39-year-old dropped out of college and now runs a business bringing in $500,000 a year—how she did it

This story is part of CNBC Make It's Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor's degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at [email protected].

Justine Parker chose her career based on a sign — not one from the universe, but an ad taped to the window of a coffee shop.

It was a flier for an in-person real estate course. For $2,000 and a four-month commitment, the ad promised, anyone could earn upwards of $100,000 a year.

Parker, then 24, was less interested in making six figures and more excited about becoming a licensed professional.

She left the University of Georgia during her first semester when she was 19, after getting pregnant, and says she spent her early 20s feeling untethered and, at points, burned out, adjusting to her new role as a working mom.

"Since I didn't finish college, and going back with a young child felt impossible, I thought taking classes and graduating with a license would give me a similar sense of accomplishment, like I was still moving my career forward," Parker, 39, tells CNBC Make It.

She signed up for classes that afternoon and on Dec. 31, 2009, received her Georgia real estate license in the mail.

The flier lived up to its promise: Parker now owns Toes N Sand Properties, a rental management company in Orange Beach, Alabama that brought in about $500,000 in 2023, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

After deducting business expenses and taxes, Parker earned $200,000 last year from her work as a real estate broker. Here's how she did it:

Building a career on three jobs and 'two hours of sleep'

When Parker found out she was pregnant, she left school and started working full time in Atlanta as a telemarketer to save money for her first child.

Her high school sweetheart and now-husband, Stephen, opted out of college, working behind the counter at a sandwich shop and also as a telemarketer to support their growing family.

Parker worked right up until her delivery date. The couple's first son, Brandon, was born in August 2004. They welcomed their second son, Nathan, 17 months later.

After Nathan was born, Parker left telemarketing and took on three part-time jobs— pet-sitting, substitute teaching and bartending — to help cover her family's bills. These gigs, Parker says, offered the most flexible schedules so she and her husband could share child-care responsibilities.

She didn't start attending real estate classes until Nathan turned 4 and her children were in school full-time. She went to classes Monday through Wednesday during the school day and then worked the late shift bartending Thursday through Sunday.

"It was chaos, but I loved it," Parker says.

On weekends, Parker would spend her afternoons studying for the Georgia real estate exam and evenings at the bar, clocking in at 6 p.m. and leaving at 4 a.m. after closing.

"Some nights I'd get two hours of sleep before the boys woke me up at 6 a.m.," she adds. "Luckily, I've never needed a lot of sleep — I wanted to spend those weekend mornings with my kids."

The requirements to become a real estate agent vary by state, but the process generally includes completing a prelicensing course, passing an exam, getting a background check, finding a sponsoring brokerage and submitting a license application. All in all, Parker spent $2,000 to get her license.

She started working full time as a real estate agent — sans side hustles — the minute she received her license, supporting a local agent, Barry Britt, in foreclosure listings. Parker also sourced her own listings, on Craigslist and through friends of friends, as an independent agent.

In 2010, her first year working as a real estate agent, Parker made about $50,000 — but by 2014, she doubled her income to $100,000.

Running a six-figure business

In 2017 the Parkers moved from Atlanta to Orange Beach, Alabama, a small city on Alabama's Gulf Coast, to be closer to their relatives and the beach.

Parker secured a real estate license in Alabama within a few weeks of moving there as Georgia has a reciprocity agreement with the state — she just had to take a 6-hour course and pass the state exam.

She spent her first three years in Orange Beach working different real estate and hospitality jobs to get a pulse on the local market and meet potential clients.

Parker also bartended part time at a restaurant in town, which is where she met a woman who would change the trajectory of her career: Cynthia "Cyndi" Cook.

Cook, a local real estate broker, owned Toes n Sand Properties — which managed Gulf Coast vacation rentals as well as Heritage Motor Coach Resort and Marina, a waterfront RV resort with 42 rentals in Orange Beach — a business Parker would eventually take over.

In January 2020, Parker joined Toes n Sand's staff as an agent and property manager.

She took over the business after Cook's sudden death just 11 months later. The transition meant "a lot of sleepless nights, finding the right support, making mistakes and learning from them," Parker, who was Toes n Sand's lone employee at the time, recalls.

At that point, Toes n Sand was bringing in about $200,000 a year. Parker, with the help of the two real estate agents and office manager she hired, has since grown Toes N Sand to be a $500,000 business — namely by managing more vacation rentals in and around Orange Beach.

Working in real estate has given Parker "a lot more confidence and even more patience," she adds, but the most important lesson she's learned in her career up to this point is to trust herself.

"When I got pregnant at 18, I thought that was the worst thing that could happen to me, that my life was over," she says. "But I listened to my gut, chose an industry that interested me and now I have this beautiful career where I get to help people achieve their own dreams and financial goals."

And, Parker adds, "I didn't have to go into $100,000 of debt for a degree to make it here."

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