This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor’s degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

Bridgette Tena has one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. She says she couldn’t be happier. 

The 51-year-old is a roofer in Santa Fe, New Mexico, part of the less than 10% of women working in construction in the U.S.

Roofers face the second highest rate of fatal work injuries among all occupations, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Roofing is also one of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S., with nearly 15,000 jobs expected to be added each year over the next decade. 

“Working in this field is hard, don’t get me wrong, but it’s beyond rewarding,” Tena tells CNBC Make It. “It’s the coolest job ever. I love what I do.”

Tena started building and repairing roofs as a side hustle four years ago to supplement her real estate broker income and learn more about the construction side of the housing market. 

She launched her own roofing business, B. Barela Construction, in February 2021. 

Last year, B. Barela Construction brought in about $180,000 in revenue, and the business is on track to surpass $200,000 in revenue for 2024, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. 

Her combined income from running B. Barela Construction and working in real estate is more than $70,000 (she declined to share her exact salary). 

Ahead of her fourth year in business, Tena says she hopes to scale the business into a full-time career. 

Here’s how Tena found a job she loves and built a business bringing in six figures— without a bachelor’s degree: 

Tena jokes that she was “destined” to work in construction as her uncle and grandfather were both general contractors. “It’s something that was always tugging at my heart, but it took me years to finally chase that dream and follow that career path,” she says. 

She attended Santa Fe Community College on and off between 1995 and 2002, waffling between entering business, law or real estate, but never finishing her bachelor’s degree. 

After leaving college, Tena worked as a receptionist in a local realtor’s office in Santa Fe and obtained both her realtor and real estate broker licenses. 

Realtors are licensed to help people buy, sell, and rent real estate and must work for a sponsoring broker or brokerage firm, while brokers have additional training and can work independently or hire other real estate agents to work for them.

Tena worked as a broker for more than a decade but didn’t find the career fulfilling on its own; she soon realized that she “belonged outside, not in an office.” 

But the reason she didn’t start working in construction sooner, she says, is because “it’s such a man’s world.” 

“I never saw someone who looked like me working in the field, and as a woman, it was scary and intimidating to get into that kind of work on your own,” Tena adds. 

Tena started apprenticing with a general contractor on construction projects in 2016.

She was inspired to take the leap and obtain her general contractor (construction) license with the state of New Mexico during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 when demand for real estate slowed and she suddenly had more free time. It only took her a few weeks to finish the certification.

In New Mexico, prospective general contractors must pass a trade-specific exam and show they’ve completed at least two years of work experience with a licensed contractor in the state to obtain the certification.

Tena spent most of the lockdown drafting a business and marketing plan, practicing installation and repair techniques on a shed in her backyard and researching names for her roofing business.

She officially launched B. Barela Construction in February 2021, less than a year after obtaining her license. The name pays homage to Tena’s grandfather, Lino Barela, who inspired her to pursue a career in roofing and construction.

Since then, Tena has pursued several specialized licenses to expand her business’ offerings. In 2023, she attended a free two-week GAF Roofing Academy training program in Denver, Colorado which was held exclusively for women.

Through the program, Tena received a roofing certificate that covers shingle installation and roof coating, among other skills. 

The requirements to become a roofer vary state by state in the U.S., but most states will require roofers to have a local license and complete an apprenticeship or on-the-job training. 

The start-up costs to becoming a roofer including training, licensing and equipment can range anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 or more, Tena says, adding that she spent about $20,000 of her personal savings to launch her roofing business. 

That initial investment, however, can pay off, as more experienced roofing contractors earn upwards of $100,000 in the U.S., per ZipRecruiter’s estimates. 

Tena adds that running your own roofing business has an even greater earning potential, as you can set your prices and take on more customers. She says there’s high demand now for roofers due to backlogs brought on during the pandemic and supply chain issues.

It didn’t take Tena long to drum up business, she says, as she’s a Santa Fe local and has a wide network of builders, construction foremen, and other potential customers from working in real estate for so many years. 

Tena says that on a typical weekday, she works from 6 a.m. until 4 p.m., but is also on call during the evenings and weekends for emergency repairs, whether it’s a leaky ceiling or crumbling drywall. 

“We’re always rushing around with our ladders,” Tena says. For Tena, a typical day on the job involves climbing up a slender ladder and working on top of commercial buildings and homes that are 8, sometimes 30 feet high.

Once she’s up there, she and her team might remove old roofs, install new shingles or repair holes. Because she’s up so high, and working with hazardous materials including saws and nail guns, Tena wears a hard hat, thick leather gloves, a safety harness and other protective equipment to minimize injury.

She works with four full-time employees and close to a dozen contractors, many of whom are women — her mother and daughter have often joined her to help on bigger jobs. 

“There was one customer when we showed up with an all-women crew, who looked at us and said, ‘Where are the roofers?’ and I told him, ‘We are’ and he was like, ‘No, the men,’” Tena recalls. “That was brutal, but I told the girls we have to let stuff roll off our back, that creating an inclusive environment for women in construction starts with us.” 

Roofing might not be a popular career choice among young professionals but it’s an “underrated” field that can provide a lot of stability and fulfillment, Tena says. 

“People are always going to need a roof over their heads, so roofers are always going to be in demand,” she adds. “You’re not just working; you’re protecting what’s most important to people — their homes. It’s hard to find that kind of fulfillment in many jobs.”

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Jenny Lei looked at the towering stack of cardboard boxes in her Hoboken, New Jersey, apartment. She’d spent $30,000 on handbags and needed a new strategy to sell them.

An unemployed UX designer, Lei had taken it upon herself to create the perfect work bag. She spent months designing a prototype before ordering a production run. Four weeks later, she’d only sold 20 totes.

“My plan failed spectacularly,” says Lei. “I couldn’t afford to not make it work. [A lot] of my savings were sitting in boxes in my living room.”

Today, Lei is the 28-year-old CEO and founder of Freja, a New York-based company that sells work totes, shoulder purses and travel accessories. The 4-year-old startup brought in more than $9 million in revenue over the last 12 months, including $2 million in profit, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

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Lei is Freja’s only full-time employee, alongside five contract workers. She credits her company’s growth — not easy, in the highly competitive fashion industry — to cultivating loyal customers, drawing them in with minimalistic bag designs and a public commitment to environmental sustainability.

“From the beginning, I thought, ‘Does the world even need another handbag brand?’ Not really, if I’m going to do things the way that everyone else has,” Lei says. “But I thought if I could do it in a way that felt really good to me, and would resonate with a certain group of people … it was worth the try, right?”

Here’s how Lei turned hundreds of unsold bags into a profitable luxury handbag company, despite her lack of fashion experience.

In February 2019, Lei was a soon-to-be-unemployed graduate student at Cornell University preparing for a job interview in New York. She tried pairing three different work bags with her outfit, and none of them worked. One was too small. Another didn’t offer enough interior organization.

It was like “when your apartment is messy and you can’t think straight,” Lei says. “What I wear is a big part of my confidence … It felt like I went in on the wrong foot, when I was already nervous.”

After the interview, Lei sat in Bryant Park and sketched out a structured bag with interior compartments for her laptop and portfolio, and a strap long enough to fit over a winter coat. She dipped into her savings — $300,000, gained from a purse dropshipping side hustle she ran during graduate school — to order a $2,000 prototype from a sample maker in Brooklyn.

The result “looked like a kindergartener’s art project,” says Lei. So when she visited her parents in Guangzhou, China, that summer, she toured factories that specialized in vegan leather. She chose the factory that was the most communicative and transparent about its working conditions, she says.

“As a Chinese person, I wanted Freja to kind of be my way of showing the world this is what ‘Made in China’ can look like,” says Lei.

She ordered an initial run of 300 bags, created a website, started a marketing campaign to collect potential customers’ email addresses and wrote blog posts about Freja’s values and practices. Sales flopped: It took Lei a year to offload her inventory, she says.

Feeling financially pressured, Lei doubled down — ordering a second run of inventory, which featured a second bag design, and investing more into a harder social media advertising push.

“It was really, really slow for the first two years,” says Lei.

In 2022, Lei finally sold enough bags — largely through social media ads — to bring in $1.7 million in annual revenue. She spent that money, along with two loans from Shopify, on a broader array of bag designs, hoping to expand her target audience beyond environmentally conscious working women.

The results were near-immediate. Freja brought in $5.3 million last year, becoming cash-flow positive enough to pay off both Shopify loans. The company is on track to finish 2024 with $12 million in annual revenue this year, says Lei.

Yet within the context of the $22.8 billion global luxury handbag market, Freja barely registers as a competitor. LMVH, which owns designer labels like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine and Loewe, made $16.85 billion in U.S. dollars in net profit last year. Other established brands, like Sandy Liang and Alaia, sell stylistically similar bags as Freja, too.

The steep competition means that merely surviving is a best-case scenario for most niche fashion brands, says Katie Weir, a consumer and luxury industry strategist at Deloitte. Staying relevant over time “is really, really hard, particularly in this space,” she says.

Startups that stick around constantly evolve to keep up with fashion trends and consumer desires, Weir notes. Lei hopes to achieve that by hosting events to build customer loyalty, becoming a small-business mentor to other young women and using a growing array of bag styles to capture a wider audience.

“One thing I kept telling myself was, ‘No one is born a designer,’ but I can become one in a couple of years if I give it a go,” says Lei. “I think now maybe this year I can start calling myself a designer … I think we’ve hit a stride.”

Conversions from EUR to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 EUR to 1.05612 USD on November 19, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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If you’re looking for a career that pays well, doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree and offers strong job security, you might want to consider a job in the skilled trades.

The U.S. is facing “record-high pressure” for blue-collar workers as tradesmen age out of the workforce or retire and fewer young people enter fields like construction, plumbing and transportation, according to recent research from McKinsey & Co. 

Labor shortages, intensified by disruptions to in-person work and material availability during the Covid-19 pandemic, have heightened competition for talent, leading to a more than 20% rise in wages for skilled trade jobs since 2020, McKinsey & Co. reports.

Close to a third (35%) of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. are in the skilled trades, with more than 1.5 million new jobs expected between now and 2032, according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, aviation and energy are not only in high demand but also offer salaries that rival those of many white-collar professions, Nathan Soto, a career expert at Resume Genius, said in an email to CNBC Make It. 

“As people continue to search for higher-paying jobs with low barriers to entry, blue-collar jobs have had a resurgence in interest — especially among Gen Z,” he added.

Though many blue-collar jobs don’t require a four-year degree, most roles require certifications, licensing and, in some cases, extensive on-the-job training.

Here are five in-demand jobs in the skilled trades that pay over $100,000 and don’t require a bachelor’s degree, according to data from Resume Genius and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

These workers install, fix and maintain elevators, escalators, moving walkways, chairlifts and other lifts. 

To become an elevator technician, you’ll need a high school diploma, and to complete an apprenticeship program sponsored by a union, industry association or individual contractor. Most states require a technician to be licensed and finish additional on-the-job training. 

Median annual salary: $102,420

These workers control boilers, turbines, generators and other systems in a plant that generates and distributes electric power. 

Power plant operators typically only need a high school diploma, though the role also requires extensive on-the-job training. You’ll also need a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Median annual salary: $100,890

Air traffic controllers direct aircraft in the ground and air, controlling all ground traffic on runways and taxiways and giving landing and takeoff instructions to pilots. 

To become an air traffic controller, you’ll need at least an associate’s degree from the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative program and to complete training at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) academy, as well as other on-the-job training. 

Median annual salary: $137,380

Nuclear technicians work alongside physicists, engineers and other scientists in nuclear energy production, operating and maintaining nuclear testing equipment. Testing air, water and soil samples for radioactive contamination can be another aspect of the job.

To become a nuclear technician, you’ll need an associate’s degree in nuclear science or nuclear-related technology. Extensive on-the-job training is also required.

Median annual salary: $101,740

First-line supervisors of police and detectives oversee members of a police force, managing schedules, training staff and coordinating investigations. Supervisors often act as liaisons between officers and higher-ranking officials, maintaining order and communication.

To become a supervisor, you’ll need at least a high school diploma and previous experience in the field, like working as a police officer or detective. Some employers might require an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. 

Median annual salary: $101,750

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When Tomas Gorny started a tech business in 2001, he wasn’t thinking about becoming a billionaire someday. He only needed a simple paycheck.

The 49-year-old is currently the CEO and co-founder of Nextiva, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based customer experience management company. Nextiva was most recently valued at $2.7 billion, giving Gorny a net worth of more than $1 billion, a company spokesperson says.

But 23 years ago, Gorny was a struggling entrepreneur who’d lost nearly all his money in the dot-com bubble crash. He was a Polish immigrant who’d only been in the U.S. for five years, and he’d spent all of that time in the tech world. He desperately needed a small source of income.

“I just wanted to make $5,000 a month to survive, pay my mortgage,” says Gorny.

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The tech industry was financially in shambles, but people and businesses were still joining the internet for the first time. Gorny started a business called Ipower, which sold software that helped people build their own websites.

Six years later, he sold Ipower to web hosting company Endurance International for a reported $100 million.

When Gorny started Ipower, he didn’t have much money, he says — but knew how to build a tech company.

In 1996, he helped launch a website-hosting startup called Internet Communications, which sold for $6 million in cash and stock to a company called Interliant two years later, Gorny says. As a minority owner, he got some of that stock, and when Interliant went public in 1999, his shares became worth several million dollars, he adds.

The dot-com crash wiped out all but $6,000 of that wealth, says Gorny. So when he launched Ipower, he prioritized consistent profitability over explosive revenue growth — hoping to build a business that could sustain itself over time, rather than aiming for a splashy acquisition.

“I never looked at it like, ‘I need to make the [millions] back.’ It wasn’t important to me,” Gorny says.

Perhaps ironically, Gorny says the more modest goal helped helped him grow his company’s bottom line far more effectively. Instead of trying to maximize revenue right off the bat, Gorny spent months developing products he believed his potential customers would value long-term.

The few people who signed up during Ipower’s early days gave Gorny a livable income, he notes. Once he released his more developed products, Ipower started adding hundreds of new customers per day, he says.

Gorny continued to build that business for six years, selling it to Endurance International in 2007 as Google and Microsoft rose up as larger competitors. Merging Ipower into one of its rivals gave both businesses a better shot at long-term success — and Gorny’s personal payout was incidental, he says.

The combined company went public in 2013 with a market value of roughly $2 billion.

Gorny started Nextiva the year before he sold Ipower. He says he’s built his current company the same way, and it’s the advice he gives other entrepreneurs, especially those just starting out: Don’t focus on your exit strategy, or think about how you’ll one day cash out of your business for millions.

“When you focus on an exit, you maybe forget about building your business,” Gorny says. “When you focus on building your business, your exit will be significantly better than you ever envisioned.”

Gorny shares that belief with at least one other billionaire entrepreneur: Mark Cuban similarly advises against having an exit strategy in mind when you start a new business, because it suggests you’re not passionate enough about the business itself.

“Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love,” Cuban wrote for Entrepreneur magazine in 2012. “If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.”

Down the road, if you’re lucky enough to sell your company or take it public for a windfall, consider it validation for the more important goal of building something that people find valuable, says Gorny.

“Financial validation for what we do, like when we sell a business, or when you go public or the valuation of the business, does matter to me, a lot,” he says. “Because it’s just a validation that we’ve done something right and different.”

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

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Darien Craig and Brandon Echols have known each other since they were 6 years old in small-town Hayden, Alabama. They attended the same high school and even dropped out of college in tandem, they said on Friday’s episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

During that episode, the pair hit another milestone together: agreeing to an investment offer for their jointly owned business. Craig and Echols co-own Y’all Sweet Tea, which Craig founded in 2021 — after getting fired from his previous job, he wrote on his company’s website.

“The week I got fired, I had $7 to my name,” wrote Craig. “With the last paycheck I received, I used the $300 from that check to purchase the first jars, sugar, and tea that would eventually catapult this idea.”

Y’all sells its tea direct-to-consumer and in roughly 600 grocery store locations, mostly across the southeastern United States, Echols said on “Shark Tank.” It brought in $4 million in revenue, including nearly $800,000 in profit, last year, he added.

Those numbers included a detail that the show’s investor judges found particularly interesting: Y’all added flavored teas to its lineup last year, and sold 10,000 units of its first flavor, “Georgia Peach,” in just 35 minutes, Craig said. The first eight of those minutes were responsible for $100,000 in sales, he noted.

“When you’re dropping that amount in that short period on your own site, that’s rare,” Kevin O’Leary said. Barbara Corcoran chimed in: “Do you know how few entrepreneurs can make that claim?”

“That is beautiful. That is like beauty,” Mark Cuban added.

Craig and Echols asked the investors for $500,000, in exchange for a 5% equity stake in their company. Guest investor Rashaun Williams, a venture capitalist and minority-stake owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, quickly offered them $500,000 for 10%.

“I’ll let you figure out if you want to go to Walmart, if you want to stay direct-to-consumer, or what balance of both,” said Williams. “You don’t need me to tell you how to run this business … I think you guys are a rocket ship.”

Cuban and Corcoran bowed out. Y’all was a better fit for Williams’ investment style, Cuban said: Craig and Echols noted that they hoped to eventually find an exit for their company, and a professional VC investor could help them grow enough to get acquired or go public.

But O’Leary wanted in. He proposed a joint offer with Williams — $500,000 for 20% of Y’all, which the two investors would split down the middle.

Not to be outdone, Lori Greiner added another joint offer with Williams to the table: $500,000 for 15% of Y’all. O’Leary promptly lowered his offer to match.

Craig asked if any of the investors would chip in another $250,000. They declined, with Williams saying Y’all could always raise more money in the future. After quickly deliberating, Craig and Echols accepted Greiner and Williams’ joint offer — prioritizing the combination of Williams’ VC knowledge and Greiner’s retail experience over the stronger financial terms of Williams’ solo proposal.

The quartet officially inked the deal at Greiner and Williams’ proposed terms after the show’s taping, Craig confirmed to CNBC Make It.

“Rashaun is an awesome businessman and Lori has so much experience in retail,” Echols said on the show. “It couldn’t have been a better deal.”

This story has been updated to include Craig’s post-taping confirmation of the investment deal.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 50% off through November 26, 2024.