Elyse Burns enrolled in law school at Duke University in 2019, taking out student loans to cover $63,000 in tuition and living expenses, she says. A career as a lawyer seemed like a reality, but before he graduated, he knew he couldn’t work as a lawyer.
“I feel like everyone knows that you can make a good living as a lawyer, and you can’t as an artist, and that’s like a belief and a fantasy,” said the 28-year-old.
Back in 2015, Burns began selling hand-painted canvases on Etsy. She opened a bank account and linked it to an Etsy seller’s account on her 18th birthday, she says, and sold two pieces within a week. By 2020, her company, Elyse Breanne Design, was making six figures in sales, bringing in $360,000 that year, she said.
After graduating from law school, she was able to enter her own business, which now sells a variety of products including stickers, coloring books, stationery and home goods. By September 2023, he had paid off all the student debt he took out to get his law degree, without taking the bar.
Burns started Elyse Breanne Design as an Etsy shop when she was 18 years old
Elyse Burns
Although he did not end up pursuing a career in law, Burns has no regrets about going to school, seeing it as part of his and his business’s journey to success.
“I was very lucky, and how I got here included going to law school,” he said. “Sharing being in law school and owning a business on TikTok was part of what led me to start my own business.”
Why Burns chose his art business over a career in law
Burns’ art business remained busy as he began law school. He worked at Duke’s First Amendment clinic during the summer, but couldn’t fight the itch to focus on his art.
“I was doing exactly what I wanted to do legally, and I was still like, ‘man, I want to do this a day to paint,'” he said.
He joined TikTok and started posting his creations on the platform in 2020 and started selling his designs through Faire, a platform that connects brands with sellers. That’s when things started to get tense, he says. Talking about running her art business while studying law seems to resonate with viewers on TikTok.
As he built up a living from his art business, Burns began to rethink his legal career. None of the different routes he considered to pay off the loan – either working in corporate law and commanding a high salary to pay it off quickly or going into public benefit law and pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness in 10 years – seemed appealing to him.
Burns brought up the idea of skipping the legal profession to her husband now. He felt that he would be stressed working in law and that working so hard would “take all the life out” of him, he said. He fully supported his idea of pursuing a career he loved and hoped he could repay the loan. Still, he “felt compelled” to finish the law degree he started, he says.
“Even though I knew this wouldn’t be necessary – a degree wouldn’t do much for me – I think it was something I was convinced I should do,” Burns said.
All of Burns’ loans were federal, meaning they are still in the interest-free period when he graduates in 2022.. That prompted him to pay them off quickly, before they started accumulating interest.
By 2023, he had paid off more than $75,000 in loans, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Burns isn’t sure how much money he ended up borrowing and paying back, but estimates his cost of living at $63,000 a year and about $20,000 in living expenses. He says he had a $25,000 scholarship each year and paid for his third year out of pocket.
Business is still booming
In 2025, Elyse Breanne Design brought in approximately $4.6 million in sales across various online stores and at Mill and Meadow, a stationery store she opened in Durham, North Carolina in 2022. He is the sole owner of Elyse Brianne Design, and has been reinvesting the company’s profits to grow the business, he says. The company has 18 full-time employees.
Burns has had his fair share of challenges as a small business owner, primarily learning to manage a company as his own has changed. A growing business comes with changing and ever-growing needs, “which is a big problem to have,” he says.
The company has outgrown the commercial space it occupied since Burns began leasing the warehouse in 2021, he said. The next big goal, Burns says, is to get more products into big box stores. For now, shoppers can find his designs at Blick Art Materials stores and about 40 Hallmark locations, he says.
There are times when Burns gets frustrated and frustrated and wishes that another company would get his. But if the opportunity arises for him to sell his business, “I don’t think that’s how I really feel, because I’m like, I don’t know what else I can do,” he said.
Taking the bar exam will not be on his agenda.
“What am I really going to do without this? It has my name. I would just like to start another business like this, if I sell,” he said. “So I think the way forward is pretty much the same, and I’ll see what happens.”
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