In 2017, Leena Pettigrew was gifted her first houseplant — a golden Pothos, notoriously easy to care for — and killed it.

Five years later, she tried again. She and her husband Marquise were redecorating their home in Houston, and they needed to fill its empty corners, she says. She drove to Lowes and bought a couple of succulents.

The hobby blossomed into an obsession, and then a side hustle: After her home became “overrun” with 8-feet-tall Monsteras, she looked for ways to sell her extra houseplants online. She found home décor marketplace website Palmstreet, and started auctioning off her plants on livestreams there last June, she says.

From July 2023 to July 2024, Pettigrew brought in nearly $148,600 in revenue, or an average of $12,380 per month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She stores up to 1,000 plants at a time in her garage, she says.

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Pettigrew, 44, works about 20 hours per week sourcing, selling and shipping the plants — in addition to her full-time I.T. job, where she makes roughly $90,000 a year, she says. She also is a paid consultant for Palmstreet, where she helps train new sellers.

The side hustle is profitable enough to replace Marquise’s former full-time income, they say. The couple now runs the Palmstreet side hustle together, along with five contract employees, from their garage-turned-greenhouse.

Here’s how Pettigrew built and maintains her lucrative side hustle:

To develop her green thumb, Pettigrew spent a lot of time on YouTube, she says: She and her husband would lay in bed on their phones, watching plant-care and bass-fishing videos, respectively, before going to sleep.

Selling her houseplants proved more of an administrative process, she says. As she unloaded her extras, finding local buyers on Facebook, she realized she enjoyed the interactions. But creating an actual business — sourcing and buying inventory, keeping organized track of each customer sale — took time and effort.

“I spent hours and hours tracking every purchase and expense in spreadsheets,” says Pettigrew.

At PlantCon Houston, a fair for houseplant enthusiasts, she met another seller who convinced her to try Palmstreet, which was called PlantStory at the time. The platform, which promised to take over much of Pettigrew’s administrative work, offered two options: a traditional online store and a livestreamed auction system, where she could sell plants on camera in real time.

Pettigrew listed a couple plants on her online store, but taking photos and writing descriptions for each one took time. She tried the livestream feature, and her on-camera presence felt awkward and stiff — until Marquise, who was arranging plants next to Pettigrew, started making jokes.

He made Pettigrew laugh, which made her appear more at home to the livestream’s 55 viewers, the couple says. That auction lasted about four hours, and sold 53 plants, according to a Palmstreet spokesperson.

Two months and several successful livestreams later, the couple sat down to develop a more comprehensive business plan, says Pettigrew.

Today, Pettigrew sells roughly 100 houseplants per livestream. With an established audience and reputation, she can sell larger, more expensive plants, she says: starting at $30, rather than her old starting price of $5. Her Monsteras go for upwards of $115 each.

The extra income allowed Marquise, who now occasionally hosts his own livestreams, to mostly step away from his full-time job: running an auto repair shop co-owned by the couple. He still works about six hours per week there, largely for friends and family who “coax” him to take their appointments, says Pettigrew.

Running the auto shop full-time was stressful, Marquise says. Employees were dependent on the couple for their livelihood, and customers were often unhappy — concerned about their car, the bill or when they could get back to work.

In contrast, managing contract workers for Pettigrew’s side hustle — she started hiring people this past spring — is a less stressful experience, she says. The workers only rely on them for part-time work, so the business’ success doesn’t feel life-and-death. The job is less labor intensive, and the customers are largely easier to work with, says Pettigrew.

Together, the couple has five streams of income: Pettigrew’s I.T. job, Palmstreet selling and consulting, the auto shop, and a virtual mechanic gig Marquise picked up with his spare time.

The money helps keep the auto shop open. It’s also recently funded a couple weekend trips around Texas to preserve their sanity, they say: When you both work from home, with your side hustle in your garage, it can be hard to unplug.

If the side hustle ever outpaces her full-time salary, Pettigrew wants to sell the auto shop, move to Florida, open her own greenhouse and hire enough staff for her and Marquise to only need part-time work. It could happen within the next year or two, she says.

They’d spend their remaining time on other passions, like volunteer preaching work, adds Pettigrew.

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Pettigrew says her reputation on Palmstreet helps her sell more larger, expensive plants.

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During the course of a long-term relationship, priorities shift and sometimes your partner takes a back seat to health, family, or work stressors. Sometimes they are in that back seat for a very long time.

If you’ve be an absent partner and want to reignite the intimacy you and your significant other once had, it can feel awkward broaching that desire — and understandably so, says renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel.

The author and podcast host recently released “Esther Perel’s Desire Bundle,” a duo of online courses that teach you how to reignite a romantic flame.

But the only way to improve the situation is to address it.

“It starts with a conversation, verbally or non verbally,” she says. “You reach out with words, or you reach out with your eyes or with your hands, but you have to take the initiative.”

Here are three steps to help you start owning your mistakes and rekindling your partnership.

To start the conversation, Perel offers the following script:

“Yes, I’ve been gone for a long time and I’m reappearing and I take full responsibility for my behavior.”

Maybe it’s that you were depressed or attending to a dying family member. Acknowledge that regardless of how consuming the reason was, you understand the experience for your partner has been less than ideal.

You can say something along the lines of:

“I checked out for a long time. I was [insert reason here] and it took me completely out of the equation. And now I’m back, and I know that I have neglected you and us.”

After resentment builds, one apology often isn’t enough. Perel says a good rule-of-thumb is to take responsibility three times.

“If your taking responsibility and ownership is not received, the burden of forgiveness passes over to the other person,” she says.

After the third apology if your partner still will not accept your contrition, it is up to them to figure out why and how they want to proceed.

If they do agree to work on reinvigorating the relationship, start making some plans.

“If you do things you enjoy that are familiar and comfortable, then you will often reinforce your friendship,” Perel says. “But if you want to bring the lovers into the center, then you need to do things that are more new, with more risk, with more uncertainty.”

If watching a movie every Friday night is part of your routine, perhaps opt to see a live show instead. Maybe your Saturday mornings are dedicated to household chores. Let the dishes sit for a few hours and take a bike ride at the park or brunch at a new restaurant.

Introducing, or reintroducing, some variation into your lives can help reignite the spark.

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Few Gen Z adults are saving for retirement.

Just in 1 in 5 members of Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are contributing to a retirement account, according to a recent Bank of America survey.

That hesitancy to invest might be driven by fear, as “a lot of people feel very financially vulnerable,” Kamila Elliott, a certified financial planner and co-founder and CEO of Collective Wealth Partners, previously told CNBC Make It.

“It’s really necessary to be participating in the market to be able to achieve your investment or asset goals,” Elliot said. “That’s one thing we talk about with young people: You have to think long term.”

But that kind of thinking might be hard to do if your career is just starting or you don’t have a robust financial education, says Winnie Sun, co-founder of Sun Group Wealth Partners.

“They probably don’t have as much income just yet, and they still have a lot of expenses,” Sun says. On top of that, Gen Zers likely “aren’t as familiar with the best ways to save. So when you don’t know the best plan of action, you tend not to do it right.”

But it’s never too early to begin investing. Here’s what Sun recommends for young adults just getting started.

For young professionals looking to plan for long-term goals like retirement, a Roth account is a smart option, Sun says.

You contribute post-tax dollars to Roth 401(k)s and Roth individual retirement accounts, which means you don’t owe any additional taxes when you withdraw the money in retirement. A traditional IRA or 401(k), on the other hand, is funded with pre-tax dollars, so you don’t owe any taxes the year you contribute, but do have to pay when you make withdrawals.

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A Roth account is generally considered a good option for anyone who expects to be in a higher tax bracket in retirement than they are currently, such as a young person who is still early in their career.

If your company offers a Roth 401(k), be sure to take advantage of any matching contributions offered by your employer, which experts often refer to as “free money.”

If your company doesn’t offer a Roth 401(k), consider a Roth IRA instead. While it does come with an income limit of $161,000 for single people in 2024, it’s perfect for young professionals because most people starting their careers are earning well below that, giving them plenty of time to build up those savings, Sun says.

Additionally, your Roth IRA can double as short-term and long-term savings accounts, Sun adds. You’re able to withdraw any contribution you’ve deposited without penalty, which might come in handy in an emergency. However, you cannot withdraw your earnings without penalty before age 59½.

“When you have a Roth, you tend to set it and forget it, and you should treat it as money that you’re just not going to touch for a really long time,” Sun says. “But in case you do have an emergency, know that a big portion of that money you can take out just as easily as you could in a savings account.”

“The Roth IRA is definitely the golden egg of your financial picture.”

Once you’ve set up a Roth IRA, it’s time to fund it. In 2024, you can contribute up to $7,000 if you’re under 50 and up to $8,000 if you’re 50 and older.

And make sure you remember to actually invest the money.

But don’t just choose the investments your colleagues choose, Sun says. Seek out a financial advisor or online resources to help you make the most informed choices for yourself and your future.

Sun compares this process to eating in a college dining hall for the first time.

“You have unlimited soda, unlimited nachos and all this stuff,” she says. “Imagine if you got a chance to sit with a nutritionist for 30 minutes before you walked into that dorm. You would probably make much better decisions on your health for the next few years in college. The same thing would be like meeting with a financial advisor.”

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The next time you catch yourself nodding along to something you disagree with, stop and calmly enter the argument instead.

That’s advice from Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Learning how to effectively disagree — without simply saying “no” — can strengthen your relationships and make you more persuasive, Grant recently told the “What Now? with Trevor Noah” podcast.

“So often, people are told, ‘Just compromise. Pick your battles in relationships,’ that they end up treating them as fragile,” said Grant, in an episode that published on August 15. Then, “we never build the calluses for the bigger [conversations].”

That doesn’t mean you should name call or strong-arm your way into getting other people to seeing your point of view. Effective disagreements don’t need to cause lasting conflict: Calmly assert your point of view, genuinely listen to the other side and engage in a give-and-take conversation, Grant wrote in his 2021 book “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.”

“Although productive disagreement is a critical life skill, it’s one that many of us never fully develop,” Grant wrote. “Being able to have a good fight doesn’t just make us more civil, it also develops our creative muscles.”

Learning how to disagree can improve or create new ideas and set you apart as an original thinker, he added. Plus, effective leaders are often authentic and good at having difficult conversations constructively, research shows — helping you maintain a reputation as an agreeable person who’s liked by co-workers and job recruiters, without becoming a pushover.

Here are Grant’s top three ways to get better at disagreeing:

Disagreements fall into two categories, Grant said: task and relationship conflicts. A task conflict focuses on a specific issue: What’s the quickest way to increase our company’s revenue? In HBO’s “The Sopranos,” was Tony Soprano good, evil or morally ambiguous?

A relationship problem often assigns an identity to a person: If you think Tony is bad, you’re ignorant. If you don’t like my solution to increase sales, you’re hard-headed. Those assumptions can keep us from moving forward and affect productivity, Grant wrote.

If you can defend your argument — while being open to other perspectives, and focusing on the task-specific problem instead of the other person — you might be able to brainstorm additional solutions together, Grant said.

“When a clash gets personal and emotional, we become self-righteous preachers of our own views,” Grant wrote. “Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought.”

If a conflict feels like it’s starting to get personal, ask the other person if they want to debate.

Saying you’re going to debate, rather than disagree, signals to the other person you’re willing to hear their ideas, Grant wrote: “[It] sends a message that you want to think like a scientist, not a preacher or a prosecutor — and encourages the other person to think that way, too.”

You don’t have to change someone’s mind, or vice versa, for a conversation to be effective. Hearing someone out is more productive than cutting the conversation off at the first sign of disagreement, Grant wrote.

Debates can also help you find common ground with the other person, without necessarily compromising your viewpoints, he added.

“A good debate is not a war [or] even a tug-of-war … it’s more like a dance,” he wrote. “If you try too hard to lead, your partner will resist. If you can adapt your moves to hers, and get her to do the same, you’re more likely to end up in rhythm.”

If you’re confident the other person has something to gain from your argument, treat them as an equal. Skilled negotiators — the ones who are most effective at changing other people’s minds — are better at finding common ground and ask more questions than average negotiators, Grant wrote.

Good arguments often have just a few, strong points rather than a long list of relevant points, studies show. It’s called the dilution effect: weaker claims water down well-constructed arguments.

Disagreements don’t always lead to concessions or compromises. Often, you simply learn more about the other person, or the problem, and move forward, wrote Grant.

“Convincing other people to think again isn’t just about making a good argument — it’s about establishing that we have the right motives to do so,” he wrote.

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One of the biggest challenges for any leader is figuring out how to hold people accountable for their mistakes without creating bad blood. In those situations, playing the blame game is always a losing strategy, according to leadership expert and bestselling author Michael Timms.

The secret to calling out poor performance while maintaining a positive relationship with employees is to own up to your own mistakes first so you can inspire others to do the same, Timms said in a TED Talk in January. It’s a strategy called “modeling accountability.”

Timms, the founder of management consulting firm Avail Leadership, noted that he and other leaders often fall into the same trap: “blaming other people for a problem without considering my part in it.”

″[This is] something I teach management teams: You can’t inspire accountability in others until you model it yourself,” he said.

He provided an example from a construction company he’d previously advised, where team meetings often devolved into a series of accusations, as blame got spread around without any viable solutions being presented. This typically resulted in distrust among co-workers while mistakes kept being repeated.

Taking Timms’ advice, the general manager started their next meeting by taking personal responsibility for his own contributions to problems, which inspired other workers to chime in and admit their own mistakes.

“The mood in that meeting changed instantly,” Timms said. “Before others will allow us to hold them accountable, they must first see us hold ourselves accountable.”

Timms shared an example from his own family. His three daughters weren’t ready to leave the house in time to attend an important event, despite Timms and his wife “nagging [them] long before it was time to leave,” he said. Timms was “starting to lose it.”

Then he paused and, rather than chastising his kids, he realized he should take accountability for his own contributions to the problem and come up with some solutions.

“I put big clocks everywhere and posted the schedule in a common area,” he said. “You know what? It actually worked. Now we’re not perfect at getting out the door in time, but it’s much better than it was.”

Timms recommends adopting three simple but “powerful” habits to help improve other people’s performance without turning them against you:

“Habit one: Don’t blame. Habit two: Look in the mirror. Habit three: Engineer the solution,” he said.

Putting these habits into effect “has an almost magical effect on other people’s behavior,” according to Timms. “You get better results. But this isn’t just for CEOs and managers. We’re all trying to help others be better, right? As a parent, a coworker or a volunteer.”

It’s an important lesson for leaders who want to inspire better performance from employees without creating lasting damage to morale, Timms said. When leaders focus too much on doling out blame, it “kills accountability,” and create a toxic atmosphere where accusations fly back and forth while the root issues often get overlooked.

“In cultures of blame, people hide problems or point their finger at someone else,” he said. “No one is going to take accountability if they think they’re going to be blamed for doing so. Blame destroys teamwork, problem solving, learning and initiative.”

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