• Taylor Kelly started running candle-making workshops in 2023 to get out of the house and meet people.
• He turned his side hustle into a full-time small business after he was laid off from his corporate job.
• His company offers classes like flower arranging, pasta making, and tea tasting and blending.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Taylor Kelly, the 34-year-old founder of Eventful ATL, who lives in Atlanta. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

If you'd asked me in the beginning if my side hustle of candle-making classes would become a business a year later, I would've had no clue.

It went from $2,000 in revenue in 2023, when it was an evening and weekend side gig, to $16,000 in 2024, when I created a legal business entity: Eventful ATL.

Then, in 2025, I was laid off from my corporate job.

It gave me more flexibility to really dive in, and we ended the year a little under $75,000 in revenue. I pushed into 2026 with a stable small business, and we're on track to end 2026 with around $100,000 in revenue.

We currently offer over 12 class topics, including candle making, flower arranging, pasta making, tea tasting and blending, charcuterie making, wine tasting, and cocktail making. We also recently added pottery-making and seasonal classes like wreath-making and gift-wrapping.

Sometimes I wonder, how the heck did I end up here?

I started hosting candle-making workshops after moving to Atlanta

I lived in New York for several years and worked for Ritani, a New York-based jewelry company, in a few different marketing roles from 2019 to 2025. I took two years off from Ritani between 2020 and 2022 to do a full-time MBA program at the University of Miami, and I rejoined the company in May 2022.

My side gig began in the winter of 2023. I'd moved to Atlanta, and in order to get out of the house and meet people, I started hosting candle-making workshops on evenings and weekends. Candle making had been my hobby during COVID and grad school.

It started to grow beyond candle making, into other types of classes. I teamed up with a venue partner who has a wonderful event space and added flower-arranging and caviar-tasting workshops.

Initially, I asked people whom I knew had specific hobbies, passions, or experience if they'd offer a class in it. Soon, I started getting emails and calls from small business owners and creatives who really wanted to teach but didn't want to deal with the logistics of coordinating classes or experiences.

It wasn't hard to balance it with my full-time job because I was working remotely and wasn't doing anything else after work hours. I'd spend my nights and weekends working on Eventful and focused on SEO for organic growth.

As the months went by, it became clear that there was an opportunity to keep growing Eventful, and I thought about the possibility of making it my full-time job. However, I liked having a stable paycheck.

I was laid off from my full-time job in May 2025

It wasn't a big surprise that it happened. I remember being stressed, like, Oh, crap, I don't have any income now. If I hadn't had this little business on the side, I would've spiraled. I'm so grateful that I had my side hustle to fall back on.

I started my job search in June while still working my side gig, but I wasn't getting much traction with interviews. I sent out hundreds of applications and got only a handful of interviews. I'd be so annoyed about spending a whole day applying when I could've spent that energy diving into my business.

There were so many jobs listed, and a recruiter would say, "We'd love to chat," and then the role would vanish. That was disheartening, and it made more sense to pursue something that I had going myself.

I also wasn't finding roles that were exciting to me, the way I had years ago when I lived in New York. Part of that was because I was so excited about working on my business. I knew there was potential; it wasn't huge at the time, but I knew we could continue to grow.

A couple of months later, I made the decision to pursue my business full-time

I'm not sure I would've pursued growing the company full-time anytime soon if it weren't for being laid off.

Now, we host 15 to 20 events a month. We have at least two public classes each week, and we're adding more throughout the holiday season, as well as multiple private group experiences throughout the week.

We have a lot of brands that leverage us to provide team-building experiences for clients and employees, including companies like Google, Salesforce, Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot.

We work with about eight to 10 contractors and instructors who teach classes. I like working on a team — I don't like sitting here alone. I've also started teaching a lot of our pasta-making and flower-arranging classes.

When I'm not instructing, I like being present at as many classes as possible to facilitate setup and breakdown. However, there've been many times when our team has handled classes without me present, and the goal is to ensure we're creating the right systems to make that the standard, in order to eventually scale and grow into new markets like Miami and New York.

Sometimes I'm the marketing person, and sometimes I'm the instructor for the day. Every day is a new day, and I wake up to an email of something cool that I didn't expect coming across my desk.

I'm excited for us to continue to grow

It took until September of this year, when my brain was like, This is it. This business is really bringing in money, and if I'm being lazy or not doing as much as I can, it impacts my life. I have a dog who's very expensive. I either make money and pay the bills right now, or it doesn't happen.

It's not just about the money, though. I also get to speak with so many passionate people every day. My business has been able to film on a Bravo show and has been featured in local news. We signed a lease for our first permanent space in downtown Atlanta early this year, in preparation for the World Cup this past summer.

Now that I've fully committed and we have people who are really invested in what we're doing — the business owners who love teaching and sharing these opportunities — I always think about scalability.

There are a lot of different moving parts right now. I'd really love to focus on brand partnerships and do a big partnership push in 2027.

That being said, who knows what I'd do if another opportunity came up? I don't have to always be there personally with my business.

We have a lot of events happening at the end of 2026, which is giving me anxiety — but I asked for it. It's either that, or we don't grow.

• Marissa Goldstein and her husband traveled to Vietnam for work in 2016 and decided to move there soon after.
• Now, a mother of two sets of twins, Goldstein says her family of six is happily settled in Ho Chi Minh City.
• The city's low costs and kid-friendly culture make family life easier — though international school fees are high.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marissa Goldstein, a 40-year-old entrepreneur from the Boston area who lives in Ho Chi Minh City. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2016, my husband and I flew to Vietnam with our 1-year-old twins and two bags. We told everyone we'd be back in three months.

Ten years later, we have four kids — two sets of twins — and a life in Ho Chi Minh City that I wouldn't trade. We've taken our kids to about 50 countries and spend summers with our families in Boston, then come back to the chaos of a city we love.

Asia had my heart long before Vietnam

I grew up outside Boston. I studied communications at the University of Maryland, and a trip to Thailand during my junior year abroad was my first taste of Asia. I fell in love.

My husband and I met in high school and married after I graduated. I worked in PR and sales, then got my MBA at Babson College. Around 2015, there was an opportunity to help US companies diversify their supply chains away from China, so we started The Timroon Group, a manufacturing and sourcing company focused on Vietnam.

Being home with two babies overwhelmed me. Even though we had an incredible support system, living with my parents in a six-bedroom house in the suburbs. I quickly realized that staying home wasn't for me.

When traveling, though, I felt unstoppable. We headed to Ho Chi Minh City the day after their first birthday.

Vietnam won me over through my kids

I loved it right away, especially how people treat children. We'd bring the twins to dinners and big brunches, and the staff would take them and play. I felt really safe. Within a month, we had friends from all over the world. Three months turned into 18.

When the twins were 18 months old, we took an overnight train to Sapa in northern Vietnam. Hmong women were selling their textiles, and I decided to start my own travel accessories brand, working with women artisans. On that same trip, we decided to have one more child. Soon after, we found out we were having twins again.

In January 2020, we returned to Boston, where I grew Raffi Nova, my textile accessories brand. But by 2022, my husband's business was picking up, and we had the itch to return to Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh City works for a family of 6

We live about 15 minutes from the city center. There are a lot of foreigners living here, several international schools, and everything is within a 10-minute drive.

There are good doctors and hospitals, Michelin Guide-rated street food, French bakeries, and plenty of activities for the kids, from taekwondo to tennis.

The cost of living is much lower, though school and housing add up. Housing in our area ranges from about $1,500 a month for a smaller apartment to around $10,000 for a villa. We're somewhere in between, in a five-bedroom serviced apartment.

We spend about $1,000 a month on groceries, buying fruit and vegetables at the local market, and spending more on meat and imported food. A latte at a cute, bougie café is about $2, so I treat my friends to coffee without thinking twice.

We have a live-out helper who we pay about $900 a month. She cleans, preps groceries, and helps with the kids. Health insurance for our family runs under $10,000 a year.

I get serious sticker shock when I go home in the summer. I take the kids out for bagels, and it's $100 or more.

Schooling is by far our biggest cost. International school fees in the city range from about $8,000 to $30,000 per child per school year. We're at the higher end, but we strongly believe in a good education.

With fees for four kids, we probably spend about the same as we would in the US, where we wouldn't have to pay for school. But there, we wouldn't eat out or travel as much.

Being far away is hard, but travel makes up for it

Both our big families live in the Boston suburbs.

There's also the weather: hot, hotter, and wet. In rainy season, it pours at school pickup every single day, even when you're sure it won't. The upside is that the kids need only one wardrobe all year.

I see Vietnam is our launchpad to the world.

Last spring, we spent a night in the jungle in Phong Nha, home to Vietnam's largest cave. We've been to Thailand about 20 times. Last February, we rented an RV and drove around New Zealand's South Island. On a trip to Sri Lanka, the kids learned to surf, and we stayed at a homestay in the mountains.

Traveling as six is hard. Most hotels don't allow four children in a room, and we can't fit in a regular car. Our best trips have never been at nice resorts. They're homestays, campsites, and RVs.

That's probably why this life suits us. I never wanted to say, "This is the house we'll live in for the next 50 years." Predictability scares me. I thrive in chaos, and with two sets of twins, there's always plenty of it — I wouldn't have it any other way.