It’s Tuesday night, and Liz Chick is in her studio in Brooklyn, New York watching Ella Emhoff — the stepdaughter of U.S. vice president Kamala Harris — teach 20-somethings to do something called knit painting.
Running the studio, called RecCreate Collective, is Chick’s dream job, she says. Multiple nights per week, Chick — often sporting a quilted jacket she dyed herself using avocado pits — hosts instructors who teach knitting, collaging, painting and sculpting classes of up to 45 people.
It’s also the most lucrative job she’s ever had, says Chick, 27. In January, just ten months after hosting its first class, the studio brought in $25,000 in revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. RecCreate has been profitable since December, and Chick pays herself a salary of roughly $5,500 per month, she says.
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To get her business off the ground, Chick took on “windowless office” jobs, carted art supplies up and down her fourth-floor walk-up and trusted that she’d eventually get paid for her art.
She also got abnormally lucky. In 2022, Chick won $50,000 in a sweepstakes drawing she didn’t even realize she’d entered, providing the seed money she needed to rent the studio’s physical space and launch her business.
The unexpected cash infusion was a lifeline. “I would never go back to an office job … I hope to never have to,” says Chick. “It feels amazing to be able to make a living doing my dream job. I think are so few people who get to say that.”
Creating a balancing act
As a teenager in in the greater Chicago area, Chick thrifted, bleached and sold high-waisted denim shorts to YouTube influencers, she says. “I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” she says, adding: “I’ve been doing creative projects on the side, attempting to them into a business for, like, years and years and years.”
At age 18, she moved to New York to attend the Parsons School of Design. When she graduated in 2019,…
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