Starting a company is scary. Starting when your back is up against a wall, during a recession, is REALLY scary. When we started RRFA in 2008, we did so under duress after leaving my old gallery quickly and returning to Miami in October of that year. The market was in full-scale collapse and the thought of opening my own luxury goods company could not have been more intimidating. My mind-set is descended from a 400 year long-line of soldiers, farmers, and day-laborers…. Not entrepreneurs. So, I had to rewire my brain to think like a business owner instead of an employee. This is not an easy ask, as I had only been exposed to other similar mindsets most of my life. Further, I needed to convince my girlfriend (now wife) Kat that owning our own business was not only viable but would lead us to the life we wanted to build for ourselves. It was not an easy ask. We did not have much money to start with, or investors to lean on. We were alone. So I did not take a day off for nearly two years, worked like a dog, and listened to motivational CDs “brainwashing myself with success”. No negativity was allowed in my sphere. I slept at my desk and tried and failed so many approaches to sales it became the norm.
Then, on Thursday, the 27th of November 2008, Thanksgiving Day… a miracle happened. My first sale.
Back in 2001 while still working for my former gallery I was given a sales goal which, if met, meant I would be gifted an etching by Dutch Master Rembrandt Van Rijn (1606-1669). I worked tirelessly to make the goal and was finally gifted Rembrandt’s “Self Portrait Drawing at a Window” (1648) which proudly hung in my home for over a half decade.
Selling a Rembrandt Started Our Success
This gifted Rembrandt “Etching “Self Portrait” went on to become the first sale in my own company and, I’m proud to say still hangs in the collector’s home in Canada to this day.
This sale provided the seed money for our first rudimentary website and was the foundation on which we would continue to build. 15 years later, Kat and I now have a successful 20th Century Art business as well as a Contemporary Art business. We’ve created private and public collections worldwide, curated shows and museums and had the honor to visit dozens of countries in the pursuit of new artistic discoveries. We’ve also built a fabulous non-profit, Comic Kids, which helps underserved children become inspired and enthusiastic about art through comics, cartoons and reading.
After 15 years I’ve never lost the workman-like mentality, while still training myself to think entrepreneurially every single day. Constantly reinventing yourself and working on getting better day after day is never going to be easy. But legacies seldom are.
~Reed V. Horth, 2023
