This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Six-Figure Side Hustle series, where people with lucrative side hustles break down the routines and habits they’ve used to make money on top of their full-time jobs. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.
Emily Odio-Sutton remembers the exact moment she made her side hustle’s first sale.
She was in the lobby of a gymnasium at a kid’s birthday party near her home in Melbourne, Florida. One of her daughters had just taken a bite of Publix birthday cake, when her phone pinged: She’d sold a $22 T-shirt with a speech pathology-themed design on e-commerce marketplace Etsy.
“I can vividly see the cake, the balloons and remember thinking, ‘This can work,'” Odio-Sutton, 36, tells CNBC Make It.
Odio-Sutton started looking for a side hustle in 2022, after realizing her 9-to-5 job as an internal operations manager at a teachers’ book publishing company would prevent …