Deryl McKissack is no stranger to spotting toxic traits.

McKissack, 63, is the founder and CEO of Washington D.C.-based construction firm McKissack & McKissack, which she launched with $1,000 from her savings in 1990. She churned through employees who weren’t the right fit in her company’s early years and the business struggled, she says.

Finding the right talent helped grow her company, which now brings in $25 million per year in revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

These three red flags stand out the most when McKissack is hiring employees or evaluating her current talent, she says.

Every boss needs to be able to trust their employees, McKissack says. People who lack integrity are a problem, especially managers who don’t give their teams proper credit.

Alarm bells go off in her head “if someone is saying ‘I did this’ the whole time, and they’re not giving credit to their team,” McKissack says.

McKissack isn’t the only person who says a lack of integrity is a red flag among employees: Heidi K. Gardner, a professional leadership advisor and distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, similarly calls out workers who pass off other people’s work as their own. It’s unethical, and it gives off the impression that you don’t respect your colleagues, Gardner told Make It last year.

“Maybe they’re unable to actually see how much value the people around them bring to their own success,” she said. “And that inability to appreciate other people’s contributions is a huge red flag for me … It’s anti-collaborative.”

Nearly every team, no matter your industry, needs people who can work well with others. That’s difficult when your co-workers don’t like being around you, or vice versa.

McKissack says she needs to actually like her employees’ personalities, because if she doesn’t like to be around you, chances are, clients won’t either. “If I don’t want to be in their presence, then no one wants to be in their presence, usually” she says.

Having a warm, inviting personality at work can potentially take you farther in your career than your capabilities and credentials, self-made millionaire and entrepreneur Steve Adcock told Make It in April.

“Your personality will get you 10 times richer than your intelligence,” said Adcock. “I learned that throughout my career, slowly but surely. I worked with a lot of smart people, no doubt about it. But those smartest people in the office weren’t necessarily the ones getting the raises and promotions.”

McKissack has a three-word mantra for her business: humble, hungry, smart. She says she picked it up from author and business management expert Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Ideal Team Player.”

“We have an insatiable appetite for success,” McKissack wrote on LinkedIn earlier this year. “Humility drives us to make decisions for the collective good … [and] we value emotional intelligence because we know that’s what builds strong relationships.”

Expecting employees to embody those three descriptors — humble, hungry, smart — turned McKissack’s firm into a workforce full of people dedicated to the same mission, rather than one that struggled with low employee engagement, she says.

They’re the “three virtues” of successful team players, according to Lencioni’s book.

“I kept saying, ‘We’ve been stagnant for years. Why am I stagnant?’” says McKissack. “But when I made that decision to make our mission larger than just what we do, bricks and mortar, but make it more about the betterment of mankind, is when we really started changing.”

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The pursuit of happiness — enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as one of our unalienable rights along with life and liberty — is in reality big and daunting. Sometimes, it can feel difficult to know where to start, especially when American culture and conventional wisdom tends to get it so wrong most of the time.

Having spent the last 10 years immersed in the science of happiness and writing my book “New Happy,” I know there are simple yet powerful, research-backed steps you can take to experience more happiness today. The more you practice, the more instinctive they’ll become. 

These five small steps, sprinkled throughout your day, have the potential to transform it. 

It’s far better to share your emotions with someone you trust than to keep your feelings to yourself, research shows. 

For example, sharing positive news with someone in your life can increase your own joy and give them a chance to experience it, too. If someone is there to hold your hand when you’re in pain, it reduces the intensity of your suffering. 

Pursuing meaningful goals is an integral part of living a happy life. But goals that feel overwhelming can lead people to procrastinate. 

Remind yourself that you don’t have to achieve your objective today; you can just move a little bit closer. Every action you take and every forward movement you notice can enhance the hope and motivation you feel.

Start small. Set a timer and say to yourself, “For the next 10 minutes, I’m going to do something that moves me toward my goals.” For example, if your goal is to start your own business, brainstorm potential names or products until the timer goes off. 

Helping other people is one of the most reliable and powerful ways to feel better. Kindness can positively affect your emotional and even physical well-being — lowering blood pressure and cortisol, a stress hormone. 

Take a moment to think about who in your life is having a hard time and what you might do to support them. It can be as simple as sending a text message, sharing a funny video, dropping off a meal, or inviting them to spend time together. 

The culture we live in, which I call Old Happy, teaches us that we need to do everything by ourselves. As a result, you might start to believe that asking for help means you’re “giving up” or “failing.” 

But it actually shows you’re committed to persevering, improving, and growing. When you’re struggling, consider who in your life has done what you’re trying to do and what type of support you need. Then reach out and ask for it. 

We wildly underestimate how much other people want to help us. Since performing acts of kindness makes people happier, you’re giving someone a chance to experience happiness, too. 

Thanks to our brain’s negativity bias and Old Happy’s cultural conditioning, it’s all too easy to focus on what we don’t have: the promotion we haven’t gotten, the item we want to buy, or the ways in which we don’t feel good enough. 

But studies show that the more you refocus your attention on what you do have, the more content you’ll be. So ask yourself: “What’s going right, right now?” 

There’s a lot to be thankful for: a helpful colleague, a chat with a good friend, a delicious meal, or a beautiful sunset. You just have to pause and notice it. 

Stephanie Harrison is the founder of The New Happy, an organization advancing a new philosophy of happiness. She is an expert in happiness, speaker, designer, and author of the book ”New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong.” Follow her on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

Kevin Levu faces unpredictable dangers during his nursing shifts, including the risk of being stabbed or beaten.

A travel nurse, Levu works at Pelican Bay State Prison, which is home to some of the most violent inmates in California. “You’re dealing with some of the most dangerous people who have violated other people’s rights or have taken lives,” he tells CNBC Make It.

But “it is what it is,” Levu says. “I just do my job and try my best to care for people.”

An army veteran who studied nursing as part of active duty, Levu says his military training prepared him for the role.

“I’m not afraid, but I’m aware — I treat them like prisoners of war,” he says, “I don’t turn my back to them, I don’t leave pens out, I make sure I have all my equipment — like prison keys — always on me.”

As the 2,200-inmate penitentiary’s clinic nurse, Levu mans the medical clinic, doles out medications, monitors inmates on suicide watch and responds to medical emergencies resulting from prison violence.

Travel nurses usually work short-term contracts in places with staffing shortages around the U.S., commonly in hospitals or long-term care facilities.

But there’s also high demand for travel nurses in correctional facilities, which tend to pay better due to the added risk and stress that comes with the job. The extra pay is what attracted Levu to a six-month contract at Pelican Bay, in Crescent City in Northern California.

“I don’t want to hold a limit over what’s going to make me more money,” says Levu, who is projected to earn about $112,000 in 2024. Levu works a full-time schedule with occasional overtime, covering the morning shift from 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., five days a week.

Being a travel nurse “provides a lot of freedom in my life,” he says. “For me, it’s the benefit of choosing how long I work somewhere, negotiating my pay and feeling like I’m being paid what I’m worth.”

As a first-generation American, Levu wanted to be a soldier as far back as he can remember. He grew up in an “extremely pro-American” Vietnamese family, with parents who fled their country after the communist government took power.

In 2017, when Levu graduated from high school at 17, he asked his parents to sign a consent form so he could join the army, although it took a “few weeks” to convince his mother, he says.

However, he wasn’t interested in being a basic infantry enlistee; Levu wanted to find a role that would be useful when he left the army.

A recruiter nudged him toward nursing, and after three months of basic training in Oklahoma, Levu went to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to study to become a licensed vocational nurse.

The responsibility of the job didn’t really hit him until early in his training, says Levu. He witnessed his “first CPR incident” when a baby in a neonatal intensive care unit suffered cardiac arrest.

“The alarms were blaring, the baby was non-responsive and the parents were screaming in the background,” says Levu. “It felt like an experience where the world suddenly just feels so big.”

Doctors rushed in and were able to resuscitate the baby, but the incident deeply affected Levu: “I didn’t have a passion for nursing until I experienced life being lost.”

Seeing the assured competence of senior nurses and doctors as they worked “definitely fueled my ambition,” he says. “They were like ‘I’m here for you, I’m going get you out of this’ — that really inspired me.”

When Levu was a baby, his father opened a convenience store, “Kevin 99 Cents Plus,” named after Levu, which became successful and allowed his parents to later invest in other properties, including homes and an almond farm.

“Seeing my parents’ success and how hard they worked gave me a sense of, ‘You can do it too,’” says Levu, who started working in the shop when he was about 9. “Knowing they worked 12 hours a day for the first 10 to 15 years [they were in the U.S.] made me feel like I need to achieve and strive further than my parents.”

In 2020, Levu left active duty and became a reservist living in Fresno, California, with his parents. While there, he took pre-requisite courses at Fresno City College to become a registered nurse, a certification that has a wider scope of practice and greater autonomy over patients compared with LVNs. He also worked mostly part-time for about $20 per hour as a nurse at a long-term care facility.

Travel nursing was always in the back of his mind, though, “especially when I came home around the end of [the Covid-19 lockdowns] and saw these job listings for like $50 to $60 an hour,” he says. “I was like, ‘Whoa, my life can always revolve around that.’”

In 2023, Levu put his studies on hold and signed a short-term contract to be a travel nurse at a county jail in Placerville, California.

While the job initially paid an hourly rate of about $20, his overall pay was higher due to a tax-free reimbursement of around $1,000 per week for housing expenses. Reimbursements or stipends are common incentives for travel nurses, and are intended to cover rent and other costs that come with being away from home.

In May 2024, Levu signed a six-month contract to work at Pelican Bay, which increased his regular hourly rate to $42. Along with his hourly pay, he receives a weekly tax-free reimbursement of $1,080. The combination of his hourly pay and the reimbursement more than doubled his 2023 income of $56,600.

“This is the first time I’ve ever made over six figures compared to my other jobs and it’s just different,” says Levu. With the increased income comes a sense of “relief” knowing there’s more “breathing space” in his monthly budget, he says.

As a clinic nurse at Pelican Bay, Levu begins his workday by walking through a series of security checkpoints before reaching the armory, where he collects prison keys and a stab vest engineered to resist knife attacks.

Most of the work is low-key, but the threat of violence is always present and when it happens, Levu has to be ready. 

If a call comes through the radio, or there’s a cell block alarm, “everybody has to respond,” Levu says. Equipped with gloves and a fanny pack full of medical equipment, Levu will grab a gurney if he’s in the clinic and run along with correctional officers to assist any injured inmates.

Most violent incidents are gang-related, as gangs exert significant influence within the prison by enforcing their own rules and codes of conduct.

With prisons, you’re stepping into a “pre-established culture,” says Levu. Unlike a traditional hospital where patients come to you, “it’s kind of like you’re going to these people’s homes.”

The contrast between the prison environment and the outside world can be jarring too. 

“I have blood on my hands, and then later my shift ends,” Levu says. In the outside world, “people are greeting me at the grocery store, and I’m like, ‘Dude, this feels a little unreal.’”

On the other hand, working in a prison gives Levu perspective about his own freedom: “The beach is three minutes away from my house, but for some of these inmates it might as well be 1,000 miles away, because they’re never getting out.”

Here’s how Levu spent his money in June 2024.

• Savings and investments: $9,063 toward savings, a Roth IRA and a health savings account
• Housing and utilities: $1,450 for a one-bedroom rental
• Food: $836 for groceries and the occasional takeout order
• Discretionary: $534 for household goods and clothes
• Insurance: $379 for health, dental, concealed weapon, auto and life insurance
• Gas: $174
• Phone: $162
• Subscriptions and memberships: $79 for his gym, Netflix, Spotify and Patreon

A self-described “frugal person,” Levu rents a pre-furnished one-bedroom home in nearby Brookings, Oregon, for $1,450 per month, which comes with utilities included. When he’s not working, “I just stay home, play video games, or I hang around on the beach,” he says. “I try to keep costs low.”

Living with his parents until summer 2023 allowed him to pay off his 2018 Toyota Tacoma and a $6,000 KLX 230 motorcycle, so his only transportation expense is gas.

One relatively big expense is food: “I’ll splurge on something like ribeye steaks. It’s like my little treat.”​

Since becoming a travel nurse in 2023, Levu has been putting money aside into investment and savings accounts, although he doesn’t have any particular goals with the money.

Levu tends to make piece-meal contributions every few weeks, typically whatever is left in his checking account: “The more I can shovel into investments, the better.” He was able to save over $9,000 in June, but doesn’t usually contribute that much per month.

He has a mix of cash savings and investments, including a brokerage account and certificate of deposit. All told, he has about $16,000 in savings and $35,000 in investments as of June.

Levu plans to eventually to go back to school and become a registered nurse, perhaps starting in 2025. His parents have been supportive about going back to school, he says.  

“Corrections isn’t something I plan on doing on a long-term basis,” he says. “I have long-term aspirations that include achieving a higher level of care and knowledge [so] that I’m able to treat patients in the I.C.U. and the E.R. and anywhere in the world.”​

For now, he will likely extend his contract at Pelican Bay until the end of the year. He sees travel nursing as a way to gain “capital, work experience and experience something outside of the norm.”​

He also thinks he’s uniquely suited to be a travel nurse, based on his military experience. “It’s definitely taught me a lot of perseverance,” Levu says. “It taught me how to be flexible, I can up and go and be ready for any moment.”

He might even join the army again as a commissioned nurse, which would come with a higher ranking and new duties, potentially including managing medical staff.

“I really like helping soldiers,” says Levu, “With my family being refugees from Vietnam, that was another kind of aspect to it. It’s like giving back to what the country had provided for us.“

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Moses Lin says he’ll never consider going back to college, despite being one semester shy of graduating with a bachelor’s degree.

In 2011, Lin joined the U.S. Marine Corps and, after his enlistment ended in 2014, enrolled at Vanguard University of Southern California.

“I knew that if I went to college and took a traditional route, I’d be hundreds of thousands in debt,” he says. “I just didn’t want to start my life that way.”

Lin started a YouTube channel during college, where he posted acoustic covers of pop songs, and began teaching guitar lessons for money. By the spring of his senior year in 2017, he decided to quit school and give a full-time music career a shot.

Now, after years of building his own business as a traveling wedding guitarist and investing his earnings into real estate, Lin, 31, is on track to make $500,000 this year.

Lin says much of his success comes down to honing one important skill.

“I think learning how to learn is the most underrated skill,” Lin tells CNBC Make It. “As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned video editing, CSS coding [and] all these random talents.”

When it comes to “almost anything creative, I know how to teach myself that, and I know how to find the information, or find the experts to figure it out,” he continues.

Lin taught himself everything when it comes to building his business as a wedding guitarist. He charges between $6,000 and $15,000 for gigs, and couples cover travel expenses for himself and his team, which includes a sound engineer and production assistant.

He has also recently gotten into coaching to help other musicians grow their businesses. He charges $1,500 per hour-long session and has mentored clients in Ireland, Singapore, Dubai and across the U.S.

Another key to Lin’s success is setting ambitious goals and telling everyone about them.

When CNBC Make It spoke with him two years ago, he set a goal to have a net worth of $1 million by the time he was 30 — he reached that goal a few weeks shy of his 31st birthday.

“I’ve always been a fan of: make a crazy goal, tell everyone what your goal is, and then you have to make it,” he says.

Getting other people involved in your goal-setting builds a sense of accountability. Plus, since a lot of his work is referral-driven, repeating his goals out loud helps him get connected with people who can help make them happen.

“If you don’t set a goal, you’re just clocking in,” Lin says. “You’ll look back and think, ‘Oh, I think I did OK,’ but you have nothing to measure against.”

Lin currently has eight income properties in Little Rock, Arkansas, and nets $2,500 per month in rent. It’s not enough to live off of, but his goal with real estate is to increase his net worth over the long term.

“I spend less than I make, my net worth has appreciated with my portfolio and I’m happy doing what I want to do,” he says.

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When you get an email or see a headline telling you there has been a data breach at a company you do business with, the natural instinct may be to roll your eyes and go about your day.

In the first half of 2024, more than a billion people saw their information leaked online as the result of a data breach, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center — a nearly 500% increase from the same period in 2023.

So if you feel like recent high-profile breaches at Ticketmaster and AT&T are drops in a very large bucket, no one would blame you. In fact, cybersecurity experts have a name for it: “breach fatigue.”

“People might say, ‘Oh, here’s another one and stick it in the drawer and don’t do anything,’” says Michael Bruemmer, head of global data breach resolution at Experian. “That’s the worst thing you can do.”

Following a breach, depending on which information was compromised, you may find yourself on the receiving end of targeted scams or picking up the pieces after identity thieves open lines of credit in your name. Here’s how to protect yourself, and what to do if you’re part of a breach.

Unless you’re somehow operating off the grid, the odds are very high that a good chunk of your information is floating around on the web, cybersecurity experts say.

“I operate under the assumption that pretty much all my information is out there. And that’s a pretty reasonable assumption,” says Ed Skoudis, president at SANS Technology Institute.

Nevertheless, the more information that fraudsters can piece together about you, the higher risk you run of falling victim to scams and identity theft. Should a bad actor get ahold of your email address and password during a data breach, for instance, things can spiral further out of control, Skoudis says.

DON’T MISS: Achieve Financial Wellness: Be Happier, Wealthier & More Financially Secure 

“If you have the same password anywhere else, they can log in there as well,” he says. “If they compromised your health-care provider, they can use more targeted attacks because now they know symptoms or diseases you suffer from. If it’s a news site, now they know about your politics and what you like to read.”

To keep your information as private as possible, practice these online hygiene tips from cybersecurity experts.

1. Use a password manager

Put the days of remembering a slew of passwords behind you, and sign up for a service that does it for you.

“A password manager is a really good thing,” says Bruemmer. “You can store all your passwords in one spot with only having to remember one master password. And it also creates unique and complex passwords that you don’t have to remember, automatically.”

2. Avoid links from strangers

If you receive an email from someone not in your address book or a text from an unfamiliar number, avoid clicking on any link therein, says Bruemmer. If they claim to be representing a business, such as a package delivery service, navigate directly to that business’ website.

Don’t pick up for unfamiliar callers, either. Even if you hang up right away, you’ve alerted would-be fraudsters that yours is a working number. “It only takes a 10-second voice-print for them to be able to clone your voice and be able to deepfake that,” says Bruemmer.

3. Skip QR codes when possible

It’s as good a reason as any to ask for a paper menu, says Bruemmer. “No human being can tell a good QR code from one that’s going to hack into your phone and install malware.”

4. Always use credit online

If a fraudster gets hold of your payment credentials, you’ll have a much easier time if you paid with a credit card, which comes with better fraud protections than your debit card.

“If it’s a debit card, they can empty my account. And I got nothing,” says Skoudis. “I can say, ‘This is a fraudulent thing.’ But I don’t have the money until that whole fraud investigation is finished.”

Even if you’re careful, you still may receive word that a company you do business with has lost your information to hackers.

Here’s what to do if and when that happens.

1. Don’t bury your head in the sand

It’s important to know what information of yours is out there. If you receive a notice of a breach in the mail or via email, it’s essential to read it, says Bruemmer.

“It will tell you what happened, why it happened and how to protect yourself,” he says.

2. Change your passwords

If you don’t have a password manager yet, be sure to change your password for the site where the breach occurred and for any other where you might use the same password. Enter your email address at HaveIBeenPwned.com to see where your personal information may have been compromised.

3. Be vigilant

Following a breach, monitor your credit card statements for any fishy charges, even if the process seems tedious, says Skoudis. “Reviewing your financial statements sucks, but it’s just one of those things we adults have to do.”

Keep an eye on your credit score, too. Big changes in your score, available through many online bank and credit accounts, could indicate fraudulent financial activity, Skoudis says.

You’d also be wise to regularly request copies of your credit reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You can contact one of the agencies and ask that a free fraud alert be placed on your account.

4. Act quickly

If you do see something alarming on your credit history, like a new credit line in your name, time is of the essence, says Bruemmer.

“The most important thing is reaching out to the credit bureau and saying, ‘Hey, I’ve seen this activity,’” he says. “And then let that fraud resolution agent guide you through the steps to be able to dispute that particular inquiry or new line of credit.”

You’d also be wise to report any suspected identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission and to your local police department, who will issue you a police report.

“If you have any lost wages, you may have to make an insurance claim,” says Bruemmer. “Whether it’s identity theft protection or insurance, having that police report gives you the freedom to be able to say this is what happened and why it happened, and you’re covered.”

Want to stop worrying about money? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course Achieve Financial Wellness: Be Happier, Wealthier & More Financially Secure. We’ll teach you the psychology of money, how to manage your stress and create healthy habits, and simple ways to boost your savings, get out of debt and invest for the future. Start today and use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off through Sept. 2, 2024.

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