Sunny wonderful morning in MIA today with clear skies. I had a chance to talk to a nice lady from South America during our ride to her hair salon. She apologized for her English and I made sure to compliment her on the fact that she is doing just fine. Her story is amazing… she is renting a chair at the salon and she also is a nutritionist on the side and helps her clients with weight loss with her line of unique body cleanse shakes. She gave me her business postcard. I was really impressed.

She asked, “can you make a living just with Uber?” I told her that started with Uber in May, 2015 and it has been my sole source of income for one year. She had a lot of questions!

When I told her that I get paid daily, she was really amazed because she sometimes has to wait two weeks — sometimes longer for the owner to pay her for the credit card receipts with her tips included.

It was great to mentor her on Uber and ridesharing this morning. That is one of the beauties of ridesharing…you meet many interesting people.  Her story: she is working on her English, cutting hair at a salon and working on the side as a nutritionist. The American entrepreneurial spirit is alive!

I had a chance to see a clip of Travis, CEO of Uber on the Stephen Colbert show and I was a little taken back by the cynicism behind Stephen’s line of questions.  In defense of Uber, as a rideshare partner for one year, I really don’t want to be classified as an employee. The classification of independent contractor works great for me because you have 100% flexibility with your schedule and you can claim so many great tax deductions like interest on your car loan, business mileage, meals, etc. Uber’s platform gives you so much leverage to make as profit as a small business entrepreneur from Day One. All of my rides this morning confessed that they use Uber exclusively to go to work every morning. In the short period of seven years, Uber created a paradigm shift in how people commute to make a living. Flexibility and liberty is the way to go!