Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2015. All figures are from 2014-2015: $7,000 in 2011, almost $25,000 in 2012, over $100,000 in 2014, rates of $150-$250 an hour, and $21,000 in May 2015.
As you can imagine, a simple skill or talent can become a profitable business if you start thinking like an entrepreneur. In fact, you should not underestimate those small skills: you do not have to save the world to make money.
There is a piece of advice often given to people looking for business ideas: “find something you are good at and that people are willing to pay for.” And the truth is that, with a few exceptions, there is almost always a group of people willing to pay for one of our skills or talents.
This is the story of Julia Kelly, which was covered by Business Insider. It is one more example of how, in a simple way, anyone can make money and start their own business from a small talent.
Julia Kelly started drawing professionally in 2010, when she was 22.
She had just started university after a few years of working and travelling. She had a part-time job as a graphic designer, which she combined with full-time studies, but she wanted to earn some extra money over the summer holidays.
On a whim, she applied to be a caricature artist at an amusement park in San Diego. She had never had any kind of art training, so she was quite surprised when she got the job. It paid minimum wage, but she was happy to be paid while learning how to draw caricatures, which she loved.
The amusement park job was seasonal and ended with the summer. She thought about looking for a similar caricaturist job at another park, but concluded that an $8.50-an-hour job was not for her.
By then she had started reading authors such as Michael Port, John Jantsch, Steve Slaunwhite, Ramit Sethi and Brennan Dunn. She realised that the caricature skills she had learned over the summer could translate into better contracts as a freelancer if she learned to sell herself properly. In other words, she could turn that skill and passion into her own business.
She started looking at other caricaturists online and saw that they were charging $100 an hour, so that became her hourly rate. She approached local schools to ask whether they had any events where they could hire her. At the time she did not even have a website. She landed a few contracts that way, and that was when she knew freelancing could become something interesting.
Her younger brother built the first version of her website and started applying some search engine optimisation (SEO). Through a combination of people finding her website and referrals, the business slowly began to grow.
She kept drawing caricatures on contracts here and there until 2011, when she brought in $7,000 in less than a year, and in 2012 she brought in almost $25,000. In mid-2013 she quit her part-time graphic design job, and she has supported herself as a freelance caricature artist ever since.
(See: Ways to learn a skill faster than everyone else)
In 2014 her business passed $100,000. That was the result of several factors building on each other: relationships with event organisers, better search engine rankings, repeat clients and higher rates. She also had the chance to increase revenue by hiring other artists for events, since she could not cover them all herself.
See also: The day I stopped being a terrible salesperson
Given that she was still a full-time student and only focused on the business one or two days a week, this kind of growth was quite unexpected for Kelly. She never thought she could support herself entirely from caricatures, let alone build a business with six-figure revenue.
Once she realised how much her business could grow, she chose to keep living as cheaply as possible and reinvest a good share of the revenue in the business: a great web developer and a good website, a part-time assistant, and so on. She took home about 40% of total revenue in 2014 after paying her independent contractors and reinvesting in the business.
Her rates currently range from $150 to $250 an hour, depending on whether the client chooses traditional or digital caricatures. The average contract is around $450 for traditional caricatures and $1,000 for digital ones, which are drawn on a tablet, projected onto a big screen, printed in colour on site and made available to download online.
As the work became too much for her alone, she hired a virtual administrative assistant who has handled email, invoicing, scheduling and bookings. It has also helped to have a large network of artists she subcontracts work to when she cannot do an event herself. Now that the business has expanded, she works with around eight to ten artists in several states.
One of the things she recommends to people who want to start their own business is to be patient and learn to feel comfortable, because selling is very hard at first.
“The feeling of discomfort only goes away after you take action, not before. Getting past your initial fear of selling is the hardest part. Once you build some momentum, the wins start coming on their own. Don’t give up before you start.”
For Julia Kelly, 2015 looks set to be a great year. In May she brought in $21,000, her best month since she started the business.
Further reading
- 12 important things entrepreneurs should know about business
- 29 ways to make extra money from home or online
Featured image: Garry Knight, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
