010 - Uber

Hello everybody! I remember the first time I rode in an Uber. It was in San Diego late summer two thousand fourteen. I had flown in from Chicago to a network marketing training event. there were thousands of people in town, it was really amazing! The weather was incredible and I took a shuttle from the airport to the hotel and literally walked everywhere. There are all of our friends in the company were all over town, and we got together and made our way to the event and to all the training sessions and it's just a really exciting time to be in San Diego.

I remember my friend Patty who was there from Chicago as well made a suggestion for dinner one night she said “let's go get Ramen” and I said “that sounds awesome I know the perfect spot it's called Underbelly and it's over in Little Italy” which generally make a lot of sense but I'll tell you that place is amazing! I'll link it in the show notes in case you ever want to check it out.

Anyway, I met up with Patty at our hotel in she said let's take an Uber. I'm like, really? they've got Uber down here? and she said yeah let's do it so we got picked up by an Uber and talked to the driver on our way over to our dinner and actually walked around afterwards and walk back to our hotel because you're pretty close.

It was kind of a neat experience to be in the car with Uber driver to pick his brain about why he was driving, what attracted him to it, what he liked about it, if you had another job or business, if he was in school. We asked him a bunch of questions. It was actually a really nice conversation even though is a short drive and I remember distinctly thinking this is a really cool deal for someone.

When I got back to Chicago, we lived in an amazing place right off Michigan Avenue and we're very close to all of the bus lines and the “L” and we could take taxis anywhere, but I made a decision at that point if I was going to take a taxi I was gonna take an Uber. I would rather take an Uber and support somebody who was a small business owner, that was really the way I looked at it, I wanted to support this person's business rather than put my money into a taxi driver. now I have all kinds of issues with taxi drivers given that I've lived in a city like Chicago and I've traveled a ton, so to get somebody that was a small business owner and his own car and to see what kind of experience I would have was really pretty cool.

So I really really love supporting Uber drivers going back to my days in Chicago and I also travel a lot for business at the time and I was able to support Uber drivers literally all over the country in my travels.

One of my favorite stories was in Chicago, I was riding with this gentleman, he was probably in his mid sixties I'm guessing. He was definitely retired. He had on a Vietnam Vet baseball cap and I was really interested in his story. We were in the car for about ten minutes so I asked him  how we like driving for Uber and he said “no I like it, I enjoy it, I get a lot of variety out of it.”

I go “what's your favorite part about it” he said, “well I'll tell ya, if I stayed at home with my wife and watch the news all day long and that's all we did, I'd probably kill her!” and I had to laugh! I mean, it was hysterical, but he was serious! This gave him an opportunity to get out of the house and interact with people and also have quality time with his wife when they were together. So he had a really good reason for it, he just told the story in a funny way.

I was on business in San Francisco at one point this last year and I remember sitting in an Uber with a gentlemen and looking at its profile and it showed that he had twenty thousand rides and I was so impressed by that that Uber started in San Francisco so it made sense that the earliest adopters of being drivers was in San Francisco but he'd only been driving for about five years any amassed twenty thousand rides over that time says pretty amazing I was really impressed with that any clearly did it and a full time way even though we had a real estate business on the side but he was really interesting as well.

so I've always made it a point to get to know the Uber drivers that I'm writing within learning their stories and finding out  is it their main job or is it their main business or do they have a side business are they going to school and I really learned a lot about these people and I've come to be really impressed with their stories for the most part

let's fast forward to last year we had moved to Dallas and settled in in April and it was really exciting time things are going well for us we love the quality of life we love the cost of living we're settling in and it was about middle of summer and we were basically just rolling along through life when I got the call from my company and they told me that they were letting me go and I don't know if you've ever been in that situation before but  it's not something that you necessarily expect or you look forward to. It's really something that sometimes comes as a shock.

I'm in sales I've been in sales my entire life and I've been through this before. I've been in a situation where I've been let go from a company for whatever reason whether it's side economic decisions corporate decisions performance decisions all these types of things happen when you're in the sales business and all I can say is I'm responsible for what happened and that I'm learning from that experience and that I plan to take that knowledge going forward into this next phase of my life.

Now I'm not gonna lie, it was scary! We're living in an area where the cost of living was lower but we were also a two income family and we were definitely feeling like we're getting headed in the right direction from a saving standpoint and looking forward to buying a home here in north Dallas I needed to create income right away savings was not an option the rent was due the bills had to be paid we needed have food and gas and make it from month to month.

I really felt like I was letting my family down again that fear that we could lose our apartment or cars or have our credit damaged really creeped in I didn't want to do that to my family I really needed to get busy and get into action.

I've been in my industry for fifteen years and perhaps I needed to take a look at where I was and where I wanted to go in this next phase of my career. I took the opportunity to explore my options and with the love and support of my wife and my family she picked up the pace and work harder and I decided to start driving for Uber.

It gave me a lot of flexibility, I was able to drive six days a week and gave me flexibility in the middle of the day to do all kinds of interviewing and contacting and networking and exploring my options. It also helped discover financial commitments and I was able to support my family through that time over the course of about seven months.

I tried to do some different things that I thought would be a great opportunity for me and my family. One was an artificial turf company that had been really successful in Southern California and Arizona and I was hoping to have an opportunity to help grow that business here in Dallas but it turned out the funding wasn't quite there.

I also worked on a business venture over the quite a bit of time involving a travel membership. Now this really got very close I felt but in the end the funding just wasn't there and so I ended up not getting to go forward with that.

At the end I did some contract telemarketing which put me back on the phones, dialing for dollars. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about myself but all the while I was driving for Uber and I was building up some experience and I was making connections.

Over that time, about eight months from July to March I amassed over 855 rides. I have a 4.95 Star Rating. I'm pretty proud of that! And I’ve met all types of riders but really the decision had to be to put my family first. These entrepreneurial spasms I call them, really weren't working out for me so I spoke with my wife and she said are you ready to put your family first and I said yes.

So I decided to go back to my industry and I reached out to my network and actually found a friend who's an owner of a company who had faith in me and he gave me an opportunity to come back to our industry. There’s no coincidence that I was doing contract telemarketing and that’s exactly what I'm doing now. I'm on the phones every day reaching out and connecting with people and evolving my relationships with these contacts in our industry.

And I have great confidence that I'll be building a significant business over the coming months and years. I'm a better worker., I have incredible gratitude for where I am today and I'm still driving for Uber part time which helps to save money for the future and that home we plan to buy as soon as we possibly can.

Every night when I first start driving I call my brother Paul back in LA, he's my good luck charm! We talk about a lot of stuff, family, sports, politics, just life. He's gonna move to Texas some day and I'm really looking forward to it. It keeps us connected, I really think we've gotten closer as a result! And every time we talk I get a great ride which that's the reason why he is my good luck charm!

Have you ever thought about driving for Uber or lift or any of the other rideshare services? have you spent much time in the back seat of and Uber as a passenger? what's your experience been like?

I thought I'd share some statistics, actually some survey results, based on a survey from 2017 by The Rideshare Guy. Now he's an absolute industry leader in this space he's got a blog he's got a podcast he's got a youtube channel he puts out tons of content that's really really valuable to people that are driving in the industry and if you're looking at driving for Uber or Lyft I strongly suggest you tap into his content.

He did the survey of about 1,150 respondents back in 2017, they all drove for either Uber or lyft fifty percent of the respondents were overall satisfied with their experience driving for these right your companies the most important aspect from the survey was the pay that they were receiving followed by flexibility those certainly were my most important factors fifty two percent needed extra money and twelve percent had gotten laid off while eight percent wanted to pass the time in a more constructive way so I could relate to at least two of those three somehow and I think they're probably a lot of baby boomers out there that would fall into the eight percent category thirty three percent make between ten to fifteen dollars per hour and twenty six percent make between fifteen and twenty dollars per hour and I certainly fall into that former category roughly fifteen dollars per hour on average fifty five percent of drivers %HESITATION age fifty one or more and the average is fifteen dollars per hour again that's where I fall in as a baby boomer I like to drive on the weekends my wife works Thursday through Sunday nights and I don't like to sit around and just  be on the couch and watching Netflix so I like to get out and the opportunity to make additional money for my family is really important plus it gives me some variety so I drive on Thursdays sometimes Friday Saturday nights in sometime Sunday nights I usually go out about nine PM and drive until eleven thirty or midnight so it's really three hours a night maybe nine to twelve hours per week and I've been able to average between a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars per week doing this which is been great for us it'll continue to be great for us I would meet really interesting people I found some anecdotal evidence about my passengers I think you might find interesting millennials and younger are very quiet in the car they tend to be on their phones they tend to be kind of reserve and I'm not sure if that's from a trust perspective or they're just not present and they're on their phones doing whatever they're doing Gen X. and baby boomers and older they tend to be very talkative very friendly very interested and I can identify with that type of personality in the car because that's exactly what I did couples tend to talk to each other more than they do the driver which makes sense they're out on a date or coming home from dinner and they're talking about their evening or they're planning for the next day so that makes sense and I really really enjoyed driving I really enjoy the people I've met I've gotten music in concert suggestions I've found interesting places all throughout the city of Dallas that I wouldn't ordinarily have seen I've really gotten to know the area much better than I ever could have and in a much more quicker pace then if I just was living here and working here and exploring from here to there so I'm just wanted to share this information with you this is been my experience with super have you thought about driving for Uber do you use super maybe this information will help you look at it more seriously thanks again for joining me on aging is optional radio hope you found some value in this episode that's really my goal you can find the podcast on iTunes and I'd really appreciate it if you could subscribe and give it a rating I love receiving comments you can also find it on Google play store tune in radio on stitcher pocket cast cast box and paper and I'll be adding more channels in the future including you too if you like what you hear please be sure to share the podcast with your friends on social media you can also reach me directly at mark at aging is optional radio dot com if you have any questions or have any suggestions for topics I'd love to hear from you so until next time thanks everybody

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