I built a 6-figure company designing sets for photoshoots and events. Here's how I turned my college hobby into a business.

• Dotun Abeshinbioke is a set designer and the owner of Ábiké Studio in New York.
• She got into set design as a student and started making sets for friends, leading to paying clients.
• Now her company earns six figures a year in revenue from projects with brands including Foot Locker.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dotun Abeshinbioke, the owner of Ábiké Studio in New York. Insider has verified her revenue with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Three years ago, I was studying graphic design at the Parsons School of Design, and I started freelancing as a way to build out my portfolio. I initially started doing design work for T-shirts and flyers, then I started designing sets to showcase my photography. Since I was at an art school, I became familiar with props and design and decided to give it a try.

I eventually transitioned to small-scale installation work, and I decided to turn my personal work into a creative brand in November 2020. Ábiké Studio was inspired by my traditional Yoruba name, which means "born to treasure."

As a creative studio, we do branding, web design, and experiential design for clients across creative fields. My business has grown entirely through word-of-mouth referrals. In 2022, Ábiké brought in six figures in revenue. Here's how I built it.

When I first started, I would imagine something I wanted to shoot and DIY it

For a while, the work was mostly for me, and initially, I hadn't imagined doing it for paying clients. My funds were very limited as a student, so if I wanted to shoot something, I'd seek out cheap alternatives to the sets that inspired me, like the curtains and checkered flooring that the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé uses. I found materials, like peel-and-stick flooring and fabrics, at discount and hardware stores and purchased things I could return later to keep my overhead low.

The help of community members and social-media followers is what shifted my transition from passion to profession. I gained traction when I started sharing more of my work on Instagram and connecting with industry peers there.

I used to go live on Instagram to show the process of building out my sets, then shared the images on my page the next day. My followers loved this content, especially during the pandemic. These posts would be sent around and eventually shared with people who hired me for jobs later on.

Friends started to refer me to other creatives, including artists who needed help with sets for music videos. One of my followers referred me to the production studio working with the artist Fabolous. He had a song with Davido and Jeremih, and the video shoot was in New York. They needed a set and had seen my work. They gave me a budget up front, which I divided up based on the cost of materials and labor.

After this project, I worked on expanding my scope, shifting away from videos to album covers, work events, and brand activations. As I grew, I could negotiate for higher budgets and higher day rates. Most of my early projects were small-scale and budget-friendly. As the work progressed, the budgets of set design projects began to range between around $5,000 and $10,000.

Business picked up in 2021 when I discovered the Creative Collective NYC and worked with Foot Locker

CCNYC is a destination for diverse creative freelancers to connect with opportunities and partners in the industry. They operate as a networking platform and a production agency, connecting clients with teams to execute creative visions.

From there, a friend brought me to work on a project for Instagram. A production agency was producing the #REELJOLLOF Ghana versus Nigeria basketball game, which Instagram was hosting, and the agency thought my style would fit in with the event's creative direction. I was tasked with building out a photo activation that guests would interact with at the game.

By this point, my work was circulating between production companies and friends who work with different brands. I took on another project with the Billionaire Boys Club to help design and install in-store activations for Pokémon and Yankees collaborations.

The person who initially brought me on for the Ghana versus Nigeria basketball game asked for me again when Instagram was planning an activation with CCNYC for the CultureCon event in October 2022.

The theme was sustainability in fashion. Being in charge of design for the installation allowed me the freedom to create based on my imagination. For guidance, I was given a 3D mock-up along with some inspiration images. Then I worked with Instagram's creative team to make a color-gradient activation out of thrifted clothes as a commentary on sustainable fashion.

My creative process revolves around a narrative arch, and I try to use storytelling as a starting point for my ideas

I ask my client what they want me to try to say, who I'm trying to speak to, and what they want to see. It's a process of world-building.

Much of the work I do is through trial and error. In instances where I had to reevaluate materials or labor, I always learned something new. The reward is seeing my visions come to life and seeing my clients be happy with what I made for them.

As a freelancer, it's imperative to learn how to be an effective project manager

Organizational skills and diligence are what made the difference for me, and it's helped me better serve the people I work with. This became valuable as I merged all the freelance work that I was doing into one distinguishable brand. I still lead most of the day-to-day work, but I now have two graphic designers who I hired in 2022 and a project manager. On a project basis, I bring on other contractors and freelancers to collaborate on branding and web design.

Clients don't always immediately understand, but my team is closely following the ideas and aesthetics on our vision boards. The physical rendition of the project in its final form is when it starts to make sense for everyone. The clients provide the objective, and my job is to lend my creativity to make it a reality.