Entrepreneur Media

Susana Chen grew up in NYC's Chinatown helping her mother sell souvenirs — and that experience shaped everything. After Parsons School of Design, she identified a gap no one had filled: artists were designing nail art but getting no credit and no cut. She and co-founder Jess Wu built Never Have I Ever to solve exactly that — a beauty brand anchored by a royalty model that pays 100+ artists 5% on every licensed design. They started at craft fairs pulling $3,000–$5,000 per weekend, then scaled into Urban Outfitters, Revolve, Nordstrom, MoMA and the Met. By end of 2025: $1.5M in revenue, 120,000 units sold, 3.5x year-over-year growth — then a Shark Tank deal with Kevin O'Leary. When you build a model that genuinely serves your creative community, the growth follows. Learn how to turn your passion into a business: bit.ly/429LDi7

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Nicole Glabman kept hearing the same advice: “skip the sauce, it’s empty calories” — a non‑starter for someone who loved sauce. She didn’t want to cut something she enjoyed; she wanted to fix the problem. In late 2023, while working full‑time at Uber, Nicole began testing She’s The Sauce in her own kitchen, experimenting with ways to add protein and prebiotic fiber without wrecking taste or texture. In September, She’s The Sauce opened pre‑orders on two SKUs — Honey Mustard and Ranch — and generated about $10,000 in revenue in just 48 hours, a huge validation of demand. But the manufacturer couldn’t produce at the needed volume, so she rebuilt the supply chain and relaunched in January with just one product: Honey Mustard. The others went back into development. Today, She’s The Sauce does around $10,000 a month in revenue from Honey Mustard alone, driven entirely by organic growth: content, word‑of‑mouth and building in public. Learn more about balancing your full-time job with your passion project: bit.ly/422MRvH

Most people assume a former Goldman Sachs CEO would lead with an investing strategy when asked what to do with $5,000. Lloyd Blankfein leads with life insurance. His reasoning: before you chase returns, protect against the worst case — especially if you have a family depending on you. After that, buy yourself something practical and fun. Then, and only then, start investing — in stocks over bonds while you're young, and in low-cost funds so you're not handing your gains back in fees. It's a sequence, not a stock tip. Blankfein applies the same ordered thinking to leadership. At Goldman, he ran the firm like a partnership — where employees felt accountable for the whole company, not just their corner of it. Slower decisions, he admits. But better ones. Protect the foundation. Then build on it. That principle holds whether you're managing $5,000 or a $1 trillion firm. Read the full article: bit.ly/4tF6XIn

By day (and night), Deane Bigay was a full‑time FDNY firefighter; in the margins, he was a former fine‑dining cook making plated‑restaurant meals in his tiny East Village apartment and posting them to Instagram. What bothered him most wasn’t just his schedule — it was looking around NYC and seeing the same boring, greasy takeout everywhere, with almost no culturally diverse, truly healthy, high‑protein, seed‑oil‑free options for busy, fitness‑minded people. In 2023 he officially launched Beast Village Meal Prep, forming an LLC, securing food permits, commercial operating licenses, and insurance so he could operate at scale. He self‑funded the whole thing with roughly $10,000 in savings and a strict habit of reinvesting every dollar of profit back into the business instead of into his lifestyle. Today Beast Village has doubled its revenue since launch and produces around 5,000 meals a month — about 60,000 meals a year — translating to roughly $100,000 in monthly revenue and about $1.2 million annually. The menu stays rooted in “home‑cooked” vibes: culturally diverse, high‑protein, seed‑oil‑free dishes built for the fitness community and busy professionals who want real food without losing hours to shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Learn how to turn your hobby into a hustle: bit.ly/4267BCM

If you’ve ever wondered why some founders land headlines while others stay overlooked, this breaks down exactly how to change that — including a key insight from Daymond John that helped shape the approach.

Keep growing.

Don't hold yourself back.

Looking to boost your bank account with something a bit more unconventional? From campus-based services to testing the limits of artificial intelligence, these side hustles prove that opportunities for extra income are everywhere if you know where to look. 1. Mobile Spray Tanning Student-athletes are finding success by bringing the glow to their peers. With a modest upfront investment in equipment, a mobile tanning business can become profitable within weeks by serving a local community on demand. 2. UGC Content Creation You can fund your travels without having to build a massive personal following. User-Generated Content (UGC) creators work directly with brands to produce authentic videos and photos for the brand's own social channels. It is a high-demand way to earn while on the move, often without even needing to show your face. 3. AI Adversarial Testing Tech startups are actually paying people to "bully" their chatbots. By intentionally trying to make an AI lose context or misinterpret data, you help developers identify critical weaknesses. These specialized shifts can offer significant daily rates for those with a knack for spotting digital errors. Want to find your dream side hustle? We've got you: bit.ly/4eil3L0

It’s time for a reality check: there is no version of success that doesn’t involve some level of discomfort. Haley Sacks (aka Mrs. Dow Jones) joins How Success Happens to break down why we need to stop glamorizing "financial chaos" and start embracing the sacrifice required to build real wealth. Do you want to be a little uncomfortable now by prioritizing your future, or do you want to be extremely uncomfortable later when you don’t have the resources you need? Watch the full episode: bit.ly/4s91icz Clips courtesy of Haley Sacks (@mrsdowjones).