Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Kennie Bukky, co-founder of The Pivot Place.
Courtesy: Kennie Bukky
Kennie Bukky, a millennial professional, made a six-figure salary in 2024 and attributed his high earnings to two key strategies: building an audience on social media and learning high-paying skills.
Despite his age of less than 30 years, Bukky balances several jobs and earned just over £100,000 (about $130,000) in 2024.
However, this was not always the case. When she graduated from college in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in forensic science, she felt her prospects seemed bleak.
“Straight out of college, I was pretty worried about money, looking at the wages, it wasn’t that big,” he told CNBC Make It in an interview.
But she knew she wanted a high salary – and so she started making it happen.
“I was very intentional about what career paths I was going to take and how I was going to trade my time for money,” he explained. “Money has always been a problem… [and] I realized that it is important to go for high-end careers to be able to mitigate this,” he explained.
This attitude saw Bukky pivot into the financial services sector where he saw there was money to be made.
He is trained to be a compliance officer and has worked in this role for companies including KPMG and Visa. Now, despite being on break from the 9-to-5 for the past year, she’s pulling in six figures as a full-time content creator, as well as through her work as a youth engagement officer digital, career coach and public speaker. .
Bukky chose to keep his legal name and age privatefor privacy reasons, and CNBC verified his earnings via invoice statements.
“I feel like I have so much value to share”
Bukky said building a personal brand on social media was key to earning a high income.
She has nearly 130,000 followers on TikTok and over 35,000 followers on Instagram and creates content around career advice and wealth growth for her demographic of mostly young and ambitious women of color.
“I just wanted to share my career and personal finance knowledge because I feel like these are things that I mastered at a pretty young age and I’m really good at,” he said.
“I felt like I had so much value to share, and that indirectly made me build a personal brand.”
As a result of its growing audience, it has been able to collaborate with brands such as LinkedIn, Deutsche Bank, MicrosoftACCA, Bing, and HSBC on social media.
Becoming a social media personality gave Bukky the impetus to co-found The Pivot Place in 2023, a business that helps people build skills to move into non-coding tech roles.
“Skills pay the bills”
Bukky said she is able to charge higher fees for the services she offers because she has invested in upskilling.
“I have a pretty big belief that when you invest in yourself, skills and knowledge, it can have a super high ROI. [return on investment] in terms of how much you can earn as a person, which is sometimes more than the stock market will ever pay you,” Bukky explained.
When he was 23, Bukky was working as a boarding analyst at RBS on a salary of £28,000. He then jumped to a management role which paid £40,000.
“I was very intentional about knowing that I wanted a huge jump. I didn’t want to just be there and get a 3% raise every two years,” he explained. “That involved going for a role that was much more senior than I was, and learning how to sell confidently for roles that were quite senior.”
Although he struggled with impostor syndrome at the time, Bukky wanted to challenge his perception of what he was capable of. To prepare for the role, he did a lot of self-study using free online resources.
She advised young people trying to hit a six-figure salary to look for ways to build “high-income skills” that will increase how much their time is worth. Bukky recommended taking courses, joining communities or boot camps, or even starting a side hustle to do this.
“Skills pay the bills. You need to build high-income skills. You don’t have to stay stagnant in terms of how much your time is worth,” he added.
