selling Avon beauty products while I was in college. A few years after graduation, I started an online retail business and also a wedding and lifestyle photography business. I even started Clever Girl Finance as a side hustle. And despite running Clever Girl Finance full-time now, my mind is constantly buzzing with side-hustle ideas that I share with friends and family all the time.
Why am I so passionate about side hustles? They’ve been incredible learning experiences and have allowed me to earn a lot of money over time. My side hustle inspiration comes from my mother. Her side hustles made a big impact on what she was able to accomplish financially when I was growing up, and I got to watch it happen.
My mother has always had a side hustle for as long as I can remember. She’s pretty much the queen of side hustles. From when she was a stay-at-home mom raising her four kids, to when she went to get her college degree (with me in tow at all her classes), to after she had multiple degrees and was working full-time in banking, she was always running one side business or another.
On evenings after her full-time job and on the weekends while I was growing up, she would take me to visit the different businesses she had over the years. Some of these businesses included a bakery, a Coca-Cola franchise, a hair salon, and a girl’s school. She was also always buying and selling all kinds of goods for profit. In retrospect, I realize my mother was able to run these businesses as side hustles by creating systems and processes and hiring the right people. And even today, she still has a side hustle and is always churning ideas in her mind of what to do next.
Having these side hustles not only allowed my mother to contribute to our household finances in a major way; they also allowed her to achieve financial wellness and ultimately become the breadwinner of our family when my father went through a financial downturn. Her hustles also allowed her to support me (alongside a partial scholarship) through college as an international student, an opportunity I will never forget.
She worked incredibly hard to build and grow her side hustles, but at the end of the day, all of her efforts were worth it. On the visits we made together to the various businesses she was running, she would always remind me how making my own money could give me options and freedom. Seeing her drive and dedication to her side hustles while I was a child set the perfect example.
Going back to my first side hustle selling candy, I remember saving up my pocket money to buy a bunch of hard-to-find candy flavors (specifically, some lollipops called Chupa Chups) and then selling them at a profit to my friends in my neighborhood. It was exciting to see my investment grow quickly, and while my profits were tiny, just knowing I could sell something and earn money gave me a big rush. It didn’t last long, though, because after I shared my success with a friend, she convinced me to lend her all of the money I made—and I never saw it or her again (#Igotpunked—story for another book!). I did, however, gain some valuable lessons from that first business. Without realizing it at the time, I was learning about pricing my products, making sure I was getting paid, and (very importantly) how not to lose my profits.
Fast forward to my last year of college, I started another side hustle selling Avon for a few months before graduation. Yup, I was an Avon lady! My mum would order me the catalogs and I would basically take orders from anyone and everyone possible, making note of everything in my little Avon receipt book. It was with this business that I realized the financial gain that could come from having a side hustle. Back then, if you sold over a certain amount of Avon products within the time frame before a catalog expired, you could earn up to 40 percent or more in commissions. And for me, the ability to earn money was my motivation. I would sell as much as I could to meet this threshold, and I ended up earning a pretty decent income from my Avon hustle. From my earnings, I was able to co-host my sister-in-law’s bridal shower, buy my bridesmaid dress, buy return plane tickets to fly to and from the wedding, and give my brother and his wife a lovely wedding gift. As a college student, being able to do this was huge for me.
Several years later, I would start an online bridal accessory and clothing retail store and a wedding and lifestyle photography business. I ran both of these as side hustles part-time while working full-time as a technology consultant in corporate America.
My online retail shop was called the White Dress Shop. It was inspired by my photography business, as brides would be constantly asking me if I knew where other brides I’d photographed had gotten their wedding accessories and pre- and post-wedding event outfits. Based on this, I decided to set up a business to fill that void. I figured out how to become a wholesaler for various brands, how to use line sheets to plan future inventory, how to set up an ecommerce website, how to organize my physical inventory, how to set up processes for packing, shipping, and returns (aka fulfillment), and very importantly, how to become a pro at customer service! Since I was already in the wedding industry as a photographer (which I’ll get into shortly), it wasn’t that difficult for me to figure how best to market my side hustle, and it became profitable after a few months.
However, while the profits were nice, I shut down the business just shy of its second anniversary. I quickly started running out of space to store my inventory at home, I had begun planning my own wedding, and my husband and I would be moving cities twice over a short period of time due to our jobs. Given that I was running this side hustle alongside my photography business and a full-time job, I decided to minimize my overall stress and focus on the one side hustle that was earning me the most money.
My wedding photography business, called Onada Photography, was my longest-running side hustle, and I did it for seven years. Over that period of time, it also earned me the most amount of money of all my side hustles—up to the tune of almost $70,000 in one particular year. Funny enough, I stumbled into wedding photography mostly by accident. My dad was always taking photos, so I have tons and tons of photographs that document my childhood. Despite being exposed to it early on, I never imagined myself as a professional photographer until one day an opportunity presented itself and ignited the idea.
I was visiting Jamaica for a friend’s wedding, and I had just purchased a new low-cost entry-level professional camera from Nikon, which I took along for the trip. For whatever reason, my friend’s wedding photographer was running late on the day of her wedding. She had seen my camera earlier on and asked me to take a few photos before her photographer arrived, which I did. I loved the photos, and more importantly, so did she. This got me thinking that perhaps there was an opportunity to make some money with my photography!
I advertised (on Craigslist back then) to get my first few wedding photography gigs, and shot them for free. Yup, free! I did this because I didn’t have any experience photographing a wedding outside of the pre-wedding shots for my friend, and I felt that if people accepted my services for free, it would minimize the risk if for whatever reason the photos didn’t come out as expected. I had so much to learn, and I also needed to build a portfolio of images to showcase on my photography website, so this approach made sense for me—and it worked. Because I didn’t set any expectations and I put in my best effort, my clients loved their photographs. I bought books, watched videos, practiced on my family and friends, paid for workshops, and essentially became a self-taught photographer. Once I built a solid portfolio, I was able to confidently charge for my work and invest in better equipment.
It definitely wasn’t a walk in the park, though. On the weekends, I was busy photographing weddings and other events. I remember incredibly crazy summers doing back-to-back weddings on Friday evening, Saturday, and then on Sunday. On weekdays, after working at my day job (where I put in 60 hours a week on average), I went straight home and got on my computer to sort and edit photos late into the night. Many times, I’d also wake up to do the same thing early in the morning before I went to work—rinse and repeat.
I was exhausted, but I was happy to be making all that extra money on the side. I charged $3,000 to $5,000 a wedding and $300 to $450 for my lifestyle photography sessions (e.g., baby sessions, engagement sessions, family sessions, etc.). The year I made almost $70,000 with this side hustle, I photographed 19 weddings and several lifestyle sessions. I transitioned
