As Katelyn Alsop recalls, she stumbled into the hobby that would help her become a millionaire before she turned 30 by accident.
Alsop, 35, is a wedding photographer and mom of four — soon to be five — in Richmond, Virginia. Her wedding photography and online education business brings in close to $240,000 per month, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Growing up, Alsop “wasn’t passionate about photography,” she says. “I didn’t take a photo class in high school or college …. It was never something I considered trying.”
Alsop was, however, artistic, and entrepreneurial. She started her first business when she was 15, called “Katelyn’s Krafts,” painting and selling decorative ornaments, bowls, plates and more.
During her second year of college at Christopher Newport University, one of Alsop’s friends asked if she wanted to photograph students around campus together.
“I thought it would be fun to try something new, even if I was bad at it,” Alsop says. That semester, she bought her first camera, a Canon Rebel XSi, for $700, and took it with her everywhere. She enjoyed capturing the rare moments of pure, unadulterated joy: her friends having a snowball fight in the quad, students crossing the stage at graduation.
In 2008, after six months of photographing people and events for fun, Alsop turned her hobby into a full-fledged business, Katelyn James Photography (James is her middle name), that she ran from her dorm room.
In 2016, right after her 28th birthday, Alsop made her first $1 million profit. Here’s how she turned her photography side hustle into a multimillion-dollar business:
Building a strong personal brand early on
In Alsop’s first year of business, she was still a full-time college student, but she managed to spend at least 40 hours per week growing her photography side hustle: driving to shoots, editing photos and sharing the finished albums on her blog.
That blog turned out to be a tremendous asset for Alsop’s budding…
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