Back in 2007, I dropped out of college, despite owing about $50,000 in student loans. Believe it or not, it was the smart choice for me at the time. 

None of my friends who’d graduated were landing jobs. I knew I’d need to go even further into debt to finish my degree. And I’d already landed a great position as a public policy assistant. 

Still, starting out on such shaky financial ground was far from ideal.

Feeling uneasy about quitting school, I thought all I could do was grind it out at my job. But I’d found a passion that got me excited outside of work: video creation, which included capturing moments and telling stories. I was thrilled when I discovered this site called YouTube where I could upload my videos for free and share the links with friends.

At the same time, social media platforms like Facebook and then Twitter were becoming popular — and I realized I was pretty good at figuring out how to use them. 

I had no idea how much of a game-changer these discoveries would be. Fifteen years later, my fun hobby has become my career: It allows me to make about $18,000 a month in passive income, according to my calculations from a recent month’s deposits, and work only four hours a day.

A couple years after I dropped out of college, a friend pointed out that I had a knack for understanding video content and social media platforms. She suggested I could do it professionally. 

It was the aha moment that changed everything. My side projects weren’t just fun. They were teaching me valuable skills that were increasingly in demand. 

This led me to take the strategies I was learning about content and social media and start a side hustle. I was basically a one-woman show posting on Facebook and Twitter for small businesses to help bring them brand awareness.

I worked evenings and weekends for over a year before I quit my full-time job in 2010 to go all in on my agency.

To market my new business, I leveraged my video editing skills to share tips and tricks around social media marketing, including tutorials, resource recommendations, and content strategies. 

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During a particularly tough month with almost no revenue for the agency, I decided to try something new: selling a course teaching businesses how to create their own videos. I pitched the course to my modest email list of a couple hundred people, offering a special pre-launch price for early sign-ups. 

That was my first taste of passive income — as I recall it, I made about $1,000 in revenue in a single day from one email. 

The early validation and surge to my bank account was all the momentum I needed to create the content, which I delivered via live hour-long webinars once a week for six weeks. 

It took me about 30 hours in total to make and teach the course. But once the course was created, it became an easy source of passive income as I made it available for purchase on my website and social media channels from that point forward. 

Over a decade later, my passive income portfolio has evolved significantly.

I’ve created more than 1,000 videos about productivity and brand-building for my YouTube channel, AmyTV. Each one takes me about an hour to prepare and another hour to film, and can continue earning money indefinitely through advertising revenue and more. 

For example, a video I posted in December 2020 called “Plan Your Best Year Ever! My 7 Step Goal Setting Process” keeps growing in views every month and directing people to purchase my planner.

My community began asking time and again for something that laid out my philosophy on video content strategy. I realized that my audience was telling me they’d buy books, so I started writing them. 

I began with, “Vlog Like a Boss: How To Kill It Online With Video Blogging.” Then “Good Morning, Good Life: 5 Simple Habits to Master Your Mornings and Upgrade Your Life.” Most recently, I published “365 Days of Good Morning, Good Life: Daily Reflections to Help You Go After the Life You Want.”

I self-published through Amazon’s print-on-demand and audiobook creation platforms. Each book took an average of three weeks to write, followed by a couple months of design to get it ready for print and e-book formats. Since 2017, the three books have sold about 40,000 copies.

“Good Morning, Good Life” inspired my first non-book product: a paper planner helping people streamline their morning routines and be more productive. This has brought in over $140,000 in sales.

On average, my personal brand brings in about $18,000 monthly in passive income between YouTube ads, affiliate revenue, brand deals, and books and other products sold. 

I’ve learned that when you show up in service of others, amazing things can happen — including making more money for a better life.

Amy Landino is a personal brand coach and the award-winning creator of AmyTV on YouTube. Follow her on Instagram.

Want to make extra money outside of your day job? Sign up for CNBC’s online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories.

Even billionaires think about starting side hustles.

If Mark Cuban were 16 years old again and “needed to make some extra money,” he’d start one specific side hustle in just three steps, he tells CNBC Make It.

First, he’d learn how to write prompts for artificial intelligence language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. Next, he’d teach his friends how to use those prompts on their school papers. “Then, I would go to businesses, particularly small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t understand AI yet,” says Cuban. “Doesn’t matter if I’m 16, I’d be teaching them as well.”

More than half of Gen Zers in the U.S. currently have side hustles, a LendingTree report found in February. AI prompt engineering — or, the ability to phrase inquiries to chatbots to get desired responses — can be a particularly lucrative opportunity. The average pay for AI tutors starts at about $30,000 per year, and full-time AI prompt engineers can make up to $129,500, according to job board platform ZipRecruiter.

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You don’t need a college degree to become an AI prompt engineer, but you do need practice — and, often, certifications — to learn how those large language models operate. Some online certification courses, like Vanderbilt University or IBM’s offerings on Coursera, say you can master the basics in one month.

Cuban’s hypothetical side hustle is more high-tech than his actual first job, selling garbage bags door-to-door to his neighbors outside of Pittsburgh at age 12 to save up for a new pair of basketball shoes. He continued to earn extra cash as a teenager by selling collectibles like baseball cards, stamps, and coins, eventually helping him pay to attend Indiana University. There, he bartended, hosted parties with cover charges and even picked up work as a dance instructor.

After a brief post-college stint in banking, Cuban turned to entrepreneurship full-time. He sold his first company, a software startup called MicroSolutions, to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990. His second company, audio streaming service Broadcast.com, made him a billionaire when he sold it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in 1999.

Today, Cuban has a net worth of $5.7 billion, according to a Forbes estimate. He spends much of his time advocating for his online pharmacy Cost Plus Drugs, which aims to make a variety of common prescription drugs more affordable by selling them at cost, plus a 15% markup.

 “I was a hustler … I have always been selling,” he said during an episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank” that aired in 2016. “I always had something going on. That was just my nature.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Mark Cuban sold garbage bags door-to-door at age 12.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.

Want to make extra money outside of your day job? Sign up for CNBC’s online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories.

There’s no such thing as a perfect parent, says Tovah Klein.

“Being a parent is so humbling. It’s throwing at us probably daily [reminders that] we are far from perfect,” says Klein, a child psychologist, author and director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development.

Fortunately, making mistakes and owning up to them is one way that parents can actually help teach their kids how to become healthy, successful adults. “Perfection is impossible, but it’s also important that we’re not [perfect], because our children learn how to handle real life,” Klein tells CNBC Make It.

Even so-called experts are no exception. In her latest book “Raising Resilience,” which was published in September, Klein shares some examples of moments she let her emotions get the better of her when raising her own three now-grown children.

Like most parents, Klein raised her voice in heated moments on more than one occasion: “I could really yell at my kids,” she says. She points to “rough times” in the evenings when her children were younger and could become rowdy between dinner and bedtime.

The rowdiness could sometimes devolve into loud arguments that left Klein “embarrassed if people would have come over to my house at 6 p.m.,” she says. Yelling is common, even understandable, in the heat of an argument, she adds — but it’s far from ideal, and parents should commit to repairing the situation once everyone has calmed down.

“I wish I had never been that parent who went over the top and really got into battles with my children. But I did,” Klein says. “And, when I did, I had to very shamelessly own it.”

In her book, Klein writes about how these difficult moments create a “disconnection” in the relationship that can have harmful effects if they go unaddressed. Raising your voice or lashing out, even in a heated moment like a toddler’s tantrum, can be disruptive and potentially scary for the child. 

A child might mistake their parent’s outburst as something more serious and long-lasting. That can lead to self-blaming and shame, which can cause negative long-term effects to their mental health. Children who are regularly yelled at are more likely to develop behavioral problems, low self-esteem and depression, according to a 2013 study published in The Journal of Child Development.

Parents should quickly apologize to repair the relationship and put their child’s mind at ease, says Klein. She recommends being “honest and direct.” That can be as simple as saying, “I’m sorry I yelled,” or, “I apologize. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Apologizing models exactly the sort of positive, mature behaviors parents want their children to emulate, according to Klein. It “brings relief to your child and provides a model of how to deal with anger and disruptions in other relationships in their lives” going forward, she writes in her book.

Accepting the fact that you can never be perfect, and being open with your kids about your mistakes, will benefit both you as a parent and your kids as they grow into mature adults, says Klein.

“I’m most proud of the moments that I could catch myself and [remember], ‘You’ve got to be the adult in this room,’ even when it was really hard to be,” she says.

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 50% off through November 26, 2024.

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Picture this common scenario: Person #1 is in the middle of sharing something meaningful with Person #2. Suddenly, they notice Person #2 is scrolling through their phone instead of listening.

Can you relate to Person #1 or Person #2 — or maybe both?

Chances are, you’ve been on both sides of phubbing, or “phone snubbing.” Phubbing sends a subtle but powerful message: “My phone is more important and interesting than you.”

In my research on emotionally intelligent digital etiquette, I’ve found that phubbing erodes trust and weakens connections, leaving others feeling lonely, insecure, resentful — and dissatisfied in their relationship with you. 

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Phubbing is associated with a lower sense of social awareness. In public settings, people often resort to phubbing to avoid face-to-face conversations.

At the same time, this behavior has become so automatic and compulsive that many of us don’t realize we’re doing it.

Emotionally intelligent people recognize this blind spot. Instead of letting their phone control their attention, they take the following three steps to stay present.

Emotionally intelligent people set clear intentions for when and how they’ll use their phones, especially in social settings. To reduce the temptation to check their emails or feeds, they plan ahead with “if-then” statements to cut down on decision fatigue.

For example:

• “If I’m having a meal with someone, then I’ll put my phone on silent and wait until the meal is over to check it.”
• “If I remember something I need to do on my phone during a work meeting, then I’ll jot it down on a sticky note and handle it after the meeting.”
• “If I absolutely need to check my phone during a conversation, then I’ll first inform the other person and explain what I’m doing.”

Instead of getting overly critical of themselves when they do slip, they employ the same approach to repair relationships: “If I realize my eyes are on my phone instead of the person I’m talking to, then I will put away my phone and say, ‘I’m so sorry about that, you have my full attention.’”

Merely having your phone within reach – even when it’s turned off – reduces cognitive capacity, studies have shown.

Emotionally intelligent people have a heightened awareness of human tendencies and use all the tools at their disposal to make sure their behavior aligns with their interpersonal goals.

To achieve greater mental freedom and productivity, emotionally intelligent people create physical barriers between themselves and their devices by leaving their phones in their pockets or in a different room.

When self-discipline falters — as it inevitably does, from time to time — these environmental frictions make it harder to mindlessly reach for the phone. This safeguards focus and reduces the risk of derailing meaningful interactions.

Constant and unpredictable phone notifications keep our brains in a highly reactive and excitable state. It takes an average of 23 minutes to regain focus after checking a phone, research finds. These distractions pull us away from meaningful work and interactions, often without us even realizing it.

Emotional intelligent people understand the importance of managing dopamine-driven impulses. By intentionally pausing their phone use — whether through scheduled breaks or downtime apps — they regain control over their attention and focus.

To eliminate digital distractions during conversations or team sessions, turn off non-essential notifications and switch your phone to “Do not disturb” mode.

Designate “phone-free” zones on the dinner table or in the bedroom, and make pacts with family, friends or colleagues to ensure genuine presence and connection.

By planning your phone usage, setting boundaries, and managing notifications, you can break the habit of phubbing and foster deeper, more meaningful connections. Your phone will always be there — but the moment in front of you won’t be.

Dr. Jenny Woo is a Harvard-trained educator, EQ researcher, and founder/CEO of Mind Brain Emotion. She created a series of educational card games and mental health tools to help kids and adults develop human skills in the age of AI. Her award-winning card games, the 52 Essential Relationship Skills, 52 Essential Critical Thinking, and 52 Essential Conversations are used in 50+ countries. Follow her on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 50% off through Nov. 26, 2024.

Victoria Carroll began doing voiceover work by chance.

The 33-year-old started her career as an actor and, after performing in a play in the Czech Republic in 2015, an audience member asked if she’d audition to voice a character in a video game called “Kingdom Come: Deliverance.” Carroll agreed, got the gig, and realized voiceover work might be a good moneymaking avenue.

She’s since built a full-time freelance career as a voiceover artist, recording an array of different types of content and working with companies including “Google, Apple, Nike, National Geographic, Adidas, Pepsi, Coke,” she says. She finds most of her work through Fiverr, she says, where her gigs start at $30 for 50 words.

She brought in more than $251,000 doing voiceovers in 2023, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. For anyone else keen to make it in a similar career, here’s her advice.

Carroll recommends putting in long hours and keeping prices minimal at first.

She created her Fiverr profile in 2018 “and didn’t say no to any work at the start,” she says. “And I was working sometimes literally 18-hour days and working seven days a week.” It was hard, but she stands by that level of dedication to building her businesses and client base.

She also kept her prices low to attract customers — sometimes she even did work for free to build up her portfolio. She’s in touch with other successful Fiverr freelancers “and we all started the same way,” she says, “really low prices and really long hours.”

Carroll also advises making sure your customer service is top notch.

“You want to respond to client requests really quickly,” she says. “You want to deliver really good work.” She always makes sure she understands exactly what the customer wants, delivers high-quality voiceovers and fixes anything they’re unhappy with.

Generally speaking, Carroll will only do one free revision. After that, she’ll charge for changes. The policy has “saved me a lot of strife,” she says. Still, if a client is willing to pay, she’s happy to keep tweaking. She recently worked with someone who asked for six revisions altogether.

Delivering high quality work and agreeing to revisions ensures your clients feel good about the product. Plus, especially on a freelance marketplace like Fiverr, “it’s really important that you get good reviews,” she says, adding that that “lets the Fiverr algorithm know that you are a quality seller and helps promote you more.”

Finally, Carroll recommends investing in good tech.

“You have to have a pretty good quality mic” to create those recordings, she says. She started out with a snowball mic, which these days goes for about $50. She then upgraded to a Shure SM7, which can go for about $400.

You’ll also want a quiet place to record. “99.9% of the voiceover actors I know record in a closet,” she says. “It’s small, it’s quiet. Clothing is a really good buffer for sound.” Some people add extra sound paneling as well. Carroll, who lives in Los Angeles, records in her closet or a home studio.

Want to earn more money at work? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Negotiate a Higher Salary. Expert instructors will teach you the skills you need to get a bigger paycheck, including how to prepare and build your confidence, what to do and say, and how to craft a counteroffer. Pre-register now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 50% off through Nov. 26, 2024.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.