News on Youtube Sep 28 2017

My name is Aquila, I am 27 years old.

I am the food truck operations manager

as well as the general manager

for Jamaica Mi Hungry, and my salary is variable.

So Jamaica Mi Hungry is a food truck and catering company.

We also have a restaurant.

We started off in 2012 as just a personal chef

and small party events company.

We got our first truck on the road 2015.

Opened up our first restaurant in 2016, and now we're here.

We have two trucks, two food trucks,

a catering van, a restaurant, and we're working

on growing and expanding some more.

Jamaica Mi Hungry, our food style

is Jamaican cuisine with a little bit of a twist.

The twist is pretty much all the crazy, imaginative,

fun things that came from our chef Ernie's head,

(laughs)

mixed with some of our just creativity and fun.

So my current role here at Jamaica Mi Hungry,

I am really pretty much in charge

of running the food truck itself.

So making sure that we have what we need on the food truck,

everything from the paper supplies to the food.

Making sure that we have staffing for the truck,

knowing where the truck is going, how to get it there,

making sure the truck is always clean inside and out.

Managing the staff, putting together the schedules,

scheduling our prep time in the kitchen,

ordering food that we need to have done for prep.

Coming here to cook the food, which I do

a little bit less of that now because I'm trying

to really grab a hold on the trucks,

and of course driving the trucks.

So my job is to take the trucks out

and make sure that they're not getting scratched

and crashed, and nobody's getting hit.

(laughs)

Also once we pull up on the location, I serve the food.

I make sure that our customers are super happy all the time.

I kind of take the lead on making sure

that our customers are just getting

the customer interaction piece going,

making sure that the customers are aware of who we are,

making sure we know who our customers are.

We've had customers that have been following us on the truck

for the past two years, and they come every day.

Making sure that I know what they have

so I don't even have to let them ask for it.

I'm like, "all right, I see you, gotcha."

(laughs)

The most difficult part of my job

is probably how physically demanding it is.

We are up on our feet all day,

which doesn't really bother me

but other than that, I do love it.

We were without a website for a little while

because we had one that was built

a while ago and it wasn't working.

So I took some time over the winter when it was kind of slow

and I just hopped on a website and just really

forced myself to sit there and learn how to build one.

Last year, it was like, I don't know.

A week seemed to be like 14 to 15 days before it ever ended.

My salary is very variable and a big part of that reason

is that I'm so invested in the business

and making sure that the business is always successful.

When I first started working with the company full time,

we were teeny, teeny tiny and now we're growing

to be this huge thing. We just want to make sure

that we're able to maintain that, so we're able

to maintain the lifestyle and the job that we have.

So over the winter time for example,

this past winter we did-- or actually this past summer

we did a lot of investing in opening up the restaurant,

getting lots of things done there.

So over the winter time it was a crunch.

The trucks are not going out as much,

not making as much money. A lot of people--

Not as many people want to come out in the snow

or in cold weather to get food from the food truck.

So the sacrifice was made in terms of the salary

to make sure that the food truck can keep running

so that we can come back and get a salary

in the summer time. (laughs)

For more infomation >> Aquila, Food Truck Manager and Chef part 1 - What I do and how much I make - Duration: 4:10.

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Misha, Freelance Journalist and Podcaster part 1 - What I do and how much I make - Duration: 8:56.

I'm Misha Euceph.

I'm a journalist focusing on podcasts.

I'm 24 years old and I make approximately $60,000 a year.

I was gonna go into public radio, but that opened up

doors for for profit jobs and I ended up

getting recruited by Sirius XM.

I worked there for a year and then decided

to freelance so that I could focus on original

production and pursue more reporting,

have the opportunities, so whether those are

full time jobs or consulting opportunities

where I consult with other people and help

them develop podcasts.

I think I was more passionate about the production

and story telling and journalistic aspect of radio

than I was about the tech side of it.

I started pursuing opportunities outside of work

while I was working at Sirius XM.

So, I started a podcast called Beginner, which started

getting a lot of attention.

I started freelancing and got published in notable

papers like the Wall Street Journal and I felt like

that was giving me a greater sense of validation

and excitement and challenge than I was getting

at my job, as much as it was secure and safe

and with a great team of people.

And so, I decided that I was going to freelance

full time and see how it worked out for a few months.

I'm 24, this is the time to do it.

If it doesn't work out I'll go back to a traditional job

and if I freelance I can always say that I tried

to build something up from scratch and that it either

worked or it didn't, but I learned something in the process.

And, if it works then I'll be able to make more money

and be doing work that I'm more passionate about

and that was really exciting to me.

I made that leap two months ago.

The first month was really hard.

There were many nights where I just lay on my bed

staring at the ceiling wondering why I did this

and then, slowly opportunities came rolling in.

There were a few things I knew that were gonna bring

me income, one of which was my podcast and the second

was something that's called tape sync, because

you have all this equipment.

You go and record for somebody who can't be

on location to record the interview and they conduct

the interview over the phone and you basically

make it seem like they're in the same room

and you provide them that audio and you're paid

a couple hundred bucks for an hour, which is like

way higher than you could get for baby sitting

or for you know, tutoring even, or something

that like I think requires more skill.

But, because it's so industry specific and you have

equipment that's very expensive, you know how

to operate it, you can make a lot of money off of that.

So, those were two things, my podcast and that

that I knew were definitely gonna bring in revenue.

And then, from there the rest was just kind of hustling.

So, pitching things to people, pitching podcasts

to top newspapers, I got approached by some professors

from notable universities that were really interested

in reaching a mainstream audience and they did not

have the skillset to produce a podcast and they felt

like a podcast was the perfect way to do it.

That's a really interesting project because their

research is something that I think deserves to reach

a mainstream audience and it's you know, paid very well

based on like industry standards for that kinda project,

so for me it's a great opportunity to help bring

something out into the public that I think is

really important, but also, moneywise it's kind of

a more steady, bigger paycheck than I would get

from you know doing tape syncs or one article here,

one article there.

And then, other than that I'm constantly pitching stories.

So, I just published two stories in the U.S. News.

I'm writing a bunch of op-eds and I'm gonna shop

around for months until they get published.

So, that's kind of what my responsibilities look like.

It feels a lot like running a business though, surprisingly.

I don't have a regular office.

At first I started out working at home and that was

a total disaster because I would get distracted.

I would you know, cook myself a meal or watch a movie

and I realized my productivity levels were way lower.

What I have done is I break it up into two coffee shops

during the day and I most often go to a place

in the West Village because I like the environment

surrounding it.

It's quieter than mid town, but it's more exciting

and fun to be around than up town.

It's also near the water.

It makes for a nice walk in the middle of the day, too,

if I wanna take a break.

And, I like the food that they serve, so that's awesome.

I go to one coffee shop in the daytime and I'll

usually run or go to yoga in the middle of the day

and then I'll switch up scenery and go to a different

coffee shop and that's where I do you know, all

the work that needs to be done on a computer.

A lotta days actually don't look like that, though.

A lotta days there's recordings and phone calls

that need to be made that I can't be in a coffee shop

making, or interviews that I need to go in person

and conduct, or for my podcast there's activities

that I'm learning.

So, I'm actually like going out and riding my bike

and actually recording myself or taking

a swim lesson and getting reported.

So, that also adds up to like different parts of the day.

The podcast that I'm producing is called Beginner.

It is about being an immigrant in America

and learning how to belong.

And specifically, it focuses on all the things

that I don't know how to do because I kind of missed

out on this crucial formative part of childhood

in the United States, so I moved here when I was 11.

And, for the first few years I was just focused

on like acclimating and you know, getting rid

of my accent, just fitting in.

I didn't know how to ride a bike.

I couldn't really swim.

I have no pop culture references before like 2010.

So, every episode of the podcast I learn

a different activity and it's recorded

and I kind of reflect on what it means to be

an immigrant and how that changes, you know,

my relationship to being American.

The podcast is surprisingly gotten a lot of attention.

It was on Spotify's home page for multiple weeks.

It trended on Pocket Casts which is one of the podcast apps.

I was interviewed on NPR about it which was pretty crazy

and very meta for a radio producer.

And then, I also was featured in The Guardian for Beginner.

So, that was really, really rewarding and worthwhile

and kinda validating at the beginning of this whole

freelancing thing that okay, I'm making something

that is valuable and I should keep going down this path.

A big milestone in podcasting is when you go from kind

of like perform a space advertising model to like

a flat rate and it means that you've reached

a certain number of downloads and average listeners

so I'm having that call this week which is really exciting

which means the check coming in from Beginner is gonna

be a lot more steady and a bigger check than it was

up until this point.

With a podcast that's highly successful, so if you have

300,000 listeners you can make as much as $150,000

off of the podcast, depending on what kind of advertising

deals you have.

Now, there's other models where you can have exclusivity

deals with platforms and they'll pay you more money

to basically buy your podcast for a certain exclusivity

window, or you can work for a brand or an institution

like a university and they'll pay you a lot of money

because they have the backing to actually pay you

for that podcast and they know that over time

they're gonna reap the benefits of that either

monetarily or through publicity or whatever it

is that their aim is.

So, at that point I realized that I didn't have to settle

for you know less than $100,000, which a lotta people

had told me that in journalism that's the max you're

ever gonna make and your lawyer friends are gonna

be very rich and you're not gonna be comfortable.

And, I also started thinking about there are other

opportunities that once you get a certain level

of expertise and a certain level of notoriety

that you can write a book.

There will be speaking engagements.

You can teach workshops.

You can become a professor, an adjunct professor

and there's income from that.

You can consult with other people and offer

your expertise and your skillset.

I think just realizing that there was so many more

ways to make money than just getting a job

and getting promoted was a really liberating thing.

I'm not gonna lie, my first month as a freelancer

I totally doubted all of it and I forgot about

all of those things that I was so delusively

optimistic about.

I was like, I'm not gonna make rent this month.

I'm gonna have to ask my parents for help,

like what am I gonna do.

As you gain momentum opportunities start

rolling in you know.

And so now, I feel like okay, now I'm in the groove,

like now I know that I can ask for this much

for this kind of project, and I can ask for

that much for that kinda project and people

are asking me to write things and asking

me to consult on things rather than me

pitching things to them.