This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
If you've ever been to a job fair, especially a university, college university, young graduate's job fair, you might see a familiar scene. There are rows of nervous students, a shocking number of dorm room selfies on their resumes, and today's storyteller spotted that problem while freelancing as an events photographer. Career Services, the Department of Career Services, kept begging him to shoot quick LinkedIn headshots, but these budget-friendly slots vanished in minutes and the queue stretched down the hallway. So he built a self-serve alternative. He'll tell you how he did it in this story.
Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This story is part of our first $1,000 segment where we get to hear from a side hustler about how they got an idea, how they made that idea happen, and how that idea earned at least $1,000. Usually, it goes on to earn a good bit more than that, but we are interested in the genesis of the idea and helping you, our listener, take some practical steps so that you have your own stories of getting to $1,000 and well beyond. So this story about an event photographer who gets a little bit creative, makes a DIY headshot station.
Let's set the timer. Let's turn it over to him, pass the microphone, and I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up. I've been photographing campus events for years - convocations, hackathons, the occasional wedding. At every spring career fair, students begged me for just one quick headshot. I loved helping, but once you hold up the flow for a 5-minute shot, it's hard to recover.
I kept thinking there has to be a self-service version of this, so one Saturday, I laid my gear on the living room floor and asked, "What's the minimum viable studio?" I landed on four items - a used 10-inch iPad mini collecting dust in my closet, a sturdy tripod with table mount, $40 on Amazon, a $19 dimmable ring light, $58, a reversible grey-to-white pop-up backdrop, $72. Total cost after cables and a spare power bank, $190. I loaded the free app Shutter, set a 5-second countdown, and programmed it to upload each shot to a Google Drive folder named by the student. I printed a one-page guide, step one, stand on the tape, step two, smile until you hear the beep. The first pitch went to the Career Services director at the university where I shot my grad portraits.
The subject line was headshots without a photographer, $250 a day. She was curious and booked the station for the mid-semester internship fair. Setup literally took four minutes. Unfold tripod, clamp iPad, plug-in ring light, stick two pieces of painters tape on the floor for foot placement. I hovered nearby for the first 10 students, then disappeared to grab coffee.
When I returned, the line was moving on its own. At 4 p.m., I packed everything into the art tube, rolled it to my hatchback, and drove home with my $250 payment. I did a total of zero labor once the station was live. Two days later, the director emailed, "Students loved the convenience. Can we reserve the engineering career expo next month?" That was booking number two.
She also CC'd her counterpart at a neighboring university who quickly grabbed the Thursday slot before the engineering event. Booking number three. Number four came from LinkedIn. I posted a short clip of the station assembling like a transformer in fast motion. A campus recruiter messaged, "Can you do pop-ups at community college job fairs?" Absolutely.
Deposit paid within the hour. In 27 days, the ledger read, "Revenue, four rentals, $250 equals $1,000. Costs, original kit, $190. Fuel and gaffer tape, $34. That profit, $776.
Maintenance is trivial. I just wipe fingerprints off the backdrop, recharge the power bank, and clear out the drive folder. I keep the setup guide and a plastic sleeve taped right to the light stand so any volunteer can run the station if I'm not there. The side hustle now peaks every September and February. Eight rentals a semester can pay my annual camera gear upgrade bill, and students walk away with a nice LinkedIn portrait instead of dim selfies.
A win that fits in a tube I can carry with one hand. If you're sitting on idle equipment and a simple process, remember, institutions will pay well for turnkey, no babysitting solutions. Anyone can do this, and I hope someone else will try. All right, big thanks to Paul for sharing that story. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed it.
And as always, I hope you take an inspiration or a point of inspiration from the story and just kind of consider, well, that's pretty cool what that person was able to do and wonder what I could do. Or maybe you already have your idea and you just need help with taking the first steps or the next steps. And hopefully the collective stories that you hear, along with our listener questions and answers, other case studies, archival stuff, it all just kind of brings you closer to a goal that is important to you. I want you to be able to create extra income. I want you to be able to have the lifestyle that you want.
For more than 3,000 days in a row, we have been making a new episode. And I hope that these episodes are helpful to you. New ones drop every day as well. You can always subscribe or follow wherever you prefer. That's it for today.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. From The Onward Project.
