Jean Kang, 32, brings in about $20,000 a month with her business.
Courtesy of Jean Kang
Jean Kang never thought she would be an entrepreneur. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she had always envisioned herself working for a big tech company.
“I grew up watching a lot of ‘Shark Tank’ [and] thought it was always fascinating. I never thought that it could be me though,” Kang told CNBC Make It.
Having witnessed the rise of Silicon Valley from her own backyard, she worked hard to land her first tech job. “I felt like I was in a bubble, that’s all I knew [and] I wanted to be part of this cool kids club,” she said.
After graduating from university in 2014, Kang went on to start a decade-long career in technology — but things didn’t go as planned.
Kang’s corporate career eventually led her to starting her own business, which has given her freedom from a 9 to 5 and now brings in about $20,000 a month, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
Starting the business
Kang’s career in technology wasn’t a linear one. From 2014 to 2024, she was fired twice, worked at six different companies and across many functions such as sales, operations and strategy.
Then in 2020, she landed her first program manager role and realized that she had a real knack for it, so she zeroed in on those skills. Two years later, Kang saw that people began reaching out to her with requests for mentorship and questions about her role.
“I noticed a need in the market… I wanted to help people who were aspiring program managers pivot into this career path,” she said.
“Then, I decided to [announce] with one post: ‘Hey, I’m launching a coaching business, if you… want to land a program manager job, I’m open for a session [and] you can book a call with me,” said Kang.
After she made that initial LinkedIn post in October of 2022, Kang started creating career content on the job-focused social media platform and coaching clients online — and thus, her side hustle “Path to PM” was born. By the end of 2023, she says she brought in a total of about $30,000 in revenue and was able to help 10 clients land jobs.
“I was very shocked that I could supplement my take home pay from my tech job, [adding] another $30,000 completely by myself,” said Kang. “That was such a foreign thought that blew my mind.”
From side hustle to main hustle
During this time, Kang was working an additional 15 to 20 hours a week on her business on top of her full-time corporate job.
It wasn’t until the beginning of 2024, that she began to experience burnout. “[I was] doing two jobs full-time because I had a nine to five, and then I had a five to nine — literally just did not have breaks, my vacations were nonexistent,” Kang said. “It was really hard for me to be able to pull the trigger because I have this good paying job. [If] I can do both, why not just do both for as long as I can.”
This is also when she began asking herself: “If I can do this much using just a few hours I have outside of work daily and on my…
Read More: I turned my side-hustle into a $20,000 a month business