beyond the art. Because it’s almost like my art, and for me it’s more music, is a masquerade for my mission. I can serve people and create a massive impact in the world through my music.

QUESTION:                         What is your mission?

Laura Lamn:                        People are powerless and feel out of control in their life. People are surrounded by people who are hateful, nasty, disrespectful, and who bring them down. People feel ashamed of their flaws. People don’t know how to feel or express their feelings. They are disconnected from themselves.

QUESTION:                         Why does your mission matter?

Laura Lamn:                        It matters to me because then I don’t care what people think.

Ann Rea:                              Yes! I don’t give a shit what you think, I’m doing it anyway, right?

Laura Lamn:                        Yeah because it’s fine if you don’t get it, you’re not my target market.

Ann Rea:                              That’s right!

QUESTION:                         Why else does your mission matter?

Laura Lamn:                        It motivates me because when I’m reading those out, those were my problems not that long ago.

QUESTION:                         Why do you want to serve this mission?

Laura Lamn:                        I’ve helped myself and now I want to help other people because I dug my way out of a very, very big hole. I feel so proud of that and I know other people can do it, so that’s why it’s important.

QUESTION:                         What do you think of artist statements?

Suzanne Fossey:               I totally get it now. One of my photography clients asked me to contribute to an art exhibition she was having. I was like, ‘yes, this will get me into art again, this is brilliant, this is amazing’, And a lot of artists wanted to exhibit at her annual exhibition. She asked for an artist statement, so I wrote an artist statement. I took my boyfriend with me and he read my artist statement and he laughed his head off.

QUESTION:                         What advice do you have for artists?

Suzanne Fossey:               That you don’t need to be alone. That you can work with other artists. That we’ve all got our own calls behind our work, so we’re all gonna’ have different clients and we can work together. We are in the same line of work. We’re all creatives and that’s a really good grounding for good companionship and to have another good person to bounce your ideas off, and to keep each other going as well, to keep each other motivated. I think artists so often want to be left in their garage crying into their paintings or whatever but it can be so different, it can be so totally different. I experienced that to art school, but I have not experienced that since graduating. Having the study partner side of this particular program has really shown me that. You don’t need to be alone. We are at the end of the phone for each other whenever we need it.

QUESTION:                         What did art school teach you about selling art?

Suzanne Fossey:               It was back in 2001 and I won’t knock my art school experience because it was amazing, but it did not prepare me for selling my art at all. It was more about getting your artist statement right and applying to be published and applying to get some grants or those kinds of things. I was aware that all of these techniques that we were being taught were not actually sustainable. They were relying on the government grant or they were relying on me being noticed in a book that my work got published in. It wasn’t about actually talking, or daring to talk to a potential client about your work or just approaching a stranger and talking about your work. It had nothing to do with it.

QUESTION:                         Why is there a conflict around making art and making money?

Suzanne Fossey:               Listening to those voices that say you can’t make money out of art. It seems like another totally different life being an artist compared to being a business person. I mean I am in a creative business, why should it be any different? I get that now, but I wouldn’t have gotten that had I not gone through your course. I would still very much see ‘Suzanne is an artist who is not making any money. And Susanne in her business, you know, who knows how the business works? It’s so interesting. And how referrals work, the last line in all of my letters to all of my current clients in my photography business as always been “over 85% of my clients come through word of mouth. If you feel that I’ve done you a good enough job that you’d like to recommend me to your friends, please do so”, so I knew that fact. I just never knew it would work in the art business.

QUESTION:                         What do artists need to know?

Laura Lamn:                        There are so many different ways that you can make it work. You don’t need a record deal or a gallery to have a creative, successful life. Once you engage your creative brain, there are so many ways to make it fun and interesting and be successful without the need to have somebody important to come and verify you and pick you out and make you and put you in the spotlight. You can do it yourself.

QUESTION:                         What shook your confidence?

Laura Lamn:                        One of my songs was produced by a big Grammy nominated artist and got picked up by a subsidiary label, Warner Brothers in America and I signed a contract and then they went dead on me for six months after me having a big celebration with all my friends and family. It was quite embarrassing as well. They went dead on me for six months, then they said; ‘right, we need a music video in two weeks time’, which is a completely ridiculous ask but somehow I managed to pull it together. Then they went down on me again for six months. Then I woke up on International Women’s Day and they had, without my permission, put the song online as a free download, given it away on soundcloud, given it away on youtube and they weren’t going to put it on any of the monetizable platforms, and the joke was the producer got some kind of good hype about it because the song was about women and how women are disrespected.

Ann Rea:                              How ironic!

Laura Lamn:                        I know. He was like, ‘shout out to all the women’ and then the woman who actually created it didn’t make any money or get anything. It was ridiculous.

QUESTION:                         How did this affect you?

Laura Lamn:                        It was really hurtful. I wrote him the letter, actually six months later really expressing what I felt he’d done and that I was really upset. I offered him the opportunity to rectify the situation by paying me what I was owed and he wrote back, I’m sorry you felt jilted.

Ann Rea:                              That’s it?

Laura Lamn:                        He is on the Forbes list and he made I think 40 million pounds.

Ann Rea:                              What’s his name? What’s his name?

Laura Lamn:                        It’s Kaskade with a K.

Ann Rea:                              Asshole! Really? A pox upon you Kaskade. (laughs) What a jerk.

QUESTION:                         What shook your confidence?

Laura Lamn:                        I’m just surprised that an artist would do that to another artist because there was a point when he was probably hustling and not making money from it. He’s at the point now where he could help sustain other artists in their careers and pay them fairly and he’s not. I don’t think I’m the only artist who’s had that experience with him. That’s why I felt the need to write him this letter because I wanted to appeal to his human side and say, look, you’ve broken my heart. I paid to fly out to America twice to get that going. I worked relentlessly on the music video. They paid for the music video, yes, but I didn’t get paid. I was just producing it. I just did it because I wanted to make something amazing. So yeah, that was the big knock.

QUESTION:                         What advice do you have for artists?

Suzanne Fossey:               Just do it. Don’t listen to all those voices that have been telling you otherwise, all the voices that are still resonating in your head. Listen to Ann Rea.

QUESTION:                         What did art school teach you about selling your art?

Laura Lamn:                        I studied fine art at university. I actually got into music after I studied and I don’t remember anything to do with business, to do with selling. It seemed to be all about exhibiting.

Ann Rea:                              Showing vs. selling!

Laura Lamn:                        What’s the point of just going and showing the art? What so I put it on my website that I’d exhibited at this place?

QUESTION:                         What did art school teach you about selling your art?

Laura Lamn:                        We make mistakes and then we keep correcting, correcting. The course is iterative. I keep coming back to the beginning. I keep relearning and we are here to remind each other because we’re at different stages, reading different books and we keep encouraging each other and reminding each other all the time.

QUESTION:                         Why are study partners important?

Laura Lamn:                        About the study partner thing, how enriching. Particularly what we’ve developed. We have developed a really deep connection and we do morning check-ins on whatsapp. We have a particular criteria where we just do a short three minute thing: What progress am I going to make today? How am I going to make today relaxing? How am I going to make today fun? We’ve been doing that for maybe the last month or so, and it’s really upped it again. It’s this accountability thing and daily accountability.

Suzanne Fossey:               And having to focus on what you’re going to do on that day, right at the beginning of the day.

QUESTION:                         Should artists apply to enroll in this program?

Suzanne Fossey:               There is absolutely nothing to lose. Don’t hesitate for a moment. It’s an investment. It’s a long-term investment that is going to help you fly. Why live an ordinary life when it could be so much more exciting? If you want to be an artist just do it, an artist who makes money.

Laura Lamn:                        If it’s not working, why not try something different that actually works and there’s proven results to show that it works if you’re willing to put the work in.

Making Art Making Money

Someday Is Today

(Apply Now)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *