29-year-old scales back six-figure career to run local bookstore

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which examines how people earn, spend and save money.

Paola Merrill never intended to be an influencer.

The 29-year-old was working at a kindergarten in 2020 when the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic hit and her hours were cut. So, in her free time, she decided to create videos of the picturesque green fields and mountains of her hometown of Winthrop, Washington, where she lives with her current husband. Her channel quickly gained a following and currently has around 1.6 million subscribers.

Merrill started selling her watercolor prints on Etsy, and as her YouTube following grew, so did the number of orders. “We packaged about 40,000 pieces in four years,” she says. She became a full-time creator by the end of 2020.

Although Merrill was excited to be able to make a living as an artist, this gig was not without its challenges. “I started having panic attacks, and every time I tried to complete a video or meet a deadline, I felt a great deal of anxiety,” she says.

So when Meryl found out she was pregnant in 2023, she decided to leave YouTube and start a Patreon account where she could create more minimal content for a smaller group of people. In 2025, she also started selling her self-published fairy tale books on Etsy. Merrill said her income was “significantly reduced” during the transition, but her health and happiness improved.

But that wasn’t the end of changes in Merrill’s career. In early 2025, she learned that the local bookstore where she had worked part-time for many years, Trail’s End Bookstore, was for sale. She says she and her husband Luke Galing officially bought it in October because they realized doing this could be a great next step for her.

“We live in a small town,” Merrill says. “We don’t have a lot of community hubs, but this bookstore is an important and essential part of the community.”

Merrill is currently balancing running her store and Patreon account, gradually scaling back her content so she can focus on Trail’s End full-time. Geiling, 37, works full time as a field technician for a land surveying company. In 2025, the two brought in about $209,000 combined.

The film follows the couple and their 22-month-old son Caspian (whose name was inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series) as they build a new life as bookstore owners in rural Washington.

Between the purchase price and initial improvements, Merrill and Garring spent about $260,000 on the bookstore. The latter includes investing in new fixtures and displays and hiring a painter to create some murals. They are still working on some additions.

Galing brought his passion for collecting rocks and crystals to this venture. When the couple bought the store, he installed crystal displays, which became another source of income for the business.

Merrill is more focused on day-to-day business operations. She estimates she spends about 20 hours a week at the store selling to customers, ordering inventory and handling insurance. She spends an additional four hours at home answering emails throughout the week.

Most of all, she wants to find a balance between meaningful work and time with her son. “I definitely have less work to do than I used to,” she says, and that helps.

One of the challenges of this business is that it’s seasonal. Although the store is profitable overall, “profitability varies greatly from month to month depending on the number of tourists and changes in weather,” Merrill said. A store’s revenue can increase by up to 100% during the busy summer season, but can drop by more than 50% during the slow season, he said.

Merrill and Garing said they are preparing for fluctuations and are currently investing in inventory in preparation for increased foot traffic due to a warming climate.

In 2025, Trail’s End Bookstore’s net income was nearly $29,000.

“It’s an incredible challenge, but it’s a great challenge to learn how to have a dream, but you have to really focus on gaining all the knowledge to make that dream a success,” Merrill says.

Here’s a breakdown of Merrill and Galing’s February expenses:

Mortgage and utilities: $2,610 Annual HOA fees: $1,835 Insurance: $1,373 for health and dental Food: $1,334 for groceries and eating out Child care: $719 Discretionary: $294 for crafts, audiobooks, pet food, and Netflix Medical debt repayment: $140 Gas: $106

Merrill said the couple bought the 1,400-square-foot home from Garing’s parents in 2022 for about $405,000 (the house was on their property). The down payment is approximately $80,000. They paid their HOA fees once a year in February, and the expenses were covered from Garing’s checking account.

Food is their biggest expense for several reasons. First, the cost of living is relatively high in Washington compared to other parts of the country, Merrill said, and second, their lives are so busy with new businesses and babies that they don’t have much time to cook. Garing says she buys both breakfast and lunch outside most days.

“We’re aware of our energy levels, our humanity, our lifestyles, and we’re saying, ‘I’m spending more money on food now,'” Merrill says.

Their discretionary expenditures included craft supplies that Garring purchased to display Crystal in a bookstore. Otherwise, she says she keeps costs down by taking advantage of free activities like hikes and walks, and by using resources like libraries.

They also prioritize saving money. As of March, they had about $380,760 saved for retirement, investments and their son’s education. The couple also has about $40,000 in an emergency savings account, including a $24,500 deposit Merrill made from an independent book sale on Etsy in February.

Merrill plans to close Patreon by the end of the year in order to focus solely on her new business. Running a local bookstore means a lot to her, she says, because it’s “a way I can connect with other people and be able to give something to other people.” In the future, she wants her online creative work to feel more like a hobby than a job.

Merrill also said she wanted to protect her son’s privacy rather than share his life online.

For her, the biggest part of this journey was rethinking the word “success.”

“When you start your own business, you often recognize success by seeing something improve and become bigger over time,” she says. But she says that growth and the stress that came with it were so deadly that she ultimately decided to change her framework.

Now she says success simply means living a sustainable and manageable life by running a small business she loves. Merrill used to earn six figures from content creation, but this year she aims to pay herself about $40,000 from her bookstore and aim to make $70,000 a year in a single day.

Garing has seen Merrill’s transformation from content creator to bookseller. “Seeing how happy Paola made it was definitely worth the trip to the bookstore,” he says.

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