side hustle

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, Storytelling, Uncategorized

I Don’t Hate Mondays

If you knew me in high school, you may still have a vague memory of me going around the hallways during break, selling gum from my backpack. Yes, welcome to…“Confessions of a Teenage Gum Dealer”.

It was a different time back then. Gum in the classroom was strictly prohibited. I sold a good that was a true commodity. I provided a service that was risky. The free market rewarded me accordingly.

In hindsight, I apparently felt tied down by the idea of having to commit to just one group of people to hang out with in high school, so I decided it made more sense to bounce around from the skateboarders, to the athletes and cheerleaders, to the gamers playing Doom in the computer lab, to everyone in-between.

And while socially connecting with everyone at school, why not make some money in the process?

I would buy the multipacks of Wrigley’s gum from the grocery store for about a dollar, then only charge 25 cents per pack (which contained 5 sticks of gum) when I sold them at school. That meant I made over a dollar profit for each multipack. And believe me, I sold a lot of multipacks each week!

Naturally, I carried this “Zack Morris” mentality with me to college…

I bought two pairs of old microwaves and mini-fridges from Goodwill; turning my dorm room into the most glorious convenience store. I would go to Wal-Mart and buy microwaveable popcorn, ramen, egg rolls, burritos, and Hot Pockets; as well as other tempting processed foods like candy, energy drinks, and soda.

Just like in high school, running a “small business” allowed me to be socially connected while making some money along with the way. Coincidentally, I lived in Dorm 15 at Liberty University. My regular customers cleverly named my store, “The Freshman 15”; for many of them, it proved to live up to the name.

As I have recently been thinking back on those stories, it finally hit me, this year at age 43:

“Oh… I’m one of those people who will never stop working even after I retire, because if I do, I will die shortly afterwards.”

This does not bother me. Fortunately, I happen to also be one of those people who not only believes, but also lives by, the concept, ‘Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Funny thing is, most people don’t actually know what I do for a living. Many people assume that I write for a living, or that it has something to do with making YouTube videos. To be fair, I do make a passive side income from those hobbies. (Even my hobbies revolve around me finding a way to make money off of them!)

But my actual job, ever since I graduated college, is I am a recruiter. Basically, I’m a salesman under the division of HR.

I have a monthly quota. My job is find qualified people and motivate them to be interested in one of my company’s openings that needs to be filled- and then lead them through the whole paperwork process and background reports, up unto the point of their first day of onboarding.

I love my job. I love the people I work with. I love the company I work for.

I get a thrill out of overcoming challenges and managing chaos.

Yet, somewhat ironically, I am definitely not a workaholic. I don’t think about work before 8 AM nor do I think about it after 5 PM.

I definitely never think about my job during the weekend. Yet, unlike Garfield, I don’t hate Mondays. I don’t constantly fantasize about taking a vacation. You’ll never hear me complain about my job.

So I’m pretty sure that when I eventually officially retire at some point, I’m still going to be finding ways to make money, while connecting with people.

I suppose it has something to do with me recognizing that work, especially as it relates to earning income and being able to find a way to be of service to others, not only gives me purpose but it also doubles as a much-needed distraction from the big, scary aspects about life that have no satisfying answers or perfect solutions.

There is comfort in the routine. I don’t fight it. I embrace it.

Leave a comment Posted on SEO Spotlight Series, Storytelling, Uncategorized

What Do I Do for a Living? I Am a Driver Recruiter (with a Side Hustle of Earning Passive Income through Social Media Ad Revenue, Capitalizing on SEO)

It is quite possible to know a person very well and for a long time, without actually knowing much about what they do for a living. I think it is interesting how a person’s career, which occupies the majority of their waking hours, is undeniably connected somehow to the version of that person you know.

Their personality, talents, and interests, in “real life” outside of work obviously translate relevantly to how they make a living. If not, they would not be good enough to sustain making a living in that career.

So whether you’ve known me since preschool but haven’t been around me much since we graduated high school, or you’ve only known me as a married man with two kids, if you don’t really know how I make a living, you’re going to find out now…

I am a recruiter for truck drivers at a Fortune 500 company at their location in the Nashville area. I am responsible for filling job openings, nationwide, for them. I admit this may sound like a random career, but imagine all the 18 wheeler trucks you see anytime you’re on the interstate, moving all the freight to all the stores. Without truck drivers, our economy could not exist very long.

To burrow from my own LinkedIn profile, here’s an overview of my job as a recruiter:

My position identifies, recruits, interviews and recommends candidates for driving positions. Other daily responsibilities include sourcing, screening, interviewing and referring candidates to hiring managers, determining the best approach to fill assigned positions, maintaining effective working relationships with HR and business partners to ensure appropriate service levels are met; ensuring compliance with all legal aspects of recruiting, exercising judgment within defined procedures and practices to determine appropriate actions, and working in compliance with established procedures and protocols.

What I do for a living is a hybrid of Sales and Human Resources, as I have a quota to hit for my monthly hires.

This has been my career since I graduated college with an English degree; which I had originally intended to use to be a teacher.

Ever since Covid Culture kicked in, I’ve been working from my kitchen table. I love it!

But I also have a strong personal conviction to turn my hobbies into side hustles; as opposed to allowing my hobbies to cost me a lot of money.

Therefore, I am the content creator of two YouTube channels (containing thousands of videos I’ve created) and this website (containing hundreds of blog posts; both of which earn passive revenue from ads thanks to Google AdSense (I get a percentage of the revenue from the ads that show before my videos), as well as Amazon Affiliates (like if readers of this blog post click on that yellow taco shirt photo, and either buy the shirt or anything else while they are browsing… I get a percentage of that sale.)

With hundreds of blog posts on this website; as well as thousands of YouTube videos between my two channels, I am just some random guy making money off multiple random people any given minute of every day.

And anybody can do what I do, even you! I’m simply capitalizing on SEO (search engine optimization).

How I make a living is undeniably connected to my personality and skill set:

I am useless when it comes to anything related to math, engineering, or handyman work… or anything at all that could be classified as “technical”.

But when it comes to using my communication skills to hire people who need jobs for managers who eagerly need those spots filled- and when it comes to using the Internet as a dragnet to use content that I create to capture people’s attention… I can do that.

Just don’t expect me to be able to help you fix your car if it’s anything beyond changing a flat tire or to be able help your kid with their math homework if they’re beyond the 4th grade. I will immediately disappoint you!

Leave a comment Posted on People, SEO Spotlight Series, Storytelling, Uncategorized

5 Reasons Why Men Born in 1981 are Unapologetically Obsessed with Making Money, Saving Money, and Investing Money: The Firstborns of the Millennial Generation are Financially Woke!

Exactly 20 years ago, just a couple weeks away from my high school graduation, my plan for a career was quite humble:

To become a school teacher, to marry a school teacher, and to live in a small house in my small hometown.

That’s all I wanted. I specifically didn’t care about money. For those of us born in 1981, the firstborns of the Millennial Generation, we were led to believe that “money isn’t everything” and that “all you need is love”.

But by the time I began my career, I saw the world in a different light. And I imagine many other men who were born in 1981 also experienced the same culture shock, and therefore, a rewiring of how we perceive money.

What makes us this way? I have compiled 5 reasons why men born in 1981 are so much more woke when it comes to personal finances. Consider this to be my comic book villain origin story:

1.      The average American man gets married at age 27; which for those of us born in 1981, coincided with the Financial Crisis of 2008. Needless to say, I got married just a few months before the recession hit.

2.      Most of us attended college compared to previous generations, which meant more competition in the work force in addition to starting out our careers with heavy student loans.

3.      We were told we would be the first generation to actually make less money than our own parents; who themselves didn’t necessarily need to graduate college like we did in order to be successful in our careers.

4.      It is common knowledge that there should be no expectations for my generation to actually get social security when we retire.

5.      Thanks to the Internet, we have so many opportunities to have multiple online side hustles; to add passive income in addition to our salaries from our full time jobs.

Both at my office as well as my online persona as a YouTuber, I am referred to as Slick Nick.

If you know me at all, you know I am a person who is unapologetically fixated on making money, saving money, and investing money:

In addition to my full time job at a Fortune 500 Company, I also handle my 5 online side hustles: running two YouTube channels, managing the SEO for a majority university here in Nashville, plus selling guest blog spots and planting Amazon links here on my website.

As opposed to the excess culture of the 1980s and 1990s as people went in debt to impress people they didn’t care about by buying McMansions and brand-new luxury cars, I am from a generation where the goal is to impress people by how much money we save and invest; not how much we spend.

I feel like men from my generation will be like those who survived the Great Depression. We will spend our lives finding ways to independently fund our own retirements; assuming there will be no social security left for us.

If we’re lucky, we’re wrong. But if we’re wrong, we just might be rich.

1 Comment Posted on finance, People, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Income Tax Returns at H&R Block: So Relieved I Didn’t Owe Taxes on My 5 Side Hustles in 2018!

As I recently crowned myself “The SEO Side Hustler”, announcing that in 2018 I had 5 SEO-based side hustles that earned a minimum of $1,000 each, I knew that title would come with a potential downside:

This month when my wife and I would file our taxes for last year’s income, instead of getting money back from the IRS as we have every single year we’ve been married, it would be a very real possibility we could actually owe several thousand dollars instead of receiving that as a return.

When I said that I had 5 side hustles last year that earned a minimum of $1,000 each, the thing is…

For some of those side hustles, it was a bit more than a thousand dollars… or even a lot more.

I had never made that much in side income before. It was never an issue or a concern for the years prior.

The problem is that my superhero power of finding random ways to make money from my SEO skills didn’t mean that I automatically knew anything about being prepared for the taxes I would owe on that money.

It was a bit intense last Saturday morning, walking into H&R Block, knowing that in just an hour, we would know our fate; for better or worse.

Forty-five minutes into our consultation, it was looking as if we were going to owe about a thousand dollars; which wouldn’t have been awful.

But fortunately, and I would even say miraculously, our H&R Block representative found a couple more items that had not been considered yet as tax write-offs; like how I mainly use my phone for managing my side hustles, and the fact I have a room in my house dedicated exclusively to my side hustles, serving as my office.

Plus, our H&R Block representative helped us get set up on a system where we are now able to easily pay back 25% of my side income earnings in advance each quarter, so that there’s no reason for anxiety in paying those taxes next February.

At the 55 minute mark into our hour-long consultation, it was confirmed: Even after the consultation fee for H&R Block, we would still get a few hundred dollars back!

Our sense of relief was actually greater than our sense of celebration.

And it was perfect timing, as that money would ultimately end up covering our “24 hour parent staycation” that began the moment we left the moment we drove out of the H&R Block parking lot.

Stay tuned for that…

1 Comment Posted on fatherhood, finance, new house, parenting, People, Storytelling, Uncategorized

Affording a New Home: How Much of Your Monthly Income Should Go Towards Your Mortgage? 28%? 25%? Less Than 20%?

If your family is currently considering buying a new home, one of the biggest questions should be this:

“What percentage of our household monthly take-home income should go towards our mortgage payment?”

If you depend on the unanimous results of a Google search, the answer is 28%.

If you put your faith in the results of a lender or a mortgage calculator found on the website of a new home development, you may be pleasantly surprised to see how big and nice of a home you can “afford” based on your household monthly income.

However, Dave Ramsey teaches no more than 25% of your household take-home income; in an effort to prevent becoming “house poor”; where you could afford to pay your monthly mortgage but could not live a comfortable lifestyle.

After meeting a 2nd time with our Associate Financial Consultant, Christina Tumbleson at Charles Schwab, where my wife and I recently starting investing our money, we learned that we are spending around 13% of our monthly take-home income on our monthly mortgage.

However, that number was based on the total of both of our full-time salary positions. That does not account for the monthly income I make from my 5 side hustles; for example, I made $531 last month from my two YouTube channels alone.

When we consider all my side hustle income, we can easily yet conservatively count on another 1%.

Therefore, at around 12%, we are fortunately spending a little less than half of the conservative 25% of take-home income Dave Ramsey suggests.

While it is undeniable that at age 37, my wife and I are at solid places in our careers and are being paid accordingly, we also have no other debts other than our home. I have been driving the same 2004 Honda Element for over 13 years now. Not to mention, I spend literally all my free time on my 5 side hustles; which provides passive streams income for our family.

But perhaps most important is the fact our 1900 square feet, 4 bedroom, 2 car garage home is still much more humble than it needs to be, according to popular American dream standards.

The main take-away is this: We choose to live way below our means.

If we wanted to sell our current home, we could pocket an easy $50,000 and then “upgrade” to a half a million dollar home. I could even trade in my old Honda Element for a new Toyota Tacoma.

We could “afford” to do that.

But if I am going to impress anyone by my finances, it’s not going to by how much I spend, but instead, how amazingly little.