This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Outside Randy Roblero’s single-story family home sits his cargo van, emblazoned with the red and blue signage for his company, Beyond Limits of Palm Beach, a mobile car detailing business in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The van isn’t just for advertising — a “moving billboard,” he calls it. It’s also his office. Inside is everything he needs to clean and restore vehicles: an electricity generator, a 100-gallon water tank, pressure washer, Shop-Vac vacuum, waxing equipment and various cleaning products.
Six days a week, Roblero, 22, works out of the van, servicing three to four clients per day. To avoid the stifling Florida heat, he usually starts at 7:30 a.m. and works until late afternoon.
Roblero started cleaning cars as a side hustle when he was 18, but it wasn’t until he purchased the van in 2021 that he got the “courage” to become a full-time business owner, he says.
“I felt like I was never going to find out if running my own business was meant for me unless I tried,” he tells CNBC Make It. “And I thought, ‘I’m young, I can still start over if this doesn’t work out.’”
The decision has paid off so far. In January 2022, he quit his $20-an-hour entry-level accounting job at an aerospace repair company to pursue his side hustle full-time, earning $51,000 that year.
In 2023, Roblero found more clients and started making money from car detailing videos posted on his YouTube channel. He’s on track to bring in about $77,000 — nearly double the $41,000 he earned at his old job.
Here’s how he got there.
From side hustles to starting his own business at 18
Roblero was born in Bailey, North Carolina, but has lived in West Palm Beach, Florida, for most of his life.
His parents were undocumented immigrants from Guatemala who came to the United States in the 1990s. His father worked as a freelance handyman, while his mom was a…
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