Brooklyn Photographer Gets Paid to Throw Confetti at People

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Hey, Side Hustle School listeners, welcome back. This is Chris Guillebeau. If you are listening in real time, the month is coming to a close. Either way, I'd like to give you a general reminder of what a side hustle is. A side hustle is not a hobby or a passion or just something you like to do.

It can be all three of those things, but it's also an income generating project. That is the definition, at least the one that we use for the show. And sometimes people get a little hung up on it. They say things like, oh, do you have to make money with everything you do? And I always say, of course not.

There's all kinds of things you should do just because you like to do them. For love, for art, for whatever reason. But that's not what Side Hustle School is about. It is much more about transforming a hobby into something that makes money for you. And if you enjoy it along the way, well, that's great.

Now today's story illustrates this principle really well. It's about someone who starts a personal 90 day challenge without any initial intent to make money from it. But then as time goes by, she finds a very natural revenue fit for it. And it's now earning something like $1,000 to $4,000 a month for something that she just started for fun. So no, you shouldn't do everything for money, but it's really great when something you like to do happens to make money.

That kind of magic is what we're after. And today's story is coming up right after this brief message. [Music]

A graphic designer by day, Yelena Alexic specializes in presentation and deck design for startups and other companies. But for the past two years, she's devoted much of her spare time to the Confetti Project, a photography series that profiles incredible people doused in confetti while asking them the question, what do you celebrate? It began as a three month photography challenge to find new opportunities.

Yelena tackled her own limiting beliefs about whether or not she could truly become a professional photographer, publish a coffee table book, or even see something through from start to finish. Since she started, she's profiled over 200 people, and it recently transitioned from a passion project into a money-making brand with multiple revenue streams that gives her the ability to work with charities and nonprofits. From as far back as Yelena's been working, she's always had a side hustle. Her first job out of college was being a startup's first hire as lead graphic designer. And after about a year, she began freelancing and continued that until she launched the Confetti Project.

Which by the way, how do you get inspired to start a Confetti Project? Well, for her, it was a lifelong immersion in creative hobbies matched with a series of random events. After getting glitter bombed at a party and taking home some Confetti in her pocket after a concert, Yelena found herself fishing around in the pocket of her leather jacket a few days later. She pulled out the Confetti and immediately re-experienced the emotions that it held. After doing some quick research on Confetti, she decided to embark on a three-month photography challenge in which she'd do 50 photo shoots with her fellow Brooklyn creative entrepreneurs.

She would then design a book, pitch it, and make it a bestseller. Although she didn't accomplish all of those ambitious goals in those three months, she did set the groundwork for what became a successful side hustle. The Confetti Project went from passion project to income generating project when Yelena introduced its first revenue stream, paid Confetti photo shoots. These shoots started at $200 and are now $350 per session, bringing in $1,000 to $4,000 a month after expenses like studio rental and of course, Confetti are covered. Overall income fluctuates largely because demand varies month to month.

So to combat that, Yelena has been pursuing some pop-up activations with brands to get her more exposure. The best experience so far has been creating her own space that others can come into. The two hours she gets to spend with each subject is where she's most in her element. And she says while she was worried about introducing money into an existing hobby or passion, it's actually only become more empowering for her. Sometimes she still gets nervous that somebody's paying her to do something she's invented, but of course, then they have a great experience and she gets paid.

Her best advice for you is that there are no rights or wrongs on the side hustle path. You just have to take action, like I encourage you to do every day. Next up, Yelena plans to continue developing the brand with more individual photo shoots, charity campaigns, workshops, and focusing on finishing that coffee table book she started in her three month challenge. She also has aspirations to travel the country speaking and be the first to bring what she calls a confetti quirk to market. [Music]

If you listen consistently to Side Hustle School, you may have noticed a recurring theme.

Pretty much every photographer I've featured, as well as most artists in general, they have been successful when they have chosen to specialize. So a while back I had this episode about a guy who does Star Wars photography. He's actually built this really interesting brand from it. Here you've got someone who wasn't sure if she could become a professional photographer, but then she found this really creative, unique twist, and it kind of changed everything for her. And by the way, there's some pretty awesome visuals of this.

So if you have a hard time kind of imagining what it looks like for someone to be doused with confetti in the midst of a photo shoot, well, you should just come and check out the show notes page on the site, where you can see a link to all of her work. That page is at sidehustleschool.com/207. And by the way, I wanna give a shout out to another podcast I've been enjoying. It's called "By the Book." And the two co-hosts for the show describe it as half reality show, half self-help podcast, and one wild social experiment. So what they do on "By the Book" is each episode, they live by the rules of a different self-help book to figure out which ones, if any, might actually be life-changing.

Feel free to check it out. Let me know if you like it too. You can subscribe to "By the Book" in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. As always, my friends, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School, signing off for today, but I hope to see you again tomorrow.

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