The Optimist is adding a new recurring feature story, Emerging Entrepreneur. This monthly edition will release the second Wednesday of every month, highlighting a Bloomington South student that has created their own successful business. To get this monthly story started, our first focus will be on senior Harper Eakin and her thriving nail business, Sprint Sets Nails.
Sprint Sets Nails is Eakin’s business where she offers Gel-X manicures and plain gel manicures. She started up Sprint Sets Nails in February of 2025, after over a year of practicing on herself. “I was really nervous to start offering [my services] to other people because I was worried I wasn’t good enough. I was still practicing, I was still learning,” said Eakin.
She said the idea to turn doing nails into a business stemmed from comments from others. “I started getting compliments from other people saying, ‘oh you should do my nails sometime!’ and I would say ‘haha sure’ but I didn’t think it was actually something I was going to do,” Eakin said.
The biggest help in getting her business started was High School Hustle, an organization that aids young entrepreneurs in getting started. If a student hopes to start a business, then they can pitch it to High School Hustle and they will send a determined sum of money to help cover the cost of materials. There is a portal in the organization where one tracks their revenue, in hopes to end up on the leaderboard, which earns them additional money.
“[High School Hustle] paid for so many of my supplies; I got a desk; I got colors, tips; I got an armrest. It was so helpful to have extra money that wasn’t coming out of my own pocket,” Eakin said.
Additionally, Eakin mentioned that having the business set up in her own house took some getting used to. Because of this, she started by only working for friends and people that she knew. But she had been doing nails for a friend on the Indiana University rowing team, and her friend started recommending her to fellow athletes, and it grew from there. She has even done a set for an IU women’s basketball player.
Senior Ava Perez has been a frequent customer of Eakin’s since the end of May, 2025. Perez likes to scour her Pinterest board and find the craziest nail inspiration. Despite these complicated designs, Perez said “it stays affordable and [Eakin] does a really good job on them. It’s good pricing for what she does and she’s good at it…she gets them done in under two hours,” which is fairly quick in the nail industry.
While having a successful business is great, it comes with its thorns, especially as a high school student. “It is really hard to juggle with school and extracurriculars,” Eakin used prom season as an example as she was going “from school, to [swim] practice, to nails, to maybe another nail appointment,” which became fairly hectic for her.
This led her to create some guidelines for herself, in which she stopped offering nails on weekdays, now only having appointments on Friday afternoons and weekends. Since Eakin is committed to swim at the collegiate level for Ohio University, she said that had to take priority.
Sprint Sets Nails is only a side hustle for her, but if her roommate is comfortable with it, she plans to continue doing nails in college. Despite this, she hopes to continue to incorporate more fun materials and improve her 3D art and cat-eye skills.
Eakin offers simple Gel-X manicures at $30 a set, and $35 for a set with a design. To book an appointment, direct message @sprint.sets.nails on Instagram.
