This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Six-Figure Side Hustle series, where people with lucrative side hustles break down the routines and habits they’ve used to make money on top of their full-time jobs. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at [email protected].
Some kids play sports and practice instruments after school. 17-year-old Bella Lin builds startups.
Lin started her first side hustle, an athleisure company called TLeggings, in seventh grade by developing a business plan for $23 leggings and contacting a factory in China to make them. It brought in as much as $300,000 in annual revenue, but was never profitable due to the highly competitive apparel market, Lin says.
She shuttered it, and switched to designing new enclosures for her two-pound pets. A longtime guinea pig owner, Lin says typical cages smell bad and don’t offer much roaming space. She worked with a different Chinese factory to design an open-air alternative, and used $2,000 of her savings to launch a side hustle called GuineaLoft in November 2022.
GuineaLoft, which sells on Amazon, brought in more than $410,000 in revenue last year, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The company has a 25% profit margin, and all proceeds get reinvested back into the business, says Lin, a high school senior in Mountain View, California.
Any successful side hustle needs to check two boxes, she says: “[It’ll work] if they have something they’re passionate about, and [they find] a clear gap in the market. I think anybody can do that.”
Here, Lin discusses how to start a side hustle like hers, what she wishes she’d known before launching GuineaLoft and what it’s like to live a double life as a high school student and an entrepreneur.
CNBC Make It: Do you think your side hustle is replicable? How much does it cost to start?
Lin: Yeah, I think so. If you want to create a few units [of a product] to list online, you need to order a few models, look into [search engine optimization] and buy a bit of…
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