We were lucky to catch up with Courtney Paige recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Courtney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job

Sometimes, learning what NOT to do, teaches you much more about what to do successfully. I worked in corporate America for a little over 3 years before leaving my old industry and pursuing food blogging. As a number in a large company, I often felt like there was little appreciation and even kindness coming from management above. There were unrealistic work expectations, without the communication to support it. It often left everyone scrambled and toxic work environment. Quickly, I realized how important clear communication, kindness and appreciation for others is in the workplace. As a food blogger and content creator, I work with a variety of people and brands. Above all, I always ensure that I am communicating clearly, with kindness, and show appreciation for their work as well.

Courtney, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Courtney Paige and I’m the founder and CEO of A Paige Of Positivity, a delicious and nutritious food blog. I specialize in professional food photography and recipe development. I started a blog as a hobby when I was in college; and quickly learned that it could be a full time job. When the Pandemic hit, I was working as a commercial interior designer and realized how much time I had working from home. I was debating on throwing my blog ‘apaigeofpositivity (APOP)’ in the towel – as I realized it deserved more attention than I was giving it. I took the plunge and started treating it like a full time job and the rest is history. I purchased a DSLR camera, learned food photography, and began building a recipe index. In a little over a year and a half, my blog is now monetized, I’ve left my corporate job, I work with large brands on five figure photography contracts, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been working. Most days it doesn’t feel like work, as I’m so excited to continue learning, proud of the business I’ve built, and work with incredible brands.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My side hustle did turn into my main/full time business. The turning point of my business was when I purchased the domain name to my website. At the time, I only had an Instagram account with a healthy number of followers, working with brands on sponsored content. I was fed up with Instagram’s algorithm, and thought I might just stop ‘sharing pretty pictures of food’. I knew there was opportunity to earn ad revenue if you had a website, and decided to jump in on being a food blogger, not just an influencer. I worked full-time as a commercial interior designer for the first two years of building my food blog. I lived off of that income and reinvested what I was making from social at the time back into my blog: recipe development for building the recipe index, professional food photography – a course and everything associated to that (equipment, props, etc). and more. I purchased the LLC, obtained the EIN, started a new bank account for the business, applied for a trademark – essentially did everything for a new business. Once I saw my income from the blog exceed my corporate job, I knew that I could financially live off of it and decided to make it my full-time job. I’m 3 months in and it brings me so much joy. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was of working both jobs, until I quit corporate. I’m my own boss, and it’s the best thing ever.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for me has been my existing clients and them sharing my work with others. I work with a lot of food bloggers and when they share images that I took for them, it helps my food photography business a lot. Also, marketing agencies that represent multiple brands. Once you have a good relationship with a marketing agency, it’s much easier to do a lot of work with them for different clients. You understand how each other work and it’s a solid partnership.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://apaigeofpositivity.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apaigeofpositivity/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apaigeofpositivity/about
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/apaigeofpositivity/

Image Credits
All photos taken and edited by Courtney Paige, @apaigeofpositivity