Zoreen Kabani always assumed she'd go into a traditional professional field.

The 37-year-old's family immigrated from Pakistan to California when she was 14 and those were the paths she knew. In Pakistan, the cultural expectation is "you either are in finance or you're an engineer or you're a doctor," she says.

And for the first decade or so of her working life, she did follow one of those paths. Kabani studied finance during both her bachelor's and master's degrees and got hired first at Goldman Sachs in 2010 then at JPMorgan Chase in 2013. "But I never felt fulfilled," she says.

In April 2022, "I decided to cold turkey quit my job" at JPMorgan, she says, and find work that fed her soul. Specifically, she wanted to do something creative. A few months later, her younger brother introduced her to auction app Whatnot, where sellers livestream auctions of new and used items ranging from electronics to baseball cards.  

Kabani found her way into the women's fashion section and "became obsessed," she says. Within a month, she thought, "I can do this."

Kabani, who's now based in Las Vegas, has since both dived into auctioning on Whatnot through her page, zkstyles, and taken her hustle full-time. She often brings in more than $100,000 per month. Here's how she built her online business.

'I love finding deals'

In June 2022, when Kabani decided to dive into selling, she knew she'd focus on women's fashion. "That was personally a passion of mine," she says.

In part, that's because she's always loved shopping. As a child of immigrants, "I grew up very thrifty," she says, adding that, "I love finding deals." After scheduling her first stream, she applied this skill to find about 50 items to sell in thrift stores and on clearance, she says.

"I had probably some vintage T shirts in there," she says. "Some cute women's fashion items like a Nike hoodie." Kabani has a darker, goth aesthetic, she says, "so I had grungy items in there," too. She remembers having about 50 people tune in and 20 to 30 people ultimately buy items.

"Being in sales for about 13 years," she says, "It was a very natural progression for me to get in front of a camera and talk about a product." The difference was, instead of selling stocks, bonds and investments, she was selling cute shirts and pants.

"And I absolutely loved it."

Most sellers stream 'twice a week at most'

After booking a few more streams, Kabani started seeing the money come in. "My whole goal was to not dip into my savings," she says, "and I was able to do that with my Whatnot streams." Within a couple months, she decided to take her hustle full time.

She made sure a few elements of her business stood out on the platform. First, Kabani built a Monday-through-Friday stream schedule, not unlike the schedule she was accustomed to in corporate America. When it came to other sellers, "most of the people were streaming twice a week at most," she says.

Second, while many fashion streamers liked to simply show the items they were selling, Kabani offered styling tips. If she was showing a black Macy's sweater, for example, she would say, "you can pair that with a pair of jeans and do some Dr. Martens and it would look really cute," she says.

In her first month alone, she grossed more than $12,000.

'I'm having so much fun playing with clothing'

To-date, Kabani has sold more than 75,000 items on the site, according to her profile.

These days, she keeps a rigorous six-day per week streaming schedule, usually beginning around 7 p.m. Pacific Time. Streams last anywhere from two to seven hours, depending on inventory and her own energy levels. "I have customers who tune in at the same time every single night for me," she says. She uses her iPhone to record herself.

Having scaled her business so "we're sometimes shipping out 2,000 units per week," she says, she's had to upgrade her sourcing. She now uses sites like Boutique by the Box, where sellers can buy boxes of brand name clothing from companies like Madewell and Aerie. She also works directly with suppliers who'll let her know about brand liquidations.

Costs associated with running the business include inventory, shipping and shipping material. Those can vary because the types of clothes she sells vary, too. "I can have inventory where my average cost of goods is $5," she says. "But I can have inventory where my average cost of goods is $25." Whatnot fees can add up to about 11% of the item's sale price.

Still, the business is doing pretty well. In October 2023, she brought in more than $100,000 for the first time. In 2024 alone, she's brought in more than $900,000. Kabani prefers not to share her take-home pay but says she transfers funds to her personal account as needed and reinvests most of her earnings into the business.

"I probably have 15-hour days," she says of the grueling schedule. But she loves what she does.

"It's my business and I'm having so much fun playing with clothing."

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