After 12 long years of giving up on her art, Ann Rea returned to her passion.

However, she wasn’t selling enough work or making enough money. 

Ann didn’t know where to focus. 

Ann Rea was longing for validation as an artist and a clear purpose for her art.

Yet the harder she worked the more overwhelmed she was becoming.   

Even her famous mentor, Wayne Thiebaud, an art icon, couldn’t give her a reliable roadmap to success.

Ann and her friend Angela started their daily negative bonding routine one day by complaining about their dull corporate jobs.

Because Angela was recovering from Stage-4 breast cancer treatments, Ann redirected their conversation by asking Angela, “If you had a magic wand that guaranteed your success, what would you do?”

Angela said, “I’d be an interior designer. I love design.”

“What’s stopping you?”

After a long pause, Angela said, “I’m too afraid.”

Ann asked, “What scares you more? Pursuing your love of design or dying of cancer?”

Angela sat in stark silence.

Ann and Angela were about the same age, a month apart.

Suddenly, Ann became more afraid of not living than dying.

Ann decided she wouldn’t let her self-limiting fears destroy her future.  

Step by step, Ann found the courage to turn her dream into a plan.

In January 2005, Ann moved to San Francisco to become a full-time artist determined to sell over $100,000 of her fine art.

Her first step was firing her representation.

Despite having no contacts, family support, or trust fund, Ann Rea sold $103,246 of her art during her first year as a full-time artist.

Then, in December 2007, the Great Recession hit.

Ann’s art sales stalled. 

Fortunately, Ann was commissioned to complete an oil painting for Bob Proctor’s 70th birthday, a personal development expert and host of the movie “The Secret.”

While Ann was at Bob’s home in Toronto, he was coaching Ellen DeGeneres to beat Oprah Winfrey’s daytime T.V. show ratings. 

Ellen won, and Ann witnessed how we can manifest our goals by seeing and feeling them as if they already existed. 

Success is 80% psychology and 20% strategy. 

Ann searched her old art history books in search of a strategy. 

She noticed a pattern, and she cracked a “4-Part Code” proving how successful fine artists determine their niche so that they know:

• who wants to buy their art
• why they want to buy their art
• where to find more people to buy their art
• how to find more people to buy their art

After Ann became a student of luxury marketing, she increased her average sale price by 400% from $2,000 to $10,000 without:

• feeling pushy
• paying sales commissions
• writing cringy artist’s statements

She started generating 80% more sales, on average, and she keeps 100% of her money focusing on one proven luxury marketing.

Ann started attracting affluent collectors, who are 82% more likely to buy her fine art and spend more money.

One day, Ann’s intern, Kathryn, announced her graduation from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco. During this same time, Kathryn’s father lost his job, and her mother died suddenly from pancreatic cancer.

Kathryn’s B.F.A left her with a shocking amount of inescapable student loan and credit card debts totaling $250,000.

While Ann sat stuck in traffic on Van Ness Boulevard in San Francisco, she began contemplating the tremendous cost of Kathryn’s education and the unlikely return on her time and money. 

Then, something caught Ann’s attention. The Academy of Art University proudly displayed its antique car collection inside its former Cadillac dealership, one that you can see for a $15 admission fee. A few cars are valued at over a million dollars.

Ann realized that Kathryn’s crippling debt was not only funding the Academy of Art University’s antique car collection but also their real estate portfolio, the largest in San Francisco.

Yet Kathryn didn’t learn any marketable skills.

Ann was pissed but she harnessed her anger into the inspiration and she created Making Art Making Money™.

Ann decided that her students would graduate by selling enough of their art to cover their tuition, at a minimum. *

*As featured by Inc. Magazine as an innovation in advanced education.