How a 20-year-old college dropout made $3 million in 6 months

Inayah McMillan dropped out of college to pursue entrepreneurship (Image credit: @inayahmcmillan/Instagram)

A 21-year-old from Missouri, US, claims she made $3 million in just six months after dropping out of college. In a YouTube video shared this January, Inayah McMillan explained how Airbnb helped her earn a fortune.

McMillan said that while in college, she worked as a nanny to make enough money to survive. At the same time, she was disillusioned with college, feeling that her coursework was not teaching her anything of substance. When she got the opportunity to nanny for a “very high-profile family,” McMillan realised she wanted to learn from the billionaire who had the kind of lifestyle she wanted.

She decided to drop out of college and began to explore various avenues like eCommerce, drop shipping, and stock trading. However, she first tasted success with Airbnb.

“I think there's a major misconception that you must have the capacity to buy property in order to become an Airbnb host: While you should definitely have solid savings (I recommend at least $8,000 to $15,000) or a good credit score, you don't have to own any properties,” McMillan told Business Insider in an interview.

After a steep learning curve, she began to make money off of Airbnb. “Everyone started seeing this 20-year-old girl is making five figures a month, making $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month from Airbnb,” she said in her video.

Inayah McMillan dropped out of college in May 2021 and claims to have made her first million by October while working with her partner, Bryson. “June of 2022, I made $100,000, that was my first six-figure month,” she said in her video titled ‘How I Made $3 Million In 6 Months as a 20 Year Old Female Entrepreneur.’

In time, the Missouri woman was able to scale her business and even hired her family members for another business: a coaching to help others make money.

“We made up to $60,000 in a month from Airbnb, and then we started getting students who were also getting results. So we started an entire coaching program. I was actually able to hire a lot of my family to work with me to keep scaling this coaching business,” she said.