This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Maybe the thing that makes you different is what makes you interesting and attractive. Or maybe the characteristic that you thought was a detriment actually ends up being an advantage. That's what today's story illustrates. It's about a woman who begins a career in PR only to stumble into the world of plus-size modeling, something she didn't even know existed until a chance encounter. As a mixed race individual, she also had more than her share of experiences in feeling isolated.
But again, this turned out to be a key attribute in why she was desirable to agencies and brands. This unplanned modeling career now brings in more than six figures a year. She's also been smart to diversify her earnings so as to not become dependent on any season or trend. Welcome to Cytosool School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau.
Gonna bring you this story, unplanned plus-size modeling career takes off in just 30 seconds after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Six years ago, Katherine Lee had just graduated from college. Right after she finished her degree, she scored a job in Los Angeles as a publicist and moved there to kickstart her career. Unfortunately, that entry-level job paid less than what she needed. Among other things, Katherine had to start paying off her student loans so she began to look for extra ways to make money.
One day in the midst of her Cytosool search, she and her roommate went to pick up a couch from someone they'd met on Craigslist. When they got to this person's home, her name was Danica, Katherine began chatting with her about why she was getting rid of the couch. Danica told her she was moving to New York City to pursue a career in plus-size modeling. Katherine was amazed. Danica had the same body type as her and she had never seen models that looked like that before.
Her publicist tendencies took over. She began asking Danica all kinds of questions about modeling, including the all-important money question. Can you really get paid to do that? Katherine was blown away with Danica's response. She said candidly that she earned six figures a year.
Katherine didn't want that conversation to end. In fact, after she'd left to go get back in her car, because they were just there to see about a couch, she decided to be bold, walk back, knock on the door, and ask more questions. They exchanged contact information and Danica sent her off with a list of tips, even a referral to contact her agency. That chance encounter led Katherine to try her hand at modeling. She quickly had pictures taken and started to apply to agencies.
For a while, she didn't hear anything back, but then Danica's agency gave her a call and brought her onto the team. Again, what an incredible chance encounter. From there, she began doing modeling jobs and these were good gigs. Every day that she modeled, she made somewhere between 800 and $1,500. Most of these jobs were for modeling clothing to be sold online.
Katherine calls this econ modeling and says that it is the bread and butter of a modeling career these days. As time went on, she began to catch flights all across the country to model for a day. When she first joined her agency, the people there told her that if she wanted to do this full time, it could take close to three years. Katherine wasn't worried, she always assumed that modeling would simply be a sidekick. However, just three months later, she was making more money from modeling than from her PR job and she kept getting more offers.
What was so special about her? Well, being different is what made her attractive. And here's how she puts it. She says, when I was growing up, I got an assignment at school that asked, who is your role model? And I couldn't think of anyone.
No one looked like me. As a half Chinese, half white, bigger girl, I couldn't identify with anyone. My Asian friends and cousins were always smaller than me, making me feel fat. My white friends didn't really see me as the same either. On TV and the movies and the magazines I read, there were a few Asian people, there were almost no mixed race people, and then there were no plus size people.
There was basically nobody. So throughout the years, I had to learn to accept myself. Again, being different is what made her attractive. Or we could say being plus sized was a plus. Modeling is similar to freelance work where some weeks Katherine would have five days of modeling whether she would have just one.
It was a flexible schedule depending on when people hired her for jobs. Now, she herself makes six figures a year from her modeling work, just like Danica, and she's used her agency work to create another source of income in the form of social media. Her Instagram account has over 120,000 followers. For any prospective models, Katherine says that growing your following is vital because any offers you receive will be proportional to your number of followers. For modeling specifically, Katherine says that agencies and brands will contact influencers even if they don't meet the traditional requirements of being a model.
Working with brands directly allows for a lot more collaboration and freedom of expression. In her case, when brands sent her a product for her to style on her own, they usually include guidelines but leave a lot of room for interpretation. Like the busy person she is, Katherine fills the days that she isn't modeling. She's continued to do PR but switched to freelancing instead of working for a company. In addition, she started her own plus-size online boutique.
It was a logical fit because she'd modeled all the clothes. She's also the head of marketing and advertising for The Shade Room, a celebrity news site. She has no idea how long she'll continue to get modeling gigs as she gets older, so she understands the importance of having other skills and streams of income. Of course, she still loves to model, is planning on doing it for as long as she can. [Music]
All right, so let's return to this lesson.
You know, maybe the thing that makes you different is what makes you interesting and attractive, or maybe the characteristic that you thought was a detriment actually ends up being an advantage. I want you to think about any attribute you have or any characteristic you have that you think is negative about you and ask yourself if there's a way that it could be flipped or just reframed in some way. In different interviews and such, I often talk about how I have ADD. I talk about how I've struggled with depression and anxiety and not necessarily related to those things, but I also identify as an introvert. And it's really funny because interviewers almost always ask me about that.
They almost say like, "Wait a second. "How can you be an introvert?" And, you know, go out and be a public speaker and, you know, do all the stuff that you do. And to me, it's a pretty basic question, but I guess because people keep asking it, not everyone understands. I don't see any of those things as limitations. They're just, you know, part of who I am and I have to work with them and know what my strengths and weaknesses are like everybody else.
I had another situation once where I was going through the copy edits for a book manuscript. And when you work with the publisher, you go through various editing rounds and like one of the last ones is copy editing where they have a different person than your editor. They have someone who all that person does is like go through and look for any comma that could be misplaced or anything else that's grammatically correct. Just making sure everything is consistent with the style guide and so on. And the kind of person who does this job, they have an important job because they always notice stuff that I missed, stuff that my editor missed.
It's just the reality of a 300 page book manuscript that you're going to make a bunch of mistakes. And it's that person's job to identify the mistakes. Now in this particular example, I got a little frustrated with the copy editor because they were making various suggestions that I didn't agree with. And I had, you know, some jokes because, you know, I'm hilarious. I had some jokes in the manuscript and they were like, oh, this isn't really funny.
I was like, what are you talking about? This is so funny. Like this, this totally is funny. Like we're keeping it in the book. And we did keep it in the book, of course.
But I realized like, okay, this person's skill may not necessarily be in identifying what is funny or not, but, you know, they are OCD. They are really, really good at something I'm not good at, which is, you know, looking very, very carefully to make sure things are consistent, grammatically correct, nothing out of order, et cetera. All right, so that's probably a long winded way of saying, you know, everybody has a strength. There might be some attribute about you that you think is negative or you're not sure how you could use to your advantage, but there is a way, pretty sure, to use it as your advantage, maybe even your superpower, who knows? Okay, I'll leave you with that today.
Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1028. One, zero, two, eight. I'm so glad you're along for the journey. Another episode is coming out tomorrow.
Don't miss it. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
