side hustle

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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!

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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.

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So I Guess I’ve Always Been a Side Hustler; Being a “Gum Dealer” in High School and Running a Convenience Store from My College Dorm Room

Looking back, I realize now that I’ve actually always been a side hustler; even in high school and college. Earlier today, I published an article declaring that my 5 SEO side hustles all made me a minimum of $1,000 each in 2018. But that mentality has been a part of me, undeniably, since at least when I was a teenager in high school. (See picture above.)

Here on the first day of 2019, I am learning a little bit more about myself. The fact that I have 5 side hustles as a 37 year-old man makes perfect sense, considering my scheming ways back to when I was a teenager.

When I started high school, I couldn’t help that notice that chewing gum was high in demand in the halls of my high school. It just so happened that it was weekly tradition that I would accompany my mom in buying groceries. I noticed that I could buy a multi-pack of Wrigley’s gum at nearly a wholesale price for $1.25; which contained 10 packs of gum (each of which contained 5 sticks of gum), then I could sell each pack for just a quarter. By the time I sold the 10 packs, when I could easily do in a 10 minute break, I had made $2.50. In other words, I was making 100% profit!

It didn’t took long before I became known as “the gum dealer.”

This was great for me. I got to social with all the different groups of friends, and met new ones, by offering them the best deal on chewing gum during each of our two breaks each day during high school.

It was also during high school that I began making my own videos, on VHS. Not only did I direct a horror movie, called “Frosty Bites”…

But I also filmed hair videos, too…

In case you missed it, I made over $4,000 in 2018 from my most popular YouTube channel and its Amazon links, which focuses on men’s hair and beards. And that’s not counting my 2nd YouTube channel, as well. This is not a coincidence.

Then when I moved into my college dorm, Dorm 15 at Liberty University, I took my gum dealer experience and opened up my own convenience store, using two micro fridges, and buying all my products for wholesale price at WalMart.

I sold soda, Little Debbie snack cakes, Ramen noodles, Hot Pockets, and frozen burritos. I even let my customers heat up their food in my microwave, so they could hang out with me while their food was preparing. I appropriately named my store, The Freshman 15.

Those profits went to financing my mission trips to Thailand in the summers of 2003 and 2004, where I was a 4th grade teacher specializing in ESL…

then teaching conversation English to high school students and adults.

Some things just never change. I am and always have been a side hustler. This is simply part of my identity.