Hector Gutierrez became an overnight campus celebrity at the University of Alabama earlier this year after an embarrassing email faux pas put him in the spotlight.
While applying for the school’s honor society, he mistakenly sent his business school professor’s recommendation letter to a college listserv with thousands of recipients.
“I started getting phone calls and messages saying, ‘Why did you email me? Why did you email me?’” Gutierrez told Fortune. “My Outlook started blowing up.”
While he initially found himself cringing at the mistake, the exposure turned out to be a boon for his small business. It made him a social media star, earning him a meeting with the university’s president, and landed him a feature in the school newspaper—all of which shone a spotlight on his small business.
Gutierrez, 18, started Hec’s Pet Sitting nearly three years ago. Instead of taking a traditional teen job at his local Publix supermarket, he wanted to start something of his own. The business he started as a high school student in South Florida, has grown into a registered LLC, with 10 part-time employees, and bringing in over $10,000 a year.
“I started simply by going around my neighborhood posting flyers, saying, local pet sitter,” he said. “I was fortunate by having one person trust me, and I did a great job taking care of their dog, and then it started expanding, and then there was a point where I needed to hire people.”
Now in his first year studying business management in Alabama, Gutierrez’s accidental fame is opening new doors—including potential clients in his college town. The business income also helps offset the more than $50,000 annual cost of attendance he faces as an out of state student. But balancing a growing company with a full course load is no small feat—and he’s far from the only one trying.
As traditional job pathways grow less reliable, a growing number of young workers are redefining what work looks like—and starting earlier than ever.
A 2023 Samsung and Morning Consult survey of U.S. students ages 16 to 25 found that 50% of respondents have aspirations to start their own business. Similarly, a survey from Intuit found that nearly two-thirds of young people aged 18 to 35 have started—or plan to start—a side gig.
The job market isn’t offering much reassurance in the meantime. Three in five college seniors feel pessimistic about their career prospects, according to a Handshake survey.
Jacob Stone Humphries, the University of Alabama business instructor who wrote Gutierrez’s letter of recommendation, said it comes down to a generation confronting deep uncertainty.
