CNBC Make It

Take a glance at Nicole Brewer’s finances, and you might not be eager to trade salaries. The 43-year-old Detroit native makes about $40,000 a year teaching English at a university in Nizwa, an ancient city in Oman. Add in side hustle income as a freelance writer and travel agent, and the total for 2024 climbs to $44,000. But delve deeper into the way she lives, and you might start to envy her. Brewer pays just $650 a month for a furnished two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment that’s just a five-minute walk from her job. Utilities are included. Like the students at her university, she gets winter and summer breaks. And thanks to her low cost of living, Brewer generally spends them traveling, including vacations in Namibia, Seychelles and, most recently, Bali. Brewer has lived and taught abroad since 2009 — a move she made when jobs became scarce back home during the global financial crisis. Here’s her advice for those who are considering following in her footsteps.

Google searches for “how to reduce stress” are at an all-time high. “I’m actually hearing from a lot of my own patients that they can’t remember the last time that they were this stressed and unable to see an end in sight,” says Dr. Neha Chaudhary, a double board-certified child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist. “The spike in Google searches for how to manage stress isn’t just digital noise,” she says. “It’s a population-level cry for help.” Here are some practical ways that Chaudhary and Kathryn Smerling, a psychotherapist, suggest reducing stress and improving your overall mental health. cnb.cx/4iiICBX

Michael Caine knows a thing or two about success. His legendary film career spans more than 70 years and features two Academy Award wins. On top of that, Caine has been a restaurateur and author. In his latest book, “Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over: My Guide to Life,” the 91-year-old touches on topics ranging from his early years getting into acting to being recruited by director Christopher Nolan to star in his Batman trilogy. Caine learned early on that no matter how hard he worked, there would always be people who were better and worse than him at his craft. “Jealousy is a terrible motive — it eats away at people and exhausts them,” he writes. “If you start by saying, ‘Oh, I can beat him as an actor,’ you’re going to tie yourself in knots. Read more on why Caine says jealousy and competitiveness won’t help you be successful: ⬇️

Barbara Corcoran has seen many career wins. The 76-year-old sold the real estate company she founded, The Corcoran Group, for $66 million in 2001, and has appeared in all 16 seasons of “Shark Tank.” It was in a 2017 episode that she made a $50,000 investment in blanket company The Comfy. “They made me $468 million in three years,” Corcoran later said on an episode of podcast “The Daniel Mac Show.” When it comes to finding that continued success, Corcoran couldn’t have done it alone. And there’s one relationship she cites as crucial to pushing her forward. “I never had a traditional mentor in business,” she tells CNBC Make It. “Instead, my mom was my role model.” Here’s how Corcoran’s mother helped make her the businesswoman she is.

Alex Saint was just a few days shy of her four-year anniversary as a health communications specialist with the Food and Drug Administration. On Tuesday, she says she woke up to urgent texts, phone calls and an email sent at 5:14 a.m. informing her she was among the roughly 10,000 federal workers let go from the Department of Health and Human Services. Saint, 36, knew layoffs were coming. That didn’t make the experience any less frustrating, she says. “I’m mad for the general public,” Saint tells CNBC Make It. “My position personally was not paid for by tax dollars. Nobody saved any money by me being let go, but I’m not able to get out the things that people need to know about their medication so they can keep themselves safe. And neither can any of my coworkers.” “America’s losing out on all of that because of this action,” she says. Full story: cnb.cx/428f1q1

Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod credits his productivity at least partially, to his easy-going wellness routine. McLeod founded the dating app in 2011, sold it to Tinder-owner Match Group in 2019 for an undisclosed fee and stayed on as CEO, growing Hinge into one of America’s most-used online dating venues. The 38-year-old says there’s one mental exercise he does everyday that helps him perform at his best. Here's what that exercise is: ⬇️

He may not have known it at the time, but in 2005 Sam Altman took a risk that changed the trajectory of his career. That’s when Altman dropped out of Stanford to build Loopt, a location-based social networking app — the first of his projects before co-founding OpenAI, the game-changing artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT. It “seemed like a really fun thing to try,” Altman told students during an interview at his alma mater, the St. Louis-area John Burroughs School. More importantly, he added, leaving college was a decision he could go back on if entrepreneurship didn’t work out. “That’s the key to most risk, is most things are not a one-way door,” he said. “You can try something, it doesn’t work out, you can undo it, you can do something else.” Here’s why Altman says it’s crucial to choose the right risks — but not avoid them altogether.

In 2007, Amy Landino made what seemed like a risky decision and dropped out of college despite owing about $50,000 in student loans. Fast forward to today, and she runs a thriving business that generates about $18,000 a month in passive income — according to her calculations from a recent month’s deposits — while working just four hours a day. Building passive income isn’t about finding a get-rich-quick scheme, says Landino — it’s about creating valuable content and products that continue generating revenue long after the initial work is done. Everyone starts somewhere. Landino began with a college dropout’s determination and a love for creating videos. Her journey from there to successful entrepreneur and coach taught her valuable lessons about building sustainable passive income. Here are Landino’s top 4 tips for anyone looking to start their own passive income journey.

If you want to land a job with billionaire Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab, you’d better be able to prove that you’re passionate about the aerospace industry — and flexible enough to adapt to a demanding schedule. Building rockets is a stressful job that often requires working late into the night to fix critical issues ahead of a launch, Beck says. That’s why he sees red flags if he suspects a current or potential employee is someone “who’s just there to collect a paycheck,” he says. “Somebody who’s not passionate and hasn’t got a sense of urgency about them ... The opposite of those traits make a really successful Rocket Lab person,” says Beck, who started Rocket Lab in 2006 and built it into a company with a market value of $13.5 billion, as of Wednesday afternoon. Beck himself regularly works 12-hour to 20-hour days, especially when making last-minute preparations for a rocket launch. He likes working with people who share a similar dedication to his company’s mission, he says. “Nobody comes here for an 8-to-5 job,” he says. “And if you are ... you’re probably not going to stay here working that long.” Beck isn’t the only company leader who seeks out specific traits in his workplace. Here are three more examples of CEOs’ biggest employee red flags: ⬇️

Growing up, Jane Lu dreamt of waking up every morning and putting on a power suit to go to work at a fancy corporate finance job in one of the tall city buildings. Today, the 38-year-old is the founder and CEO of online fashion retail company Showpo, which brings in over $100 million a year in revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Along with running a nine-figure business, Lu is also currently a judge on “Shark Tank Australia” and has built a following of almost 400,000 users across her social media platforms — but her path to success was far from easy.