Four years ago, I was struggling and wanted to make a change in my life. 

I was dealing with postpartum depression after the birth of my second child and felt unfulfilled by my 9-to-5, a higher education administration job. I was also going to school part-time to earn my master’s degree in Positive Organizational Psychology. 

I decided to start an Etsy store, selling digital products like business templates and party games. It was not an overnight success, and it’s true that being a parent meant that I had additional demands on my time and schedule — especially with two kids under the age of four. 

Today, at 36, I have a thriving living room side hustle that regularly brings in $10,000 a month or more in passive income. Here is how I built it:

About a year into trying to get the business aloft, I was exhausted and frustrated. 

I was making the products I wanted to make, but I wasn’t getting very far creating in a vacuum. I spent months posting to social media, writing blog posts, jumping from product to product, brainstorming course ideas — everything was falling short. 

When I dug into my customer stats, I was surprised to find that while the revenue was small, a series of budgeting templates I created sold consistently. 

In a moment of clarity, I remembered that Peter Drucker, the management expert, once said, “Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” With my limited time, I knew I couldn’t afford to spend time on actions that wouldn’t get results. 

So I decided to stop everything that wasn’t generating revenue (like trying and failing to go viral on Instagram) and focused solely on doing what I empirically knew would make the Etsy store better.

When I started selling digital products on Etsy, I made budget planners because I was passionate about budgeting, and they were easy to create. 

However, I realized that they didn’t sell that well, because there was a lot of competition and not much demand. Over time, I learned the importance of following trends and finding product ideas with low competition and high demand. 

Today, I’m a big fan of using tools like Pinterest trends, Google trends and eRank. I’ve found the some of the best low-competition, high-demand products are niche products related to specific interests or professions. 

For example, digital planners get a lot of search but have a lot of competition, whereas ADHD planners get a good amount of search volume with much less competition. Once I understood this, my results and revenue began to steadily improve. 

I took a course about selling digital products on Etsy back in 2019 that jump-started everything. 

Thanks to the class, and studying people who were running successful stores, I realized the importance of market research and testing — before putting all my money and time into something that wasn’t going to resonate. 

Another big lesson I learned was the importance of beautiful listing images. When I first started I would put a lot of energy in my product and then I would be exhausted, so I would rush the listing images. The product is important, yes, but how you sell it matters. The listing images and the first impression buyers matter more than you may realize. 

Most importantly, as I implemented these changes, I monitored my progress and took consistent action every day. 

I would try to work six to eight hours a day developing and listing products. I would eliminate distractions and get into the zone — but I would stay flexible depending on the needs of the day. If I was holding my daughter, I would focus on learning by watching videos. When she slept and my hands were free, I focused on creating.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by your responsibilities and unsure if you can pull off a side hustle, remember this: small, consistent actions lead to big results. 

In order to make the business happen, I quickly realized that I had to get comfortable asking for, and even paying for, help. 

We were able to hire a housekeeper, and my husband took care of chores like cooking meals, so all my focus could be on building the business. 

After my digital product class ended, I stayed active in our Facebook group. I posted almost every day and remained engaged in the community online. 

I stopped worrying about being annoying or asking too many questions. I just leveraged the resources I had available to me, to the best of my ability.  

My daughter was born in May of 2020. Looking back, launching the business during my maternity leave, during the height of the pandemic, was a way to feel like myself during an uncertain time. 

During my leave, I spent any free moment that I wasn’t feeding her or taking care of my family, I focused on building my business. When I went back to work, nights and weekends belonged to my side hustle. 

I know that if I had to do it all again the same way, I would. Those few months of sacrifice have continued to pay dividends, and now, I’m able to spend as much time with my children as I want. 

There’s a model in positive psychology called the PERMA model for well-being. You need all five components — positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment — to flourish. 

Working on my side hustle helped me feel engaged, build new relationships, have meaning, and feel accomplished. The positive emotion comes from seeing my labor pay off.

Reflecting now on how I built my business, I realize it wasn’t about being superhuman or having endless energy — it was about being strategic, focusing on what really mattered and not being afraid to ask for help. Now I have the freedom and flexibility I once dreamed of, all while doing something I love. 

Rachel Jimenez is an entrepreneur, professor and mom of two, with a passion for helping others achieve their personal, professional and passive income goals. She runs an Etsy store as well as a blog, Money Hacking Mama, where she shares financial wisdom and practical advice for women navigating their careers, businesses and life.

Ready to boost your income and career? Don’t miss our special Black Friday offer: 55% off all Smarter by CNBC Make It online courses. Learn how to earn passive income online, master your money, ace your job interview and salary negotiations, and become an effective communicator. Use coupon code THANKS24 to get the best deal of the season—offer valid 11/25/24 through 12/2/24.

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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When you’re doing a job interview, whether virtual or in person, you’ll want to follow the appropriate etiquette.

“You want to make sure that you’re making good eye contact,” says Emily Levine, executive vice president at recruitment firm Career Group Companies, “that you’re reading the room in terms of when it’s appropriate to speak, when it’s appropriate and time to ask questions.”

Levine has interviewed “thousands and thousands of people” in her career, she says, often for A-list celebrities looking for personal assistants or chiefs of staff.

Here are Levine’s best tips for avoiding her top red flags in a job interview.

To begin with, you’ll want to make sure you arrive at an appropriate time, especially if you’re there in person.

Arrive too late, and you risk missing part of your interview, wasting your interviewers’ time and making a bad impression. But “if you show up too early, it’s also too eager and might make the interviewer feel rushed,” says Levine. Ten minutes early is the “perfect” time to walk into your interviewer’s office.

“I recommend making sure that you are parked 15 to 20 minutes early in the building” as a precaution, says Levine. That will ensure you have enough time to find the suite or office number but that you’re not there long before the interview starts.

Presentation is also key.

If you’re online or in person, “don’t chew gum, don’t have your sunglasses on your head” during the interview, says Levine. These are too casual and unprofessional.

If you’re in person only, make sure you don’t come in “smelling like cigarette smoke or wearing too much perfume,” she says. A lot of people are sensitive to smell and you want to make sure it’s not uncomfortable for them to be in the same room.

You want to leave “an impression based on your experience, not the way that you’re dressed or you smell,” she says.

Finally, regardless of your professional past, be strategic about how you talk about it.  

Avoid bad-mouthing previous employers, for example, or “divulging too much information that’s proprietary or confidential,” says Levine. Especially in her line of work, some of her clients make their employees sign non-disclosure agreements. When candidates tell her they’ve signed an NDA but still proceed to divulge confidential information about a previous employer, it’s a red flag.

Regardless of how private your employer was, spilling secrets gives the impression that if your interviewer hired you and shared proprietary information, in the future, you “would most likely do the same” with them, says Levine.

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Jessica Jackson always dreamed of working outdoors — now, she spends most of her days 300 feet in the air, atop wind turbines. 

Jackson, 37, is a wind turbine service technician at Vestas, a wind turbine manufacturer, in Bee County, Texas, and earns $73,000 per year. 

Her job requires technical expertise in hydraulics, electrical systems, and mechanical repairs — plus the stamina to haul 50 pounds of gear up narrow ladders in all kinds of weather.

Climbing the turbine tower “isn’t as scary as you’d think,” she tells CNBC Make It. The tallest turbine on the wind farm Jackson works on is about 350 feet above the ground. It takes her less than 10 minutes to get to the top.

“Once you’re up there, you get to see the best views: You’re watching birds fly, eagles, hawks,” she says. “You get to see planes fly by. You get to see as far as you can see. It’s beautiful.”

It isn’t a career for the faint of heart. Wind turbine technicians face one of the highest rates of work-related injuries, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Yet it’s also the fastest-growing job in the U.S., with employment in the sector expected to almost double over the next decade.

“Working in this field is hard, but it’s rewarding,” says Jackson. 

Despite the high demand for wind turbine service technicians, the profession remains “underrated and overlooked,” she adds, offering untapped potential for job-seekers who crave adventure and a competitive salary.

It’s “pretty standard” for employers not to require a bachelor’s degree for technician-level positions, according to Vanessa Benedetti, Vestas’ senior director of training operations and workforce development.

“What’s more important is that you have a willingness to learn, love to tinker and can get your hands dirty,” she adds. 

While you don’t need a bachelor’s degree to become a wind turbine service technician, some jobs might require you to complete a 2-year technical program or apprenticeship. Others, like Blattner Energy and Vestas, will provide on-the-job training for new hires.

Vestas’ training covers best practices for the turbine’s electrical equipment, technical procedures like bolt torque and tensioning, as well as first aid and safety protocols.

Before becoming a wind technician, Jackson, who has four children, spent a decade as a stay-at-home mom.

After she and her husband separated in 2019, Jackson decided to return to the workforce but was worried her opportunities would be limited without a bachelor’s degree.

Her ex-husband recommended her for a job at Blattner Energy, a renewable energy contractor in northern Texas, installing tower wiring. That job introduced Jackson to Vestas, where she started working in February 2020.

Jackson enrolled in college online part-time while working as a wind tech and finished her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from the University of Arizona in 2022.

Her long-term goal is to become a lead technician at Vestas, a role that pays about $100,000 a year.

The median annual salary for wind turbine service technicians is $61,770; however, many earn over $90,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It’s one of those rare fields where you feel like you are your own boss,” says Jackson. “You get to decide how quickly you move up the career ladder and how much you earn.” 

Jackson gets to work at 7 a.m. and ends her shift by 5:30 p.m. She works five days a week. 

The hardest part of her job is the climb. Jackson has to scale a narrow, metal ladder inside the turbine and pull herself through a hatch at the top to access the turbine’s nacelle, which sits atop the tower and contains the machine’s main parts. It’s a vertical climb up nearly 30 stories.

“Cutting any corners with safety could be the reason why I don’t go home that day,” says Jackson, who wears gloves, glasses, a helmet, harness and other protective equipment on the job. “Once you’re up there, you’re in your office and ready to work. Everything else is easier.”

The job might be physically demanding, but Jackson says spending so much time outside on the farm — and climbing the towers — has helped her feel “stronger and healthier.”

Benedetti has seen hiring for technicians in the U.S. “ebb and flow” over the past decade depending on demand, production tax credits and supply chain issues. 

Right now, “we’re seeing a huge investment in wind energy technologies,” she says. Global offshore wind investment hit an all-time high in 2023, reaching a record $76.7 billion, according to BloombergNEF’s Renewable Energy Investment Tracker.

At Vestas, the average contract for a technician is about 13 years. “It’s a career that has longevity and gives people the opportunity to learn and grow within their careers, and also to stay and feel settled within their community, which is really wonderful,” Benedetti adds.

At least 2,100 technicians are expected to be hired every year over the next decade, per the Labor Department’s latest estimates, an increase driven by both new projects and the need to maintain existing turbines.

Jackson plans to work as a technician until she retires in her 70s, if not sooner.

As she climbs the career ladder — both literally and figuratively — Jackson hopes to inspire others, particularly women and those without college degrees, to consider becoming wind techs.

“My best advice would be to go for it,” she says. “I never imagined myself in this field, but I’m extremely grateful for my job and I love what I do. … You’ll never know unless you try.”

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Some bosses like to stick their nose into everything their employees are working on. Fawn Weaver isn’t one of them, she says.

Weaver, a 48-year-old self-made millionaire, founded Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey in 2016. Her Shelbyville, Tennessee-based company became the fastest-growing American whiskey brand in history, achieving a $1.1 billion valuation in May, according to Forbes and the International Wine and Spirits Record.

That growth didn’t come from micromanaging, Weaver told LinkedIn’s “This Is Working” video series last week.

“I have two things that everyone in the company knows,” said Weaver. “One is called HBU: highest and best use of time. So if it is not my highest and best use of time, it usually will not bubble up to me.

“The second [policy] is: If someone else can do it, then someone else should do it.”

It makes more sense for Weaver to occupy herself with high-level business duties than check over employees’ work multiple times per day or dictate how people should complete their tasks.

“Micromanaging does not work,” Weaver said. “I have built this entire company on ‘intrapreneurs.’ Everyone owns their jobs. They own their descriptions fully, and I don’t bother that. I hire the best and I get out of their way.”

Weaver’s mindset echoes that of billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Earlier this year, Cuban wrote that while new employees may require some hand-holding to understand company flow and culture, afterward, you should let them do their jobs. If you’re micromanaging, something’s wrong, he added.

“Micromanage early. Trust the process or fix what’s broken if you always have to micromanage,” Cuban wrote in March, on social media platform X.

Seventy-three percent of workers consider micromanagement to be the biggest workplace red flag, saying it contributes to negative and anxious feelings, according to an August 2023 survey from job platform Monster. Forty-six percent said they’d leave their job because of it.

If you’re unsure of how to handle your micromanaging boss, try over-communicating. Anticipate what concerns or questions they may have and answer them before they get the chance to ask, according to bestselling author and New York University professor Suzy Welch.

“Swamp them with evidence of your competence and character,” she said in 2019. “Tell them what you’re doing all the time. Eliminate every possible surprise. And most important of all, don’t screw up.”

For Weaver, running a company is already like “slaying dragons,” and worrying about other people’s duties would just add stress. Being a good boss means putting the best, most-qualified talent in place to handle the rest, she said.

“What comes to me are only the things that no one else can do,” said Weaver.

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