It gets tiring being such a nice guy.......

I was thinking this morning how tiring it's been, being such a "nice guy", accentuated by the fact that many of the not-so-nice guys I know are now wealthy.

I had just arose from a night of near-sleep where my two outdoor dogs, or the ones I am training actually, for their absentee wealthy estate owner and known as relatively not such a nice guy, kept me awake half the night barking at shadows and then proceeded to chew up my new lounge chair, which was not cheap. The site that greeted me this morning was my new lounge chair in pieces scattered across the front porch.

I know, they're young dogs, but I have been training them in basic dog commands, come, sit, stay, etc. and have grown quite fond of them as a pair and I thought they liked me. I mean, how could they not? I'm such a nice guy. Although I train them with firmness, it is with affection. And this is how they thanked me.

It then dawned on me, how all us "nice guys" go through this process on a routine basis that usually goes like this; you meet somebody. You're nice to them and help them out, or let them borrow your stuff and then they start to take advantage and then you're not feeling like such a nice guy any more, but it's too late....

Or the girl "friends" back in my school days who I wanted to date seriously, but was too nice to them at the start and then became a trusted friend and the bang-potential went right out the window. Oh boy, that Kurt, he's such a good guy, they would gush. The sweeter of a guy I was, the less chance I had of getting laid. One day, I was letting them cry on my shoulder over some other luckier guy who was kind of a bad boy and the next day, the luckier, not-so-nice guy is getting a blow-job from my special girl "friend." Oh, she's such a good friend........

So pay attention nice guys. Prepare to pay the price..........

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Proof that Facebook is Worthless for Business

I have been attempting a career change since around November of 2014 after twelve years in the chiropractic profession, when I signed up for Realtourvision.com, a real estate virtual tour company that offers virtual real estate tours of properties for sale.

I also built a website concentrating on niche website design using pre-built templates (digimatrix) that can be easily customized, meaning very affordable and slick websites for small businesses.

I entered 2015 with high hopes for both ventures, making do with occasional manual labor jobs to support the startups.

So I published my websites and made it clear on my Facebook account that this is what I was doing and placed information there as well, with links to the sites. So, after almost a year, I haven't received so much as one business lead from my almost 200 "Friends" list, some of whom are very successful, but I have to admit, I haven't sent any leads to my "Friends" either. In my defense, if I am not doing any business, I really don't have the connections to benefit my network.

I think that the term, "Friends" on Facebook should at least be replaced with something like, "People who are watching you to make sure you get no business."

Anyway, I have begun to avoid the Facebook lately, and I swear, my mood has improved immensely.

Uber Update July 26

Again I had what I thought was a stellar night driving for Uber (Friday night), picking up a steady flow of riders, starting at the airport to pick up a handsome young couple, who brought me straight downtown, where the action was already in full swing around 7 p.m.

The best part of the job is definitely meeting all kinds of people, if only for a few minutes, including a few bachelorette party groups of gorgeous young college-age girls, never to be seen again, which ultimately serves strictly as an extraordinary type of torture for me in my middle age.

Looking at the hard numbers this morning, I was again struck by the disappointingly low net income, which means that the pressure is on to find something else, before my car blows up, from all this driving. Here are the numbers:

Mileage: 155.9 To be fair, I do have to drive 34 miles just to get to Uber territory, near the "big city", so that's 72 miles out the window from the start. If you're going to do this, make sure you live closer to town.

Including my 72 mile handicap, with gas at $3.26 this week, and my car that gets 23.5 mpg/city, that works out to 6.63 gallons to go 155.9 miles, or $21.62 in gas. Without the 72 miles, that would be 155.9-72=83.9 miles if I was already living in town. 83.9/23.5=3.57 gallons of gas, equals $11.63 in gas.

Ten trips at $98.19 in fares, less Uber's 20% equals $78.55 net earnings. Less $21.62 in gas equals $56.93 total net income for 7 hours in the car, which comes out to $8.13/hour, so welcome to minimum wage! It just makes me feel really good about all the time, energy and sacrifice I put into earning those two college degrees of mine. What a joke. I do know who's laughing all the way to the bank here and it begins with a big "U" and probably an "F" in there somewhere too.

To make things more depressing, I heard a rumor that the U is going to start charging drivers $10.00 a month to lease their Uber-phones, whether you drive or not, so deduct another $520/year in expenses.

Despite being quite depressed over these numbers, I managed to up my spirits enough to get back out there Saturday night, normally the best night of the week for Uber earnings, and banged out another 7pm to 2am shift in the city, shuttling young people around from bar to bar and from the bar and back home again. The numbers for Saturday night were as follows:

Mileage: 148.5
Gas: 6.32 Gallons @ 23.5 mpg x $3.34/gallon = $21.10
Trips: 12
Hours: 7
Gross Earnings: $137.49
Uber's Take: 20% x 137.49 = $27.50
My income: $109.99 - gas @ $21.10 = $88.89 = $12.70/hour
Average Income per-mile over the last four day period: $2.28/mile(before expenses)

I managed to up my average hourly net income from min. wage to $12.70/hour and that's the best night of the week. So, theoretically if every day was like Saturday and I drove for 7 hours a day 7 days a week and I put 54,020 miles on the car (148 miles x 365 days a year), the absolute best income I could manage over an entire year is just a hair over $32,000 dollars. So there it is.

More realistically, if I just stick with driving Friday and Saturday nights, most of the year, I can bring in an extra $110 + $57 = an extra $170/week multiplied by about 40 weeks a year comes to an extra $6,800/year in earnings, although you would add some major mileage on your vehicle.

In conclusion: Uber, a great part-time gig on your own schedule, one or two weekend nights a week. Not a full-time job, unless your car is invincible, runs on electricity and never needs maintenance.

Best States for Business 2013

Best states for business, from ChiefExecutive.net:

 

Top Ten States for Business

Top Ten (according to Forbes)

1. Utah
2. Virginia
3. North Dakota
4. North Carolina
5. Colorado
6. Nebraska
7. Texas
8. Georgia
9. Oklahoma
10. Iowa