29-year-old is scaling back her six-figure career to run a local bookstore with her husband: It's an 'intrinsic' part of the community

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

Paola Merrill never meant to be an influencer.

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

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

Though Merrill was thrilled she could make a living as an artist, the gig was not without its challenges. “I started struggling a lot with panic attacks and just this feeling of deep anxiety every time I was trying to get a video completed or meet deadlines,” she says.