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The Side Hustle Show

696: This 15-Year Old is Running a $100,000 Business From His Bedroom

The Side Hustle Show

Nick Loper

Business, Education, Entrepreneurship, How To

4.71.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if you could turn a teenage sports annoyance into a $100k business while juggling school, sports, and everything else that comes with being 15? Harrison Nott has done exactly that. Starting at just 13 years old, Harrison built CoolTowel into a business projected to hit £100,000 (about $130,000) in revenue this summer alone. The spark came from a simple problem: getting overheated and uncomfortable while playing squash. Harrison saw an opportunity in the cooling towel market that barely existed 3 years ago. Tune in to Episode 696 of the Side Hustle Show to learn: The viral video strategies that drove Harrison's first million views How user-generated content campaigns can scale an e-commerce business Why personal branding matters more than ever for young entrepreneurs Full Show Notes: This 15-Year Old is Running a $100,000 Business From His Bedroom New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Mint Mobile⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Indeed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ – Start hiring NOW with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OpenPhone⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — Get 20% off of your first 6 months! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shopify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — Sign up for a $1 per month trial! ⁠⁠⁠Policygenius⁠⁠⁠ — Compare free life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. About The Side Hustle Show This is the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply! The award-winning small business show covers the best side hustles and ⁠⁠side hustle ideas⁠⁠. We share how to start a business and ⁠⁠make money online⁠⁠ and offline, including online business, side gigs, freelancing, marketing, sales funnels, investing, and much more. Join 100,000+ listeners and get legit business ideas and ⁠⁠passive income⁠⁠ strategies straight to your earbuds. No BS, just actionable tips on how to start and grow your side hustle. Hosted by Nick Loper of ⁠⁠Side Hustle Nation⁠⁠.

Transcript

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0:00.0

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1:02.7

This 15-year-old is running a100,000 business on the side from school, on the side from sports, on the side from just regular teenage stuff.

1:12.3

Stick around in this one to hear his process for coming up with the idea, how he made his first sales, and the growth in marketing tactics have helped him scale to hundreds of orders a day from cool towel.co.ukh, Harrison Knott. Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.

1:19.6

Well, Nick, first of all, thank you for having me on and I'm really excited to share, you know,

1:23.1

my top tips for everyone. Yeah, I'm excited for this one as well. I believe you're the youngest

1:28.7

guest in the 12-year history of the show. We probably started when you were a toddler. I was

1:35.3

three years old. Yeah, that's exciting. In its own. So a cool towel is a, you know, a cooling

1:41.5

neck towel inspired by I'm getting hot and sweaty playing squash as a

1:46.6

kid. Yep. So you just wrapped up your third summer of this business started when you're 13.

1:51.5

It's kind of nuts too. But can you give us a sense of how this summer went for you? Yep. So this

1:56.9

summer, I'm projected to £100,000 in revenue, which is about in dollars, about $130,000. Yeah. Obviously, that is revenue, disclaimer, that's not profit. To be transparent, there's lots of hidden costs involved. Everyone sees that big figure and thinks I'm making loads of money, but actually, I find more value in the skills that I've learned and the knowledge that I've learned along the way. Yeah. You got to be eking out some profit on that kind of sales volume, though, yeah? I'm probably sitting at around 20 profit, which is good. But it's all reinvested. It's all back into the business. Yeah, that's fantastic, you know, to have that kind of experience under your belt. Totally. All right. So where does this idea come from? It seems like almost kind of a commodity product where people would go on Amazon and say, okay, I've heard of this thing. I'm not very brand loyal when it comes to this thing. I don't know of any brands that are making this. So it's just like whatever comes up and has decent reviews. So what inspires you to say, you know what? I'm going to take a swing at this. Yeah, so I love playing sport and going to the

2:51.0

gym. That's sort of my passion. And three years ago, I decided that I'm sick and tired of being

2:56.5

hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. And essentially, I went on to Google and I searched up, you know,

3:02.7

like cooling towel, you know, like ways to cool down. And turns out aircon's expensive. Yeah. Fans don't really

3:08.9

work that while. They just pushed the hot air around. And the cooling towel wasn't really a thing

3:13.5

three years ago. It was around, but it wasn't, there was no big brand selling it. So I thought,

...

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