Jean Kang, 32, brings in about $20,000 a month with her business.
Courtesy of Jean Kang
Jean Kang never thought she would be an entrepreneur. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she had always envisioned herself working for a big tech company.
“I grew up watching a lot of ‘Shark Tank’ [and] thought it was always fascinating. I never thought that it could be me though,” Kang told CNBC Make It.
Having witnessed the rise of Silicon Valley from her own backyard, she worked hard to land her first tech job. “I felt like I was in a bubble, that’s all I knew [and] I wanted to be part of this cool kids club,” she said.
After graduating from university in 2014, Kang went on to start a decade-long career in technology — but things didn’t go as planned.
Kang’s corporate career eventually led her to starting her own business, which has given her freedom from a 9 to 5 and now brings in about $20,000 a month, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
Starting the business
Kang’s career in technology wasn’t a linear one. From 2014 to 2024, she was fired twice, worked at six different companies and across many functions such as sales, operations and strategy.
Then in 2020, she landed her first program manager role and realized that she had a real knack for it, so she zeroed in on those skills. Two years later, Kang saw that people began reaching out to her with requests for mentorship and questions about her role.
“I noticed a need in the market… I wanted to help people who were aspiring program managers pivot into this career path,” she said.
“Then, I decided to [announce] with one post: ‘Hey, I’m launching a coaching business, if you… want to land a program manager job, I’m open for a session [and] you can book a call with me,” said Kang.
After she made that initial LinkedIn post in October of 2022, Kang started creating career content on the job-focused social media platform and coaching clients online — and thus, her side hustle “Path to PM” was born. By the end of 2023, she says she brought in a total of about $30,000 in revenue and was able to help 10 clients land jobs.
“I was very shocked that I could supplement my take home pay from my tech job, [adding] another $30,000 completely by myself,” said Kang. “That was such a foreign thought that blew my mind.”
From side hustle to main hustle
During this time, Kang was working an additional 15 to 20 hours a week on her business on top of her full-time corporate job.
It wasn’t until the beginning of 2024, that she began to experience burnout. “[I was] doing two jobs full-time because I had a nine to five, and then I had a five to nine — literally just did not have breaks, my vacations were nonexistent,” Kang said. “It was really hard for me to be able to pull the trigger because I have this good paying job. [If] I can do both, why not just do both for as long as I can.”
This is also when she began asking herself: “If I can do this much using just a few hours I have outside of work daily and on my weekends, how much could I bring in [if I doubled down on this]?”
Ultimately, the stars aligned for Kang when at the beginning of 2024, the startup she was working for reportedly offered its employees an opportunity to voluntarily leave the company in exchange for three-months pay.
After examining her finances and talking it over with her husband, Kang decided that this was her chance to bet on herself.
“I didn’t want to wait… to hit a certain revenue target [or] for things to be in the perfect condition for me to do it. I would just rather do it now and figure things out,” she said.
Since quitting her corporate job in February, Kang is on track to replace the $180,000 annual salary that she made from her previous role. Over the span of about eight months, she has brought in about $160,000, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
Today, Kang has expanded her business by finding new methods to monetize such as getting brand deals on her content and receiving royalties from her LinkedIn Learning course. She has built a following of about 100,000 on the platform through her content creation.
She has also scaled her business by shifting from doing mostly one-on-one coaching to running 5-week group programs.
4 tips to build a thriving side hustle
Here are the biggest tips Kang shared:
- Identify a need that you are equipped to help solve.
- Create a minimum viable product (MVP) rooted in what would help fill that need.
- Consistently iterate and scale the product or service so you can trade less time for more money.
- Be disciplined and focus on execution.
Rather than building a product that you want to build, you are more likely to find success by building something that the world needs, says Kang.
In addition to considering the problem space, aspiring entrepreneurs should take a hard look at themselves to figure out what they are uniquely positioned to help solve. It is this combination that can help set someone up for success in starting their business.
After this, you can create a minimum viable product (MVP) of some sort, which for Kang, was one-on-one coaching. It can be something “very simple,” said Kang.
“I ship things out even when it’s not perfect,” she said. “I’m very focused on the execution… I know what I need to do and how to get it done. Not only how to get it done, but I just get it done.”
Kang focused on execution without worrying about perfection. Over time, she has been able to iterate, perfect and scale her business accordingly.
Today, she spends about 35 to 45 hours a week working on her business. “I work the same amount of hours [as I was] in corporate, but this time I actually have my evenings and my weekends free,” she said.
“I feel really energized… and now I have freedom,” said Kang. “I’ve learned a lot and I’m continuing to reinvest in myself, and serve as a walking example of when you do things for you and when you’re intentional about it, things work,” said Kang.
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