This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Katherine Watercutter, founder and CEO of activewear brand Gold Hinge. Watercutter started the business as a side hustle when she was 23 years old. Today, Gold Hinge counts celebrities including Kristin Cavallari and Kaitlyn Bristowe among its fans. The brand went viral during TikTok’s “RushTok” trend, garnering 40 million hashtag impressions and multimillion-dollar sales.
Image credit: Courtesy of Gold Hinge. Katherine Tagliaacqua.
What was your day job when you started your side hustle and why were you interested in entrepreneurship?
I was a sales representative for a distribution company working with kitchen and bath designers throughout Indiana (I studied architecture and interior design). I have always been an entrepreneur from a young age; you have to have it as part of you to be willing to take risks.
When did you start your side business and where did you find the inspiration for it?
The idea came to me in 2018 and I started it in January 2019. There was really no inspiration – I thought it could make me money quickly. But I was wrong about that.
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What were some of the first steps you took to get your side business off the ground?
I opened a Shopify store and created a website and Instagram.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while building your side hustle and how did you address them?
One of the biggest challenges early on was cash flow. I received no funding from outside investors and started with very little to invest. So there were some times where I almost had to close the doors because of cash flow. It taught me a very valuable lesson right from the start because businesses often fail in the first year when they run out of money. I overcame it by getting a line of credit from the bank and a business credit card, which helped me with funds, but I also almost ran out of them. It took a lot of discipline, learning and looking at the numbers to tackle this challenge until I saw more consistent growth and revenue.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle make?
The side hustle yielded nothing. It wasn’t until a few years of making it my full-time job, putting in 80-90 hours a week, that I started actually earning money, and I didn’t get paid until about 2021. It’s hard to say how long it took steady revenue because it wasn’t until the spring or summer of 2020 that revenue took off, but later that year it dropped again. It’s safe to say that 2021 was the year that revenue was actually “consistent” enough that you felt confident when debt was repaid and things were going in the right direction. So in total it would be about three years (two years dedicated to my business).
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You’ve since turned your side hustle into a full-time business. What’s the revenue like now?
Over the course of 2023, we went from six-figure months to seven-figure months and our total revenue reached eight figures.
What is your favorite thing about running your own business?
Being responsible for my day and my future.
What is your advice to others hoping to start their own successful business?
My advice may seem trivial, but don’t give up. People nowadays are impatient and sometimes give up quickly when they feel they will continue to fail. There were a few times when I thought I had hit rock bottom and exhausted all options, but I found a way around it. I felt like I was constantly failing for three years, and I know many would have given up at that point, but business is about solving problems.
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