As a kid, Jack Cowin shoveled snow, delivered newspapers and sold Christmas cards for cash. By the time he reached his 20s, it was burgers instead of cards. Fast forward to today: The 82-year-old is a billionaire, thanks to his fast food empire.

Cowin is the founder and chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, the company that operates Burger King as “Hungry Jack’s” in Australia. He is also the largest shareholder of Domino’s Pizza in Australia, and backs a plant-based meat substitute company called v2food.

Before founding Hungry Jack’s, Cowin opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia in 1969 — his first of many. Then in 2013, he sold off his KFC franchise of 55 stores in a deal worth about $71 million, according to a representative at Competitive Foods Australia.

Today, his business is worth over $3 billion and brings in over $300 million a year, Cowin told CNBC Make It.

Growing up in Canada, Cowin realized early on that he wanted freedom in life. His father was an employee at the Ford Motor Company and was required to travel frequently for work.

“He had a phone call one day, you’re going to Brazil, or you’re going to Mexico, or things like this … When you work for a big corporation, the corporation decides where you’re going to be, [and] what you’re going to do,” Cowin said.

“And as a kid, I wanted to have the freedom to do what I wanted to do. I think I saw that relatively early, because [I saw that] dad’s on the treadmill of here, there and everywhere,” he said. He didn’t want to be at the “whims and beckon call of a corporation.”

So as a child, Cowin spent his time outside of school mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. “I never had to ask for money as a kid,” he said. “I was a sales guy from very early, like 8 or 10 years old.”

By the time college rolled around, Cowin was going from farm to farm selling “trees, shrubs and nursing stock,” he said. He was so successful at it that he was making $8,000 a year while his university professors were making only $5,000 a year, he said.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1964, and went on to get a job selling life insurance he said he was very good at.

“I had a reputation of being someone that could sell,” he said.

By the late 1960s, Cowin had begun to settle down in Canada with his wife and his first child when he one day received a phone call from a couple of high school friends.

His friends had landed a job with the American Kentucky Fried Chicken company and were sent to Australia to do some market research about whether they should expand into the country.

“Since my father had been there [for work], and I was the only guy … that knew where Australia was on a map … they phoned me up and said: ‘You should be down here. You should come and see this.’ So without a moment’s notice, I’m on a plane and I fly to Australia,” Cowin said.

Cowin landed in Australia in February 1969, and spent three weeks there helping his friends conduct research — ultimately finding that there was indeed a market for fast food in Australia.

“At that stage of the game, the restaurant business in Australia was fish and chip shops, Chinese restaurants and fancy white tablecloth restaurants,” he said. Meanwhile, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other fast food restaurants were all rising in popularity in North America.

“So at the end of the three weeks, I pay $1,000 as a deposit on a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise [and] if the American company is going to open a store, then I was going to have a 10 store franchise,” he said.

Six months later, he received a phone call saying that the American KFC company agreed to expand into Australia and Cowin had the opportunity to own his first franchise location. But he didn’t have the funds, so he started raising money.

Imagine this “kid comes into your office and says he wants to borrow $10,000, which is probably about $100,000 today or more … he’s got no experience in the business, no interest on your money … how long before you throw him out of your office for wasting your time?”

“The biggest break I’ve had in my life was … I got on my bike and I got 30 Canadians to lend me $10,000 each, so got $300,000,” he said. “Otherwise I’d still be shoveling snow in Canada. I hadn’t had the finances back then.”

By December 1969, Cowin moved his family to Perth, Australia, where he opened his first KFC franchise. “It was like drilling oil and hitting oil on your first wildcat well, because it was a booming success,” he said.

“Then, you open two more, you get into the hamburger business, you get into the pizza business, you get into the food manufacturing business, and today, that business is a $3 billion business and makes $300 million a year.”

Today, Cowin owns 98% of his company while the other 2% is held by some of his original investors and shareholders, he said. “That original $10,000 is $40 million at book value [today]. So everybody’s got their money back, and those that stayed in have done increasingly well,” he said.

When asked what his secret to sales is, he said, “I think the secret is, whatever you do, do it well … The people that lent me the money really backed me as the investment. I was the investment.”

″And an expression [I have is] when you can’t tell the difference between work and play, you’re in the right place … I’ve never really worked a day in my life because I’ve enjoyed it.”

Correction: This story was updated to make it clear that Jack Cowin opened a KFC store in Australia in 1969.

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In 2019, Yves Benchimol, an engineer at the time, had an idea to help people put down their phones and start moving.

“I [thought] one of the main issues for people like me, and also the younger generation, is the time spent behind [our] screens,” and being sedentary, Benchimol says.

He launched WeWard, an app that gamifies walking and offers a financial incentive to get your daily steps in: “Every smartphone counts your steps now so why not build a product that will help you to improve this number?”

Research shows that for every 2,000 steps you take, risk of heart disease, cancer and premature death decreases by 10%. Aiming for up to 10,000 steps a day is key to health and longevity.

Today, the French company has 20 million active users and has expanded beyond Europe to the U.S., Canada, Japan and more.

“Thanks to Apple Health and Google Fit, we have access to the average number of steps people [walked] before downloading the app. And we are trying to increase this number,” Benchimol says.

“On average people walk 25% more, thanks to Weward.”

WeWard users earn digital points called “wards” by walking, even if their phone is in their pockets while doing it as long as WeWard is connected to their go-to fitness app. This allows users to enjoy a screen-free walk and still rack up points. Wards can be converted into cash, gift cards, coupons and donations to charities.

“On average, people can earn a few hundred bucks per year. But it varies a lot because, of course, it depends on your physical activity first, but also the frequency of your steps,” Benchimol says. Walking 10,000 steps every day will help you earn more wards than walking the same amount of steps every two days.

To date, the company reports that its given out over $20 million in cash to users of the app and $1 million in charitable donations.

“Top users can earn $1,000 per year,” by completing challenges and buying products through the app’s partners, Benchimol says. “For example, we are partnering with Nike. If you buy Nike shoes using the app, you will earn some wards.”

The company realized that “some people are much more motivated by just helping others,” and have recently partnered with Feeding America.

Users can compete with friends and develop a community of walkers in the neighborhood who also track their steps on WeWard. And in an effort to get people even more engaged, the app offers treasure-hunt like challenges. “Pokemon Go is one of our inspirations,” Benchimol says.

Similar to the popular gaming app, WeWard encourages users to walk to specific destinations to collect cards that earn them extra wards.

WeWard positions most cards less than 500 meters away, or approximately 1,640 feet, from where a user lives so that they can collect them in five minutes or less. The team responsible for the app’s functionality also ensure cards are accessible by not putting them in houses or restricted areas.

“We try to put cards where most people like to walk,” he says. “You will find cards in front of museums, monuments [and] parks. In New York, you have a beautiful area in Central Park where you can find them.”

The app’s goal is to get people to walk more. For beginners, this could mean walking a few times a week. Users are challenged to walk every day or to walk further than they typically do to earn more wards.

The challenges offered in the app include walking 5,000 steps a day or walking 100 steps between noon and 2 p.m. — they each help you earn more wards.

The level of difficulty for each challenge depends on the user, Benchimol says. “We are trying to make it not too difficult, but also personalizing [it] to be adapted to your physical activity,” he says.

“We have the very simple vision to make as [many] people as possible walk more.”

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Companies often give workers a few extra days off around the winter holidays, but one retailer is going a step further: On Dec. 15, the roughly 30 staffers at Cakes Body started a full month of PTO until Jan. 15.

Cakes Body, an e-commerce brand that sells nipple covers, was cofounded by twin sisters Taylor Capuano and Casey Sarai, 32. Both left their previous corporate careers in part because their jobs didn’t provide enough flexibility for them after becoming moms.

In 2022, they launched their own business and prioritized flexible schedules and ample PTO: “Not only did we want to create this product that could be helpful for women, but we really wanted to create a better work culture for ourselves and our team,” says Sarai, Cakes Body’s CEO.

Earlier this year, each sister went on maternity leave for three months each with just one week of overlap. Meanwhile, their business grew nearly eight-fold. “We grew from a $10 million-a-year company to a $75 million-a-year company,” says Capuano, the company’s chief creative officer, discussing sales figures that were reviewed by CNBC Make It.

The sisters believe their massive growth period was a direct result of being laser-focused while preparing for their leave. “We were able to move things along much quicker in a shorter period of time because we had this deadline,” Capuano says. “That transformed how we thought about progress and efficiency on our team.”

Ultimately, she says, “time doesn’t necessarily equal progress.”

Cakes Body staffers began preparing for their month off back in August.

Everyone was tasked with defining their short-term goals to get them through Dec. 15, including handling Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the busy holiday shopping season, Capuano says. Employees also de-prioritized things that could be pushed off until mid-January.

Individuals then worked with their managers to come up with a coverage plan for their month off.

The process was a good exercise in identifying inefficiencies and ways to optimize their time, Capuano says. For example, until recently, the company manually scheduled their social media posts. They realized they should instead be using a tool that could automate the process.

As for the quiet period itself, all meetings are canceled. Some employees who normally oversee daily operations may do a weekly check-in and send updates in Slack, but otherwise, “anyone who doesn’t need to be working will not be working,” Capuano says.

“It’s funny — a few of them were trying to schedule meetings over quiet period, and I had to tell them to stop,” Sarai says.

Customers will still be able to order and receive Cakes products — the company uses contract customer service representatives and a third-party fulfillment center.

Capuano and Sarai say it’s important that they, as leaders, communicate why they think the quiet period is important and what they expect will come of it.

For example, the cofounders say they’ve revised their sales forecasts for January and February to be lower than usual. Doing so has two big impacts: Employees won’t burn themselves out leading up to their break, and they won’t feel behind coming back from it.

“I know the feeling of getting ready to go on vacation, and it’s like, ‘Well, I just worked overtime this whole week to prepare for my vacation next week, so it’s kind of a wash,'” Capuano says. “But because we prepared so far in advance, and we’re able to help prioritize what needs to get done through the end of the year, it’s not really been the case.”

Meanwhile, “it wouldn’t really be a helpful month off if everyone was going to feel pressure that we’re going to come back Jan. 15 and we’re already missing our numbers,” she adds.

It’s helpful that everyone is taking the same period off, Sarai adds, so people don’t feel like they’re slacking off while other people cover for them.

Finally, Capuano and Sarai says they have to walk the talk and commit to not working during the break, too.

“If we were like, ‘Oh, let’s meet next week after quiet period starts when there’s time to really dig into this,’ all of the sudden, everyone feels pressure to be making progress during this time,” Capuano says.

Capuano and Sarai are optimistic that in the future they’ll implement not just one, but two month-long quiet periods for their employees.

“To do 12 months of work in 10 months isn’t a crazy thought,” Capuano says. “You just need to plan for it.”

Their No. 1 goal with the experiment is ensuring that employees remain fulfilled and happy with their work, and that they don’t experience increased levels of burnout, Capuano says.

On the business side, they plan to measure success by seeing if the team can still hit their quarterly goals in the new year.

“If we meet or exceed them, this is a huge success,” Capuano says. “If we’re falling short, maybe there’s a little more planning involved.”

Employees say they already have big plans for the time off: A few will work on writing books, another plans to take up pottery, and others will catch up on TV, sleep and home organizing.

“I have no doubt that we’re going to make up for [the break] in the months that follow,” Capuano says, “because everyone is going to be coming back with a clear mind and recharged.”

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More than a third, 36% of Americans have a side hustle outside of their main moneymaking gig, according to a June 2024 Bankrate survey of 2,332 US adults. Gen Zers lead the pack, with nearly half, 48% of them having a side hustle.  

If you’re one of those already earning that extra money and are looking for new sources of revenue — or if you’re new to the game and want to start a side hustle for the first time, 2025 could offer some good opportunities.

Here are four side hustles to consider that experts say will be in demand.

Businesses increasingly find their consumers online via their websites or social media. For those artsy side hustlers who want to lean into their graphic design abilities, consider creating graphic templates for websites and social media and selling them on sites like Canva and Etsy.

For local and small businesses, “whether it’s blogging or Tiktok or Instagram or LinkedIn or YouTube or their website,” says Angelique Rewers, CEO of small business consulting firm BoldHaus, “the amount of graphic templates that are needed given the volume of content that people are creating and pushing out into the world today is insane.” Buying templates that are easy to use makes that process much swifter.

Prices vary depending on the template and number of offerings within a package. One social media template package on Etsy is going for $72. Note that Etsy charges 20 cents per listing uploaded plus a 6.5% transaction fee based on the price of your item.

Similarly, small business owners need help creating the written content on their social media platforms. That’s where AI content creators come in.

They take the business’s content, “whether a video of me presenting at a conference, or a YouTube video that I’ve done, or a media interview that I’ve been quoted in, or blog articles that I’ve written,” says Rewers, “and take all of my existing content and start running it through AI tools like Jasper, Claude, ChatGPT and creating a mountain of new, fresh content” to use across social media accounts, LinkedIn, newsletters, etc.

You don’t have to be a professional wordsmith to do this kind of work, says Rewers, because these tools can help ensure correct grammar and cohesive sentences.

Get familiar with the tools Rewers listed and offer your services on sites like Fiverr, Upwork and LinkedIn. AI content creators on Upwork are charging as much as $200 per hour.

Podcasts are on the rise. As many as 141 million Americans are projected to listen to podcasts in 2025, up from 135.4 million in 2024, according to eMarketer. And those making them need help.

As such, “being a podcast assistant is a huge opportunity,” says Rewers. Podcast assistant can mean finding and booking guests, editing recordings of shows, publicizing using various social media platforms. This role can also be called podcast manager, podcast producer or podcast editor, if they focus on that technical component.

As of the last few years, “most podcasters are starting with video,” says Nicaila Okome, host of the “Side Hustle Pro” podcast. They now post their shows on sites like YouTube to add a visual element. Many need help editing their videos now as well.

Depending on how you’d like to help, post your podcast skills on sites like Fiverr, Upwork, LinkedIn and on relevant Facebook groups for podcast creators. One podcast producer is charging up to $500 per project on Fiverr.

The short-term rental market is expected to grow 11.4% between 2025 and 2030, according to Grand View Research. That includes rentals on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo.

“One thing that’s really going to be big next year is the opportunity for folks who want to help manage those rentals,” says Rewers, “whether they want it to be a remote opportunity, meaning they can do it from anywhere, or they want a side hustle that they can do locally.”

These managers handle booking and communication with guests, for example, or scheduling any maintenance the place needs like cleaners or plumbers.

Try reaching out to people renting out their properties directly and offering your services, or going on local Facebook or Nextdoor groups to spread the word that you’re interested in managing short-term rentals.

Payment varies. “Here in South Florida, we’re seeing folks do it on a percentage basis of what they’re booking,” says Rewers, adding that they’re also seeing neighbors pay “as much as $35 an hour for someone to stop by to check on the plumber.”

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At 82, self-made billionaire Jack Cowin has a number of simple truths about life and business to share.

“I didn’t come from [money] … I’m kind of self-made. I use that terminology and I’m proud of that,” Cowin told CNBC Make It.

He’s made a fortune from selling fast food. In 1969, he bought his first KFC store in Australia, which eventually grew into a 55-store franchise. He then sold it for over $71 million in 2013, according to a company representative.

Cowin is also the founder and chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, the company that operates Burger King as “Hungry Jack’s” in Australia — a chain of more than 400 restaurants today. He’s also the biggest shareholder of Domino’s Pizza in Australia, and backs a plant-based meat substitute company called v2food.

His business is worth over $3 billion and brings in over $300 million a year, Cowin told CNBC Make It.

Before starting his fast food empire, Cowin played football in university and even had a “brief flirtation” with playing professionally. “Business is a team sport,” he said.

“Don’t be a dentist … when you’re not drilling teeth, you’re not making money,” Cowin told CNBC Make It. “If you want to do something [that] is bigger and has more scope, you have to become a team player and … to become a team player, you got to interact with people,” he said.

“Be conscious of the fact that you cannot do it on your own,” said Cowin.

Business isn’t just about satisfying your own needs — it’s also about fulfilling what others need, whether they’re employees, customers, investors or business partners. Being a “people person” and having an innate curiosity and desire to learn has been key to his success, he said.

When asked to give advice to young people who may be feeling lost in life, Cowin said, “The short answer is — if you’re lost, get active with something.”

“I see people that get fired or something goes wrong in their life. They sit on the sidelines and they lose confidence … you got to be in the game to be successful,” he said.

After spending some time reflecting, it’s important not to get stuck in a cycle of moping: “You got to get back into the mainstream of life by doing stuff, interacting with people,” he said. “Have a go, don’t stand around thinking about it.”

Today, Cowin says, he has created about 150,000 jobs globally between his Domino’s Pizza business — which consists of 4,000 stores across 12 countries — and his Hungry Jack’s business.

At 82, he says, he has no plans to exit the business.

“If there was a summary of my life, I’ve looked on it as an adventure, rather than slogging it out day after day,” he said. “It’s been an adventure [of] doing new things, new businesses, new this, new that, and it’s been fun.”

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