This 27-Year Old Started a Side Hustle That Brings In $25,000 a month

With side hustles becoming the new normal, it's hardly a surprise that many are bringing in a considerable amount of income through their second job. Liz Chick started her studio, which she calls RecCreate Collective, which hosts instructors who teach knitting, collaging, painting and sculpting classes of up to 45 people multiple nights per week.

Chick tells CNBC Make It, that this is so far the most lucrative job that she has had."I had never had jobs that allowed me to have any savings at all, let alone a hefty fund to invest into something," she says.

In order to get her business up and running, Chick, 27, took on a "windowless office" job and also carted art supplies up and down her fourth-floor walk-up and thought that she would be paid for the art somewhere down the lane. As a teenager, Chick loved to thrift, she would often buy used clothes and experiment with them.

"I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur," she says, talking about how she decided to pursue Design at the age of 18 hoping to use her knowledge to make something of her own someday. She started by dying fabrics using natural items like avocado pits and onion skins. She later hosted a pop-up shop in her 12-by-14-foot bedroom, selling dyed beeswax wraps to her friends. 

Chick also got lucky after she won $50,000 in a sweepstakes drawing she didn’t even realize she’d entered. She later used the money to rent the studio's physical space which helped her to finally launch the business.  She started by dying fabrics using natural items like avocado pits and onion skins. She later hosted a pop-up shop in her 12-by-14-foot bedroom, selling dyed beeswax wraps to her friends. Soon she was selling dyed patchwork jackets and bags at pop-up flea markets around New York. 

Chick has worked hard and invested a lot of her free time and salary. She talked about how she reached a breaking point in 2022, "I hauled all of my stuff up my fourth-floor walk-up and I was just laughing ridiculously,” she says. "When I walked into my apartment, my roommate was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I [realized] the amount of hours of unpaid labor I had been doing for years," referring to a pop-up event she had just organized. 

Chick soon used the sweepstakes drawing to rent a studio, for which she is currently paying $2,800 per month. Now, her business is bringing in a cool $25,000 in revenue each month, allowing her to draw a salary of $5,500. She uses $9,000 of the revenue to pay rent, supplies, contractors, insurance, and more and keeps the rest of $16,000 as profit which she reinvests in the business. 

"I would never go back to an office job ... I hope to never have to,” says Chick talking about her venture. “It feels amazing to be able to make a living doing my dream job. I think there are so few people who get to say that," she concludes.