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.

Sarah Cloes, 27, took a chance when she started small business Flora Flora Co., which specializes in sustainably packaged shampoo and conditioner bars, in 2021 without taking on debt or outside investment. Thanks to popularity on social media, the operation blossomed from a one-woman show in her kitchen to a company with two full-time employees and a warehouse in San Marcos, California.

For the first three years, while trying to get Flora Flora off the ground, Cloes and her now-husband Bret lived frugally while she invested company profits back into the business. Revenues rose from about $40,000 in 2021 to $102,000 in 2022 to roughly $215,000 in 2023.

Flora Flora took a small step back last year, as the brand's buzz on social media faded and revenue dropped to about $180,000. Although Cloes continues to keep her salary modest — she paid herself $29,500 in 2024 — a large tax bill and a sizeable deposit on a new warehouse means it was the first year the company didn't turn a net profit.

As she looks to the future, Cloes is certain of a few things, however. One is support from Bret, who has begun to work with her on Flora Flora part-time and shares her conviction that growth in her business could be a pathway to long-term financial freedom as a couple.

Another is the effectiveness and appeal of her products, which she says provide salon-quality hair care without the cost to the environment of mass-produced plastic bottles.

She wouldn't trade any of this for a regular 9-to-5.

"There's some low lows, but the highs are exhilarating and addicting, and so I could never let go because of that," she says. "Truly the organic feedback that we get from customers, people just telling us how this has literally changed their life — which is not something I necessarily anticipated when I started making hair-care products — that is everything."

Launching a new business: 'Dove in head-first' and 'got obsessed'

At first, Cloes didn't aim to change lives, or better the world, or even start a business, really. She noticed that her hair products came encased in an awful lot of plastic, and the alternatives on the market didn't excite her much. So she tried to make something better.

Cloes always loved working with her hands. By 2014, as a freshman at the University of Hawaii, she was "creating furiously" — painting, as well as formulating her own health and beauty products, like deodorant and mascara.

Like many creators, Cloes began with a process of trial and error on her kitchen stove. Soon, she contacted a cosmetic chemist, who gave her a crash course in hair-care formulations. "I just dove head-first into that, and kind of got obsessed with learning about hair science," Cloes says.

The eventual result of her experiments: shampoo and conditioner in bar form — no plastic bottle necessary.

By 2021, Cloes was ready to get her products out into the world. She'd tested them on friends, given them to hairdressers and received positive feedback.

After a Covid-era layoff, she had some extra time on her hands, and some cash, between unemployment benefits and stimulus checks. It only took $400 to get the business up and running at her local farmers market.

"I started super slow. I just bought a tiny bit of ingredients, I bought some molds and I bought some paper to make labels with," she says. "Eventually I started paying for a website, but I just let what I was making from the farmers market, I kind of just put that back into building up the business more and more."

In 2022, when Flora Flora began selling products online, Cloes launched a TikTok account to document her journey running the brand. The move helped sales that year take off.

"I think people just resonated a lot with it," she says. "Our TikTok and Instagram grew pretty quickly, especially TikTok. TikTok was a huge driver of sales in the beginning and kind of catapulted us in a way. That was my only method of marketing for the most part."

The influx of sales, plus $12,500 in small business grants from California, gave Flora Flora the necessarily capital to move out of Cloes' apartment and into the company's first commercial space.

Paying herself 'the bare minimum' and living with less: 'We weren't buying anything new'

During this ramp-up period, Cloes' personal budget remained tight. She and Bret shared an apartment in Encinitas, California, and split everything down the middle. Cloes paid herself "the bare minimum" in those days. Bret didn't earn much more, having graduated with a master's in psychology and taking a $30,000-a-year associateship.

When the couple first began sharing finances, "it was Covid times, for the most part, so a lot was shut down. So we didn't really have much that we could be going out to, but we both kind of had the same spending habits," Cloes says. "We weren't buying anything new, and we weren't going out to eat, we weren't taking trips."

That was pretty much the status quo until 2024. The couple got married in August, and Bret, now a practicing therapist, saw a major boost in his business. He brought in about $95,000 for the year, putting the couple's combined income at about $125,000.

That's allowed Bret to cover more of the couple's expenses — a personal and professional relief for Cloes.

"I think that there's been a big weight lifted," she says. "Because for so long, we truly felt just this huge squeeze that was really, really stressful. And now we just feel a little bit more free to, like, go get a drink out with friends, or go get a meal out every once in a while, maybe buy a new piece of clothing here and there."

Here's how they spent their money in October 2024.

• Housing and utilities: $2,422 on rent, HOA fees, power, Wi-Fi and phone bills
• Groceries and dining out: $783
• Unexpected expenses: $751 on car parts and a trip to the veterinary hospital for their cat
• Discretionary: $548 on regular expenses such as household items, clothing, pet and entertainment costs
• Health and auto insurance: $547
• Transportation: $341 on gas, tolls, rideshares and parking
• Dental: $333 on out-of-pocket costs at the dentist
• Subscriptions and memberships: $168 in monthly fees to ClassPass, Surfline, Spotify and Netflix

Cloes and her husband still go Dutch on their biggest expenses, splitting costs like rent, HOA fees and utilities. Cloes covers her own health and auto insurance — the couple has three vehicles, all paid off — as well as her membership to ClassPass, and various household odds and ends.

But Bret's salary covers the majority of the household budget, including the bulk of the grocery bills and any unexpected charges that come up, such as a trip to the animal hospital for their cat. He picked up a bill for the dentist in October out-of-pocket since the pair — both self-employed — currently live without vision or dental insurance.

Overall, the couple approaches their finances as a team. Bret supplements their lifestyle with his income over the short term, and that allows them to funnel as many resources as possible into the success of Flora Flora.

"We're understanding that the more that we can put into the business and invest back in, the less that I'm having to take out to pay myself, the better that means for the business long term," Cloes says.

Looking ahead: 'I know I'll always be creating'

Banking on the long-term success of a small business has so far been a calculated risk. Neither the couple nor Flora Flora carries any debt, and their relative frugality has allowed them to build up some $30,000 in liquid savings.

They're prepared to invest all of that into the business if necessary, though they are exploring other ways the company can grow.

Bret's part-time role at Flora Flora has involved reaching out to retailers, hoping to expand the sales reach for a company that currently does most business online.

In the meantime, Cloes works 10-hour days running the day-to-day operations of the company while trying to figure out how to expand her products' appeal. For a company that's never spent a cent on advertising, "I think that a big next step for us is actually investing into marketing a bit more to see if we can get more exposure and just get in front of more people," Cloes says.

She considers investing in more machinery to churn out her product, too, all of which is made in house.

As of now, it's unclear where that money will come from. If the couple don't dip into their savings, they may seek outside investment for the first time — likely, if at all, from friends and family. "We're trying to keep it as personal as possible," Cloes says.

The hope for the business, Cloes says, is to become a mainstream personal care company that can lead the market in plastic-free hair-care products.

On a personal level, their goals are familiar ones: Travel, homeownership, kids. Ideally, one can lead to the other. But even if Flora Flora doesn't become the household name Cloes suspects it can be, it won't stop her from yearning to come up with the next great thing.

"I know that I'll always be creating, and I think I would love to be a part of creating more startups, and kind of like having the ideas for new brands and bringing them to life," she says.

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