As the side hustle era continues, AI keeps adding to the number of lucrative opportunities available. 

Nearly 70% of Gen Z side-hustlers said they consider AI the go-to resource when they need help in work, according to a recent report from Samsung. 

So it’s perhaps not surprising that many people who want to earn money on the side leverage AI from the jump — even charging for jobs that hinge on the technology. 

But which AI side hustles come with the best payout? NetCredit analyzed publicly available freelancer rates on Fiverr, filtering for a 24-hour delivery time, to find out. 

Three AI side hustles tied for the highest-paying title. AI spokesperson videos, which feature digital avatars delivering scripts on camera, bring in a $100 median rate for tasks completed within 24 hours, per the research. 

Side-hustlers offering services related to AI applications or generative AI lessons typically see the same amount.

Side gigs adjacent to ChatGPT applications and AI integrations snagged the fourth and fifth spots, with median rates for 24-hour jobs landing at $87.50 and $62.50, respectively. 

Read on for NetCredit’s full list of the best-paying AI side hustles for a single day of work:

As the side hustle era continues, AI keeps adding to the number of lucrative opportunities available. 

Nearly 70% of Gen Z side-hustlers said they consider AI the go-to resource when they need help in work, according to a recent report from Samsung. 

So it’s perhaps not surprising that many people who want to earn money on the side leverage AI from the jump — even charging for jobs that hinge on the technology. 

But which AI side hustles come with the best payout? NetCredit analyzed publicly available freelancer rates on Fiverr, filtering for a 24-hour delivery time, to find out. 

Three AI side hustles tied for the highest-paying title. AI spokesperson videos, which feature digital avatars delivering scripts on camera, bring in a $100 median rate for tasks completed within 24 hours, per the research. 

Side-hustlers offering services related to AI applications or generative AI lessons typically see the same amount.

Side gigs adjacent to ChatGPT applications and AI integrations snagged the fourth and fifth spots, with median rates for 24-hour jobs landing at $87.50 and $62.50, respectively. 

Read on for NetCredit’s full list of the best-paying AI side hustles for a single day of work:

“Hell is other people,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in No Exit. Philosopher Kiki Berk examines the phrase in her analysis of Sartre’s view of personal relationships. It does not simply mean that other people are unpleasant or responsible for our unhappiness. It describes what happens when another person looks at us and turns us into an object inside their consciousness.

They interpret our behavior, assign motives to our actions and create a version of us that exists independently of the person we believe ourselves to be. You may be generous and still appear selfish, remain silent and appear weak, or speak confidently and appear arrogant. You can explain yourself, improve your performance and try to correct the judgment, but you can never enter another person’s mind and arrange your image exactly as you wish. Their perception remains outside your control, yet much of your identity may still depend on receiving the right verdict from it.

The identity trap

Jennifer Crocker and Katherine Knight write that self-esteem depends on “what people believe they need to be or do to have worth as a person” in Contingencies of Self-Worth. This is the real danger of labels. Once your worth depends on being a founder, writer or leader, an ordinary setback stops being an event and becomes evidence against who you are.

Anlan Zheng, Brittany Duff, Patrick Vargas and Mike Yao found that people “choose to share things that are self-enhancing” in their research on social-media self-presentation. That habit does not remain online. We begin observing ourselves while we work, travel, learn and build, asking what each activity says about us instead of whether the activity itself matters.

Ryan Holiday’s title Ego Is the Enemy makes the diagnosis explicit, while its publisher describes successful figures as “conquering their own egos.” I agree with the warning more than the title. Ego can support ambition, but it becomes dangerous when the appearance of work replaces the work and recognition becomes more important than knowledge.

Daphna Oyserman writes that “identities are dynamically constructed in context” in her work on identity-based motivation. We are obsessed with nouns rather than verbs. We do not simply want to build; we want to become founders. We do not simply want to write; we want to become writers. We do not simply want to lead; we want to be recognized as leaders. The action is no longer sufficient. It must produce a title, and the title must then be protected.

Once “founder” becomes who you are, a failed product is no longer merely a failed product. It threatens the identity itself. Oyserman explains that identity shapes how people interpret difficulty in the same research. The harder you work to preserve the noun, the easier it becomes to interpret ordinary setbacks as proof that you do not deserve it.

Put the verb first

Richard Ryan and Edward Deci write that “social environments can facilitate or forestall intrinsic motivation” in their foundational paper on self-determination theory. Putting the verb first changes the environment inside your own mind. Building matters more than looking like a founder. Writing matters more than being recognized as a writer.

The noun asks the world for confirmation, whereas the verb returns you to action. When the noun comes first, you build to prove that you are an entrepreneur. When the verb comes first, you build because a problem deserves a solution. One protects an image. The other creates value.

But every verb still needs a subject. Someone builds, writes, teaches and leads. Adam Grant writes that prosocial motivation can promote “high levels of persistence, performance, and productivity” when intrinsic motivation is also high in Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? I call that subject the giver: the person who builds because a problem deserves a solution and writes because an idea deserves form.

Why the giver is different

Crocker and Knight call contingencies of self-worth “areas of psychological vulnerability” in their research. A founder needs a company, a writer needs work and a leader needs recognition of the role. Each identity contains a condition that must repeatedly be satisfied. The giver can build today, teach tomorrow and listen the day after without losing the central subject.

Mark Bolino and Adam Grant define prosocial motivation as “the desire to benefit others or expend effort out of concern for others” in their review of prosocial work. That direction makes the giver less sensitive to ego. Instead of asking, “Do I still deserve this title?” the giver asks, “What can I contribute here?” The identity rests less on a category and more on the movement of the action.

The risk of performing generosity

Ryan and Deci describe intrinsic motivation as behavior that is “inherently interesting and enjoyable” in their research. Giving can lose that autonomy when it becomes a performance. You can help to feel indispensable, mentor to be admired or sacrifice so that others feel indebted. You can give while still asking.

The solution is not to abandon the giver identity but to define it carefully. Grant suggests that contribution is more sustainable when the action itself remains meaningful. Before acting, ask whether you are creating value or protecting an identity, whether you would still act if nobody knew and whether the action feels complete without recognition.

Kiki Berk writes that Sartre’s philosophy does not exclude “an ethics of deliverance and salvation” in her discussion of No Exit. You may never control the person you become in somebody else’s mind, but you can stop making that person the place where your work becomes complete. Stop trying to look like a founder. Build. Stop trying to look like a leader, and instead, actually lead. Choose the verb, define the giver carefully and let contribution, instead of recognition, become the center of your mindset.

“Hell is other people,” Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in No Exit. Philosopher Kiki Berk examines the phrase in her analysis of Sartre’s view of personal relationships. It does not simply mean that other people are unpleasant or responsible for our unhappiness. It describes what happens when another person looks at us and turns us into an object inside their consciousness.

They interpret our behavior, assign motives to our actions and create a version of us that exists independently of the person we believe ourselves to be. You may be generous and still appear selfish, remain silent and appear weak, or speak confidently and appear arrogant. You can explain yourself, improve your performance and try to correct the judgment, but you can never enter another person’s mind and arrange your image exactly as you wish. Their perception remains outside your control, yet much of your identity may still depend on receiving the right verdict from it.

The identity trap

Jennifer Crocker and Katherine Knight write that self-esteem depends on “what people believe they need to be or do to have worth as a person” in Contingencies of Self-Worth. This is the real danger of labels. Once your worth depends on being a founder, writer or leader, an ordinary setback stops being an event and becomes evidence against who you are.

Last year, I spent time with a leadership team that had scaled into four international markets faster than almost any company I’d worked with. The numbers looked strong, headcount was growing, the pipeline was building and the board was happy.

But something felt off to the CEO, and when we dug into it, the problem was hard to name at first. Regional teams were hitting their local targets but felt disconnected from each other. Decisions that should have been straightforward were taking weeks because nobody was sure who had authority. The global culture the founders had worked hard to build back home was, in the words of one regional director, “kind of theoretical out here.”

That phrase stuck with me. Kind of theoretical out here. It’s a polite way of saying: We heard your values; we just don’t see them in how we’re actually structured.

Scaling globally is one of the few challenges in business where the things that made you successful domestically can actively work against you if you don’t adapt how you lead.

Where most global expansions quietly break down

The instinct when scaling into new markets is to export the playbook. You take what worked, package it up and hand it to the regional team. For a while, often longer than you’d expect, things seem fine. Teams are executing, metrics are moving and the model appears to be transferring.

What’s actually happening underneath is that your regional leaders are adapting the playbook to local reality without telling you, because telling you would mean admitting the original version doesn’t fit. So they nod in the all-hands and quietly do something different in the market. By the time the gap becomes visible, you’ve got multiple unofficial versions of your own company operating simultaneously.

This isn’t a hiring problem or a communication problem, though both tend to get blamed. When a centralized playbook meets a local market and there’s no formal mechanism for the regional team to say “this part doesn’t work here,” adaptation goes underground. And underground adaptation is how you end up with a brand that means different things in different places.

The useful distinction is being precise about what actually has to be uniform versus what can flex. Your positioning and core values need to be consistent everywhere. The way you generate pipeline or onboard a new hire can legitimately vary by market, and pretending otherwise doesn’t protect your standards, it just frustrates the people trying to meet them.

What your regional leaders aren’t telling you

One of the underrated costs of rapid global expansion is information asymmetry. Your regional leads are watching competitor behavior you can’t see from headquarters, picking up on buyer sentiment shifts before they show up in your numbers and understanding the cultural subtext of what’s happening in their markets in ways that don’t translate cleanly into a quarterly report.

Whether that intelligence reaches you depends almost entirely on whether your environment rewards honesty or punishes it. I’ve worked with plenty of regional leaders who had real concerns about the global strategy and kept them to themselves because raising issues with headquarters felt professionally risky. The gap between what gets said in regional check-ins and what regional leaders actually believe is often wider than anyone at the center realizes.

Getting that intelligence to flow requires two things working together. Regional leaders need to be part of strategy conversations before decisions are made, so their input can actually shape direction rather than just critique it after the fact. And leadership at the center needs a track record of visibly responding to that input in ways the regions can see and point to. Without that track record, inviting feedback is just theater.

Building culture across time zones

The real test of whether you’ve built a global culture or just a global company is what happens when you’re not in the room. Anyone can hold culture together when they’re physically present, running the all-hands and setting the tone in every meeting. The question is: What happens in your London office on a Thursday morning when a difficult situation comes up and it’s 2 a.m. where you are?

The leaders who get this right stop trying to be present everywhere and start investing in the people who already are: regional leaders and senior people on the ground who genuinely carry the company’s values and have the credibility to model them without it feeling like a directive from headquarters. You’re distributing cultural judgment rather than transmitting cultural instructions, which requires a fundamentally different relationship with your regional leadership.

That kind of judgment doesn’t develop through documentation. A values deck can articulate the principles, but it can’t build the shared context that makes those principles feel real. What builds that context is people across regions working through hard problems together, not just syncing on status in a weekly standup. The strongest global cultures I’ve seen are built on a history of shared difficulty, teams from different markets collaborating on something genuinely challenging and coming out the other side with a common reference point.

Holding vision tight, holding execution loosely

The leaders who scale globally without losing themselves tend to have a clear sense of what they’re actually trying to preserve. They’re not trying to replicate the exact form of what they built at home. They’re trying to extend its intent into a new context, which requires trusting people who understand that context better than they do.

That trust is genuinely hard when you’re attached to how things have worked so far. The original model was built for a specific environment, with specific customers, in a specific competitive landscape. Holding onto it past the point where it fits isn’t protecting your culture; it’s limiting the people trying to carry it forward.

The global leaders who get this right hold their vision with conviction and their execution with enough flexibility to let regional teams actually own their markets. Getting that balance right is most of the work.

Last year, I spent time with a leadership team that had scaled into four international markets faster than almost any company I’d worked with. The numbers looked strong, headcount was growing, the pipeline was building and the board was happy.

But something felt off to the CEO, and when we dug into it, the problem was hard to name at first. Regional teams were hitting their local targets but felt disconnected from each other. Decisions that should have been straightforward were taking weeks because nobody was sure who had authority. The global culture the founders had worked hard to build back home was, in the words of one regional director, “kind of theoretical out here.”

That phrase stuck with me. Kind of theoretical out here. It’s a polite way of saying: We heard your values; we just don’t see them in how we’re actually structured.

The COO had every reason to believe the launch problem was fixed. A regional product launch had missed its date by six weeks after a late packaging spec change got caught in a slow approval path.

Marketing needed speed to protect the launch date. Procurement needed enough review to protect spend discipline and vendor risk.

The COO resolved the conflict with a simple rule. Any launch-critical vendor expedite fee below a defined cap would receive same-day procurement approval, while anything above the cap would still go through the normal review.

On the next comparable launch, the same kind of packaging issue appeared. The request went in on a Tuesday, procurement approved it that afternoon, and the launch hit its date.

The fix worked exactly as intended.

The evidence looked conclusive

The turnaround on that type of launch-related request moved from 11 days to same-day. The launch stayed on schedule, and nobody had to escalate, negotiate across functions or quietly absorb the cost somewhere else.

Leadership now had something far more persuasive than a new policy. It had proof that the intervention worked.

That matters because leaders should look for evidence that a fix has changed the result. If a problem caused a six-week delay and the next comparable case moved cleanly, concluding that the failure point has been addressed is reasonable.

The risk sits inside what happens next. The organization starts treating evidence that one failure point has been fixed as evidence that the underlying problem has been fixed.

In this case, the deeper problem was the conflict between two legitimate priorities. Marketing was protecting launch speed, while procurement was protecting spend discipline and vendor risk.

The packaging approval was simply the first place where those priorities collided hard enough to become visible. The COO’s rule fixed that collision, but it didn’t remove the conflict.

A successful fix narrows the search

Once the packaging issue stopped recurring, leadership had little reason to keep looking for the same problem. That’s precisely what makes this kind of execution problem difficult to see.

The same conflict between launch speed and spend discipline still exists at other decision points. Rush freight has its own approval path, fulfillment overtime sits somewhere else, and last-minute creative reprints may involve another budget and another set of people.

Each issue looks different when it arrives. A rush freight request looks like logistics, overtime looks like a staffing or cost decision, and a creative reprint looks like a marketing expense.

None automatically points back to a packaging approval that leadership already considers solved. Yet each decision contains the same question: When protecting the launch date costs more money, which priority gives way?

The packaging rule answers that question in one place. It says nothing about the others.

That’s how a successful fix makes the larger structural problem harder to see. The visible failure disappears before leadership has established where else the same conflict exists.

The same conflict starts wearing different labels

When the next collision appears, it doesn’t arrive labeled as a repeat of the packaging problem. It arrives with different people, different language and a different operational consequence.

The freight decision may be escalated through supply chain, the overtime question may sit with fulfillment, and the reprint decision may remain inside marketing. From leadership’s perspective, those look like separate issues.

That matters because separate issues produce separate responses. One decision gets handled as freight, another gets handled as labor cost, and another gets treated as a print expense.

The organization ends up resolving the same underlying tradeoff several times, one decision point at a time, without seeing that those decisions belong together. Nothing about the local responses has to be wrong.

They may solve each immediate problem just as effectively as the COO’s packaging rule solved the first one. Each successful local answer then removes another reason to connect the issue back to the broader conflict.

The organization gets better at solving the visible manifestations while remaining unaware that the same tradeoff keeps generating them. That’s what makes the pattern persistent.

This is one way hidden problems persist even in organizations that respond quickly when something goes wrong. The problem isn’t hidden because leaders are indifferent. It’s hidden because each visible expression gets resolved well enough to make further investigation feel unnecessary.

The fix is not the failure

It would be easy to turn this into an argument against narrow fixes. That would be the wrong conclusion.

The COO’s rule was a good decision. It solved the packaging approval problem, reduced turnaround time and protected the next launch.

There’s no reason to criticize a fix for doing exactly what it was designed to do. The leadership risk comes afterward, when evidence that one collision has been resolved becomes evidence that the underlying conflict has been resolved.

A bounded fix proves that one decision point is now working. It doesn’t prove that every other place where the same priorities meet has already been settled.

That distinction becomes more important as organizations become larger and work becomes more distributed. The same two priorities may collide in several functions, regions or approval paths without any single leader seeing those decisions together.

One function solves its version while another solves a different version, and both report progress. The organization can therefore improve at several individual points while still carrying the same unresolved conflict across the system.

Success closes the question too early

Leaders spend a great deal of time worrying about fixes that fail. Failed interventions stay visible because escalations continue, results remain poor, and everyone knows the work is unfinished.

Successful interventions create the opposite signal because the escalation disappears, the metric improves, and the next comparable case moves cleanly. Leadership has credible evidence that action produced the intended result.

That’s normally what good execution looks like. But when the visible failure was only one expression of a broader cross-priority conflict, success at that point doesn’t tell leaders where else the conflict remains.

It only tells them that this particular collision has been resolved. The more convincing that evidence becomes, the easier it is to stop asking a different question.

Not whether the fix worked. It did.

The question is whether what was fixed was the problem itself, or simply the first place the problem became visible. Both produce the same reassuring short-term result: The next case works. Only one means the search is actually over.

The COO had every reason to believe the launch problem was fixed. A regional product launch had missed its date by six weeks after a late packaging spec change got caught in a slow approval path.

Marketing needed speed to protect the launch date. Procurement needed enough review to protect spend discipline and vendor risk.

The COO resolved the conflict with a simple rule. Any launch-critical vendor expedite fee below a defined cap would receive same-day procurement approval, while anything above the cap would still go through the normal review.

Most executives assume their track record will carry them through interviews, but in reality, the leadership instincts you’ve spent years refining can actively hurt you when you’re a candidate.

I see this pattern regularly in my interview coaching practice. Accomplished leaders often walk out of interview loops confused about why the offer went to another candidate. The truth is, their qualifications were never the issue. Instead, the issue was that they interviewed the way they lead, and although leading this way serves them well day-to-day, it’s costing them opportunities in the interview room.

Let’s explore the three leadership instincts I most often see working against executives in interviews, as well as how to adjust each one.

1. You give your team all the credit

Great leaders distribute praise to their team. When a project succeeds, they spotlight the people who did the work, and over time, “we” becomes their default language. This habit builds trust and loyalty when you’re leading a team, making you look like a secure, selfless leader, but when you’re interviewing, it creates a major problem.

Employers are hiring only one person: you. When every story is told in “we” language, interviewers are left guessing about your individual contributions. Some interviewers will assume you’re being modest. Others will conclude you were just along for the ride and didn’t drive the results yourself. Neither assumption helps you, particularly when you’re competing against equally qualified candidates who more clearly communicate their impact.

I recall working with a product management executive who kept advancing to final rounds but never receiving an offer. When he requested feedback, one panel shared that they struggled to pinpoint what he had personally contributed to his team’s wins. We reworked his stories to name the specific decisions he had made, as well as the initiatives he had personally led, and he received an offer shortly after.

In my experience coaching hundreds of leaders through executive interviews, the fix isn’t to take credit that rightfully belongs to your team. Instead, it’s to continue calling out their contributions while also being clear about your own. For each interview story, identify your individual role or what would have gone differently without you. That is the part interviewers need to hear in the first person. This might sound like, “My team delivered an incredible product launch. My role was making the call to delay the release by two weeks, which protected the customer experience and helped us renew every one of our major accounts.”

2. You assume your scope speaks for itself

Inside your company, everyone shares context. Your colleagues already know how complex your organization is and why a particular initiative was challenging. Because of this, you don’t need to explain the backstory behind your work when you’re communicating internally.

But interviewers don’t share that context, and when executives compress a major accomplishment into a single sentence, their achievement arrives without the stakes that made it impressive. “I led the AI transformation effort” means very little to someone who doesn’t know that adoption had stalled twice before or that the board had made it the company’s top priority.

One of my clients, an operations executive, described a two-year turnaround in a single sentence during our coaching sessions. It sounded routine until we unpacked the situation he had walked into, including millions of dollars in sunk costs and a system that multiple predecessors had failed to fix. Once he named those stakes in interviews, the same accomplishment landed more powerfully.

I coach leaders to highlight the stakes around each story. You don’t need to craft a dramatic screenplay like Shonda Rhimes, but you do need to set the scene. Before your next interview, take your strongest accomplishments and answer these questions about each one: What was at stake if this failed? What did the before and after look like? While these answers are likely already obvious to you, saying them out loud turns a resume bullet point into a memorable story and sets you apart from other candidates.

3. You’ve mastered diplomatic communication

Senior leaders are often trained by experience to hedge in public. You’ve likely learned to build consensus before taking a stand and acknowledge diverse stakeholder perspectives before committing to your own. This is how you usually gain alignment and trust, but in an interview, it can backfire and sound like you don’t have a point of view.

Companies hire executives for their discernment. When you answer a strategic question with carefully balanced considerations and no conclusion, interviewers walk away unsure whether you can commit to a direction. Even worse, some will conclude that you’re a leader who waits to see where the group lands before speaking up.

I recently worked with an IT executive who had pushed back when his CEO wanted to move forward full throttle on an AI transformation. He worried that the story would make him sound difficult, so in interviews he softened the details until his position disappeared entirely. Once we reworked the story so that he stated his stance and the reasoning behind it upfront, the feedback changed. Interviewers began commenting on his sound judgment and asking thoughtful follow-up questions about how he had managed the disagreement.

The adjustment I recommend is simple to describe but uncomfortable to practice: Lead with your position, then add the nuance. In my coaching sessions, we rehearse responses like, “Here’s my recommendation, and here’s what would change my mind.” This structure allows you to demonstrate conviction while remaining open to input, and it leaves interviewers confident that you can make the tough calls.

Your leadership instincts aren’t flaws. They helped you become the leader you are today, and you’ll need them again once you land your new role. The challenge is recognizing when you’re the candidate rather than the leader and adjusting how you communicate. This can be difficult to do on your own because your leadership habits have become second nature. With practice, whether by yourself or alongside a trained professional, you can learn to notice what interviewers hear that you no longer do. You’ve got this!

Most executives assume their track record will carry them through interviews, but in reality, the leadership instincts you’ve spent years refining can actively hurt you when you’re a candidate.

I see this pattern regularly in my interview coaching practice. Accomplished leaders often walk out of interview loops confused about why the offer went to another candidate. The truth is, their qualifications were never the issue. Instead, the issue was that they interviewed the way they lead, and although leading this way serves them well day-to-day, it’s costing them opportunities in the interview room.

Let’s explore the three leadership instincts I most often see working against executives in interviews, as well as how to adjust each one.

No appreciation story, no value-add narrative, not even cocktail-party bragging rights.

A secured note doesn’t promise to 3x your money. It promises to pay you. On a schedule. At a fixed rate. Backed by a lien on a real piece of property.

For investors who have been chasing yield in a market where promises are easy and delivery is hard, that might actually be the most attractive thing they’ve heard in a while.

Here’s what secured notes are, how they work, and why they belong in more passive real estate portfolios than they currently occupy.

When a real estate operator needs to borrow money… to acquire a property, fund renovations, or bridge to longer-term financing… they have options. Banks are one. Private lenders are another.

A secured note is a loan you make to a real estate operator or investor, backed by a lien on real property. You’re the lender. They’re the borrower. They pay you a fixed interest rate on a set schedule, and your loan is secured by an interest in whatever property they’ve pledged as collateral.

The key word is secured. Your investment isn’t backed by a promise or a handshake or a business plan. It’s backed by a legal interest in a physical asset. If the borrower defaults, you have a path to recovery through foreclosure on that property.

That’s meaningfully different from unsecured lending, and it’s meaningfully different from equity investing where your returns depend on a property performing according to plan.

First Position vs. Second Position

Not all notes carry the same risk. The most important variable is where your lien sits in the capital stack.

A first-position note means you’re first in line if something goes wrong. If the borrower defaults and the property gets foreclosed, you get paid before anyone else. Equity investors, other lenders, everyone. First position is the safest place to be in a secured lending scenario.

A second-position note means there’s another lender ahead of you. If the property sells in foreclosure, the first-position lender gets made whole first. You get whatever is left. In a scenario where the property has lost significant value, second-position lenders can end up with less than they’re owed, sometimes much less.

When we evaluate notes in the club, we strongly prefer first-position liens. The yield is typically lower than what second-position notes offer, but the protection is substantially better. In our view, chasing an extra two or three percentage points by taking a subordinate position is rarely worth the additional risk.

Loan-to-Value: The Number That Matters Most

The second critical variable is loan-to-value ratio, or LTV. This is the loan amount expressed as a percentage of the property’s value.

A note at 60% LTV means you’ve lent $600,000 against a property worth $1 million. If the borrower defaults and the property has to be sold quickly… even at a discount… there’s a meaningful buffer before you start losing principal. The property would have to lose more than 40% of its value for you to be underwater, and that’s before you’ve even started a foreclosure process.

A note at 85% LTV is a different story. The margin for error is thin. Property values don’t have to fall much before you’re at risk.

We generally look for notes in the 60-70% LTV range for first-position loans. It’s not the highest-yielding segment of the note market, but it’s the one where you can genuinely sleep at night knowing the collateral covers your exposure.

What Happens When a Borrower Defaults

It’s worth being clear-eyed about this, because some investors treat the foreclosure path as a theoretical comfort and never think about it practically.

If a borrower stops paying on a secured note, you don’t just lose your money and move on. You have legal remedies. As a lienholder, you can initiate foreclosure proceedings against the property. The specifics vary by state and loan structure, but the general mechanism is: you take the property, sell it, and recover your principal from the proceeds.

This process takes time. It involves legal fees. It’s not painless. But it is a real protection that unsecured creditors and equity investors don’t have.

The practical implication: your due diligence on the collateral matters. You want to understand what the property is worth independently of what the borrower says it’s worth. A recent appraisal from a qualified third party is the baseline. You also want to understand the local real estate market well enough to know whether that value is stable, rising, or at risk.

What Secured Notes Pay

Yields on first-position secured notes have ranged considerably depending on the market environment, the borrower’s creditworthiness, the LTV, and the property type. In the current rate environment, well-structured first-position notes have been offering anywhere from 8% to 12% annually, sometimes more for shorter-duration bridge scenarios.

Those aren’t projections tied to a business plan working out. They’re contractual. The rate is set at origination. The payment schedule is fixed. You know what you’re getting before you wire a cent.

That predictability is what makes notes attractive as part of a broader passive real estate portfolio. Equity investments offer the potential for meaningful upside… appreciation, profit on sale… but those returns aren’t guaranteed and depend on a lot of variables going according to plan. Notes give you a fixed return that doesn’t fluctuate with the real estate market.

The downside is the flip side of that same coin. You don’t participate in appreciation. If the property doubles in value over five years, you still collect your fixed rate and nothing more. The upside belongs to the equity holders.

For investors who are primarily seeking income rather than appreciation… particularly those closer to or in retirement, or those building a cash flow base to live on… that trade-off is often a good one.

Henry:
Kent Long bought his first rental property at 46 years old, just two years ago in 2024. By the time he’s 50, he’ll have a real estate portfolio that will retire him early. He did all this while working a nine to five, on the road three to four days per week, and without a ton of his own savings. Kent began looking for passive income streams, but all the internet gurus and guides turned out to be selling a fantasy. After hitting a breaking point, Kent saw a house on the market with enough square footage to convert it into two units. This would turn into the beginning of an investing career Kent never imagined. With just $14,000 down, Kent turned one down payment into four properties, making him $5,500 a month in cash flow. And he did it all in just two years. Now he’s close to fully replacing his salary with rentals, allowing him to retire from his job at age 50, 15 years before traditional retirement age.
He did it all starting in 2024. So if you think you are late to real estate, this is your sign to get in the game. What’s going on everybody? I am Henry Washington, co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, and today we’re bringing you an investor story with Kent Long from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Let’s bring him on. Kent Long, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast.

Kent:
Henry, I’m honored to be here. Honestly, BiggerPockets has been a huge part of my real estate journey.

Henry:
Well, why don’t you start there? Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate in the first place.

Kent:
Starting off, I was always looking for passive income. So unfortunately, just life costs so much money. So to live normally, you have to have extra income coming in. So my initial thought process was I read Tim Ferriss, four-hour work week, and I started an Amazon business. So I made two products on Amazon and I had two different manufacturers in China that would send stuff directly to Amazon. So ideally it makes sense, then that’s totally passive. You watch all the YouTubers and they say how easy it is and you can make extra thousand bucks per unit that you’re selling. The kicker is it costs so much money to advertise on Amazon that you don’t make any money. So then after that, I stumbled on BiggerPockets and started listening to just real estate. I’ve always been like Mr. Fix It at home and can fix things. And my dad’s a union carpenter, so I’ve always had a background of building and fixing things.
And then about two years ago when I was going through a bad divorce, I had an option and I could either rent because my wife was keeping the house, or I could look at either flipping a house, live in flip, or buy a property that I could fix up and then pull some equity out. So that’s my initial dive into it.

Henry:
About when did you start researching real estate? And then about when was it when you bought your first real estate deal?

Kent:
My job, my nine to five, I travel a lot. So I’m in the car between two and four hours, three to four days a week. So it would just be podcast after podcast, whether it was entrepreneurship, and then eventually about three years ago to two and a half years ago, really just diving into BiggerPockets and just constantly listening to it in the car. So in July of 2024, I was looking at my first property. My real estate agent at the time had a property that used to be a duplex and it was converted to a single family, but all I literally had to do was put a door on it. So you walk in, the first floor would’ve been one apartment and then there was another door that went upstairs for the second apartment. So literally just putting a door on it would make it a duplex.

Henry:
What city was this?

Kent:
In Altoona, PA.

Henry:
Altoona, Pennsylvania. And how much did you pay for this large single family home that was a duplex, turned into a single that you wanted to turn back into a duplex?

Kent:
But I actually turned it into a try.

Henry:
We’ll

Kent:
Get to that. So purchase price is $70,000.

Henry:
70 grand? Was it just sticks? Was it livable?

Kent:
All new LVP in the first and second floor and the third floor, all LVP already done. And everything was freshly painted.

Henry:
Is this just prices in this market? How’d you find this deal? Was it on the market? Was it off-market deal?

Kent:
It was on the market for a while. So that house fell through a couple times. They sold it twice maybe, and the loan didn’t go through right or something happened. So then the seller just needed it kind of off his plate. But at most, it was on the market for 80 or 90.

Henry:
Wow. I just didn’t realize the price points were that low.

Kent:
Well, the price points will get better and you’re going to be. So that’s in the high end of what I paid.

Henry:
Okay. All right. All right. So you paid 70. It was a single that used to be a duplex. You ended up converting it back to a multifamily. How much did it cost you to renovate this property to get it turned into, I guess you said, a triplex now?

Kent:
$10,000.

Henry:
Okay. Did it cost 10 grand because you have the skills to do all the work yourself or did it cost 10 grand just because it was in pristine condition and you didn’t have to do much?

Kent:
So I didn’t have to do a lot, but I do all of the work. So the idea is I have a background of redoing kitchens and redoing bathrooms and I can do flooring and painting and everything else, but that’s all that I had to put into it to convert it into a try. I had a little bit of cabinets I had to add into the kitchen, and then there were some cabinets up on that second floor that I used in the third unit, which was in the back.

Henry:
Can you estimate what you think the renovation would’ve cost had you had to hire a contractor?

Kent:
I mean, I always double it. So it’s 20 to 30, 20 to 30 grand. That’s

Henry:
Fair. That’s fair. Okay, cool. That paints a good picture of about the level of work that needed to be involved with this property. And so then you converted it to a triplex. I know I’m probably getting ahead of myself, but I’m so curious because of that price point. What are the rents for the individual units?

Kent:
So they basically added a business off the back side of this house. That unit, I furnished it, and then there’s a makeshift kitchen back there too, and I get 850 for that little unit, and it’s as big as a whatever, hotel room.

Henry:
Okay. So you’re cash flowing off one unit. Allright, what else you got?

Kent:
Right. So then on the first floor, one bedroom, I get right around 900 a month for that.

Henry:
And the third unit?

Kent:
1250.

Henry:
What?

Kent:
Because it’s three bedroom, and this is off of a $70,000 home. Holy

Henry:
Crap. $70,000 single family, $10,000 renovation, which includes sweat equity, which is fine. And you’re able to bring in 850, 900, and 1250 for a total of $3,000 a month in rent on an $80,000 all-in purchase? Right. That’s a good stinking deal. Wow. Congratulations on that. That’s impressive.

Kent:
Thank you. Thank you. We always want to hit that home run in the first one.

Henry:
All right. So how did you structure the financing for this? Did you pay out of your pocket? Is it a conventional loan?

Kent:
It was a 30-year conventional loan.

Henry:
So you put down 20%, 25%? Yeah,

Kent:
14 to $20,000.

Henry:
What’s your debt service? So what are you paying the mortgage on that property? It’s

Kent:
So

Henry:
Low, he doesn’t even know, guys. He was like, “I don’t know. 50 bucks eyes.”

Kent:
All of my loans are between four and $600.

Henry:
$600 a month mortgage, bringing in $3,000 a month. Even you put $14,000 down after a few months, you got your money back.

Kent:
Oh, yeah.

Henry:
What a deal. What a deal. Now, I’m very curious now as to what the numbers look like on this second deal, and we’re going to dive into that after this quick break. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets podcast. I am speaking with investor Kent Long, who has just shared his very first real estate deal with us, and it was a banger. So Kent, tell me about this next one.

Kent:
So first property, fix it up, basically added two units because it was a single family, turned it into a try. Because I turned it in a try, I got to be able to pull, I mean, it’s 80% of the appraised value, so then I was able to pull out a $78,000 HELOC.

Henry:
Well, I want to caveat one thing though, because I just want to make sure that we’re clear on the terms. I love this strategy, by the way. So you essentially did a burr, except I call it a modified BRRR. It’s a BRR. Instead of a refinance at the end, it’s a HELOC at the end. And so you actually didn’t pull money out, you just got access to a line of credit. I like this strategy more than the BRRR. And the reason I do is because when you refinance, you’re getting a new loan at a higher amount, which then lessens your cash flow. But because you just pulled a line of credit, you gave yourself access to the equity, but you didn’t get a new loan at a higher amount. Your loan stays the same and you only pay more when you borrow the money against the HELOC.
So he was saying he pulled money out. He didn’t necessarily pull it out. He got access to it. I think it’s a fantastic strategy. I’m glad you went that route. So you’ve now got access to this $70,000 line of credit, and so that gives you buying power, right? So what did you do with that?

Kent:
I bought another single family right around 1700 square feet, and I was going to turn it into a duplex, but I bought it for $30,000. So

Henry:
You paid cash from your line of credit. So you pulled out 35,000. Again, why I like this strategy? Because he didn’t refinance, he didn’t get a new loan. He was able to use $35,000 of the 70,000 he had access to. So you’re actually only paying interest only payments on 35,000 versus having, if you did on a refinance, you’re essentially paying for all the money at once. So you pull out 35,000, you pay cash for a house that you want to convert from a single to a multi. Now, were you specifically targeting single families that had the potential to be multis or was this just coincidence?

Kent:
Ideally, I wanted duplexes or tries. They’re the easiest to renovate. I mean, the whole BRR process is easier for. The whole idea of duplexes and tries is I like one renter to pay the mortgage and one renter to pay me. So when you look at multifamilies, it’s just a cash flow and that ideally has always been my goal.

Henry:
So 35,000, how much did it cost you to renovate this one?

Kent:
20,000 all in.

Henry:
What are you getting in rents on those units?

Kent:
A thousand for the two bedroom on the upstairs and then 900 for the one bedroom.

Henry:
So $30,000 purchase, $20,000 rehab, all in for 50, bringing in $1,900 a month. Again, that is a fantastic cash flowing deal. Did you finance this one the same way or did you do it a little different?

Kent:
So when I went to get that refinanced, that’s when I went the commercial loan route, which I really, I love it. It’s just so much simpler, so much quicker. So then it got reappraised at 110. So I pulled an $85,000 loan out on that and was able to pay off $20,000 of credit card debt and pay down that $30,000 that I initial investment.

Henry:
Okay, because you paid cash and you probably funded the renovation out of your own pocket. So you’re all in 50, but it’s 50 cash. So then you went and you got a loan on the property itself for 80. That gives you some cash in your pocket to pay off your debts. And an $80,000 loan bringing in $1,900 a month is still phenomenal cash flow. Plus you were able to pay off credit card debt, which essentially increases cash flow too, because now you’re not paying those credit card bills. That’s awesome, man. And I know a lot of people are listening and they’re thinking, “Man, well, I can’t buy $30,000 houses.” Well, A, you can because you can invest out of state if you want to. And B, there’s markets like this all over the country. So don’t just believe the lie of if you’re paying less than $100,000 that you’re getting some piece of crap that is going to cost you more to fix it up than it is to sell it.
There are plenty of markets where the price points are lower. There’s obviously risk to those things. Usually markets with lower price points like this don’t have a ton of appreciation. So I’m curious, is that what it’s like in your market? Do these properties appreciate with the national average or do they kind of just sit flat? It

Kent:
Would sit flat. I mean, when it comes to risk, I like to think of it as lower risk than anything else because – It is low risk. The money that I’m putting into it, the amount of money that I would invest into a $30,000 house compared to a $300,000 house, I’m just mitigating risk just in the initial price point.

Henry:
It’s a sliding scale, right? It’s a seesaw. Typically, if you’re in a market where you’re getting tons of appreciation, cash flow is none, negative, hard to find. Inversely, when you’re in a market where you can get phenomenal cash flow, I mean, we’re talking a debt service of 600 bucks, bringing in $3,000. That is phenomenal cash flow, but you’re not going to get a ton of appreciation. That’s just how real estate tends to work. So you need to figure out, if you’re listening to the show, to figure out what your strategy is, you have to set your own goals and then buy properties in a market that allow you to meet those goals, right? There’s going to be ups and there’s going to be downs, there’s going to be risks, and you want to be rewarded for the risk. I think that this is a decent strategy if you’re trying to build up cashflow, heavy cashflow market.
Before we move on to this next deal, Kent mentioned that he used a HELOC on his first house to fund his second property. And if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member, we have a new perk with our HELOC partner, Avan, that can get you a $400 statement credit. So go and check that out if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member. All right, Kent, I love these deals. I think this is a good strategy in what seems to be a very highly cashflow heavy market. You’re from the market, you live in the market, so you understand that market. I think that that’s a smart investment plan. Paint us a picture here in terms of time. The first deal was 2024 in July. How long was it between that one and this deal?

Kent:
I got this deal done in February of 2025.

Henry:
So about seven months later you did this next deal. Okay. That’s a reasonable timeframe. You did one deal, you learned some lessons, you go and do another deal. That’s great. Okay. And how long did it take you from deal two to deal three?

Kent:
It took a little bit longer because that’s when I got my son involved into this real estate journey. First one was a home run. The second one was going really well, and I knew that it was going to work out because I already had the cash. And another duplex while I was working on my second property, another duplex came up for $44,000.

Henry:
Okay. This was on the market listed?

Kent:
This is on the market listed for 44,000. All

Henry:
Right.

Kent:
I had to get there immediately because I knew when duplexes come up in Altoona, they go quickly.

Henry:
How old was your son at the time?

Kent:
19.

Henry:
Okay. Okay. Awesome.

Kent:
So he’s a 19-year-old. He was in college, but over the summer, he was going to fix a duplex up, basically do the same thing, pull equity out of it, and then do one property a year for the next four years while he was in college. So I got the house for $44,000. So I put 15, $16,000 down on it.

Henry:
Okay. Did you use the HELOC to put the money down or did you?

Kent:
Yeah.

Henry:
Yeah, at a boy.

Kent:
I did a commercial loan on this as well because I’m working with a local bank. So again, I think it’s benefits to be working with your local banks because they know the area. They know how to make things work.

Henry:
So typical structure of a loan for a local community bank, if you’re doing a fix and flip or some sort of construction loan, it’s 85% of purchase, 100% of rehab. So you got to put 15% down. So that was your 15% down payment you were talking about. You borrowed that from your line of credit on deal one. How much did the renovation of this duplex cost

Kent:
You? I think we took a $15,000 renovation loan with this commercial loan. So as you’re doing the work, they’ll pay you back, but we really needed about 25,000. So it was, again, a big property and the flooring is what we didn’t figure it out right. And then the caveat to all this, we’re lucky as in my dad as a union carpenter and would come down two to three days a week and help him fix this property up.

Henry:
So you got the whole family involved, grandpa, dad and son all working on this property. That’s super cool. So total budget was about $25,000, it sounds like, on the renovation of this duplex. You paid 44, you’ve got 25 in it, so you’re all in for just under $70,000. And what are you renting those units for?

Kent:
1,200 and 1,200.

Henry:
That is awesome.

Kent:
Yeah, it was fantastic. And then we refinanced this and he was able to pull out $72,000 out of his first property.

Henry:
As a 19-year-old.

Kent:
Yeah. Wow. Wow. He turned 20 till he refinanced it. But at 20 years old, we went to a lawyer and they wrote him a check for $72,000.

Henry:
How scared did that make you?

Kent:
No, he’s the most frugal kid you’ll ever meet. I knew he won’t spend a dime of it.

Henry:
Oh, I can’t imagine getting a $70,000 check at 19. I

Kent:
Was

Henry:
Not that responsible.

Kent:
No, he does great with his money. So he did pay me back. So I put the initial investment in and had to fund some of the flooring and some of the kitchen renovation. So he was able to pay me back $18,000. But then he’s still sitting in the bank with over $50,000.

Henry:
So what made you want to pull your son into this deal? What brought that about?

Kent:
Just financial security. It’s financial future. It’s making, one, giving him the opportunity to be successful later in life. I mean, he’s going to have this property for the next 30 years, just cash flowing 1,500 to $2,000. He can pay it down. He could sell it.You’ve always talked about having multiple exit strategies, and that’s what you have when you buy these properties. As long as you think about different ways of, do you want the cash flow? Do you want the HELOC? Do you need more cash? Are you going to do another deal? So we kind of talked through all that, but because I was so fortunate on my first two deals and because the price points are so low, we’re kind of mitigazing that risk, which is great.

Henry:
What was it like working on this property with your dad and your son, seeing something go from what it was when you purchased it to this investment property that’s producing income?

Kent:
It’s fantastic. I mean, it’s nice word of my son and then my dad comes out and helps out. I mean, we just have a good time. My nephews would come down and do some painting. So almost have a party and just hang out and then we just feed everybody and get free labor. It’s fantastic.

Henry:
All right, Kent, thanks for sharing that story. That’s super cool, getting your family involved and still pulling off another amazingly well cash flowing deal. I’m assuming there’s some more and we’ll dive into those deals right after the break. All right, we are back on the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’m speaking with investor Kent Long, who has pulled off some pretty amazing cash flowing deals. Now we’re onto what looks like deal four-ish, if you want to count deal three. It was your son’s deal technically, but you helped him with that. So deal three and a half. So what’d you do with deal three and a half?

Kent:
Found a duplex, I believe it was on the market for 65 and I got it for 55 in pretty good shape. The kicker was there was tenants on the first floor already, so ideally I’m going to keep them. And then I actually, you’re not going to love this, I paid a contractor to do the work.

Henry:
No, I love that. I think you should absolutely do that.

Kent:
So I got a $25,000 renovation loan with my commercial loan. The $25,000 paid for the second floor renovation, so painting, putting in a kitchen and flooring.

Henry:
Did you leave the tenants on the first floor at market rents or did you have to raise rents?

Kent:
So their rent was $450 a month.

Henry:
Okay.

Kent:
So I came in and was like, again, I took this from one of your previous podcasts is not just jump them up to market rate. So I just slow rolled them, I’ll increase you a hundred bucks a month for multiple months and I need you to eventually get to 750. 750 is still a little below market, but they’re paying all utilities. And while that renovation was going on, they were covering the mortgage

Henry:
Because

Kent:
It’s a $55 loan.

Henry:
Tenants aren’t stupid. They understand that you have a mortgage and taxes and insurance. Now they may not want to pay more rent, but they understand. And I have always found that if I just sit down and am honest with people, share the plan and give them a say in how we get there, they’re so much happier. Market rents are X. That’s the first thing, right? It’s to show them. If you move, you’re going to be paying 850 a month for the same property, or I can let you stay here for 750. That’s where I got to get you to. Can you help me come up with a plan to get you there? If I’ve got to tweak your rent every month, how much can we afford to go up every month? And when I give them a say in it, they don’t feel like I just did something to them.
They feel like they got to work with me to keep them in their home, which is always a better strategy. So purchase price, 55. Renovation, 25. So you’re all in for $80,000 and you got the one tenant on the first floor up to 750 a month in rent. And what were you able to get in the second floor?

Kent:
$1,000 for the second floor, two bedroom.

Henry:
All right. So 1750 gross rents on $80,000 of debt. This is a recent deal that you found in an affordable market that produces a ton of cash flow. There are markets like this all over the country. I love that you’re using strategies like lines of credit and community banks to grow your business. That is exactly how I grew my business. And I like the pace at which you’re doing these deals because it seems like you’re doing about a deal every six months or so. Is this your only job or are you working some other job at the same time?

Kent:
So my nine to five as a regional manager, as an occupational therapist, I oversee 18 skilled nursing facility therapy departments.

Henry:
So you’re doing this part-time with a full-time gig where you’re traveling a ton. How much time you’re putting in on a weekly or monthly basis into your real estate business?

Kent:
I wouldn’t even say an hour or two a week. If I do three or four a month maybe.

Henry:
Yeah. I like this. I like the story because most real estate investors are mom and pop folks just like you and just like me to some level where you do a few deals here and there, you get them stabilized, and then you move on to the next one. You do it in your spare time. It’s not something that you’re taking all of your focus and you’re able to still produce good income and cash flow when things are done the right way. I love that you’re leveraging the community banks. I love that you’re leveraging HELOCs and lines of credit, but this is just basic real estate investment strategy. This isn’t new. This is literally things that have been around for decades. Anyone can do this kind of strategy. So your goal getting into this was to buy assets, produce passive income. Where do you feel like you are on that roadmap?
Because you’re still self-managing, so there’s some work involved there. You’re doing some of the renovations here and there, so there’s some work involved there, but you’re also producing a good amount of income. So how many more deals do you think you need to do before you can really start to remove yourself from some of those things?

Kent:
My initial goal was to do 10 in five years, and I think I’m going to get eight done in probably maybe three and a half years.

Henry:
Before we get out of here, let’s kind of give everybody a recap of your portfolio. So how many deals have you done? How many doors do you have? How much cash flow is it producing?

Kent:
I have four properties, two duplexes, two triplexes, and then they’re cash flowing $5,500 a month currently right now. And that’s in a two-year timeframe.

Henry:
That’s pretty cool. And that includes your fourth deal, which looks like you bought a duplex for around 90 grand and you turned that one into a triplex?

Kent:
Correct. That one was the biggest renovation and then the biggest workload for me for sure. The duplex was already done. There was new floors, some carpeting. Both of those rentals were ready to go when I bought the property. I put two renters in there immediately, and then I’m getting 950 each for both of those. And then the first floor was an old corner store and it was a disaster. It was dirty. There was an old deli fridge still sitting in there that I had to use a sledgehammer to get out of there because it was so big. And then I took about two dumpster fulls of garbage to even get that first floor cleaned up, and I converted into a three bedroom, one bath on that downstairs unit.

Henry:
And what was the budget for that renovation?

Kent:
About $30,000 I put into

Henry:
This. So you’re all in for 120 and you rented that back unit for how much?

Kent:
1200.

Henry:
So that puts you at total gross rents of about $3,100. $3,100 on $120,000 of debt is phenomenal cash flow. And so this one was an on the market duplex again as well.

Kent:
Correct. Yep. I just got it refinanced and I’m able to pull 83,000 out of it, and then I’m paying my HELOC down to zero with that. Oh boy.

Henry:
Yeah.

Kent:
And you start all over again.

Henry:
So after all of these deals, what’s the goal going forward? Are you going to try to get to 10 in your timeframe or are you going to evaluate yourself after this eight?

Kent:
Ideally, I would love to get four more in the next year and a half.

Henry:
Okay.

Kent:
And when I turn 50, a year and a half from now, just kind of be done and then retire my nine to five

Henry:
Job. All right, Kent, thank you so much for sharing this story. This is such a cool story. What amazing deals. I love that you’ve done this in a recent timeframe. I love that you’re buying the properties on the market and I love that they’re producing cash flow that is getting you to your goals, seems like ahead of time to where you can actually leave your nine to five. I love that you were able to bring in your son and your dad and have everybody work together to build wealth because that’s truly the dream. Those bonds and those memories last forever, and it’s pretty cool to be able to share that with your family. So thank you for sharing that story.

Kent:
Yeah, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much, Henry.

Henry:
Thank you very much. And thank you guys for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Again, if you have a story you would like to share on the podcast, then you can go to biggerpockets.com/guest and you can apply to share your story with us right here on the BiggerPockets Podcast. As always, thank you for listening and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Abby, a 13-year-old from Poulsbo, Washington, went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game expecting nothing more than a fun night. She left with a trading card worth $20,100, the Seattle Times reports.

The card featured Jimothy, a raccoon with an unusually short, round shape who went viral this summer after videos of him wandering a Seattle neighborhood spread online. In his honor, the team gave out Jimothy cards to the first 20,000 fans through the gate.

Abby, a 13-year-old from Poulsbo, Washington, went to a Seattle Mariners baseball game expecting nothing more than a fun night. She left with a trading card worth $20,100, the Seattle Times reports.

The card featured Jimothy, a raccoon with an unusually short, round shape who went viral this summer after videos of him wandering a Seattle neighborhood spread online. In his honor, the team gave out Jimothy cards to the first 20,000 fans through the gate.

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest. 

As a founder, I used to assume that productivity was mostly a matter of discipline — that if someone wasn’t doing their highest level of thinking during core business hours, they simply needed better habits. I was wrong. What I’ve learned, both from building Jotform and from watching how our team actually operates, is that peak performance times are something you have to discover and build around.

The science behind circadian rhythms

Contrary to the perception that people are either early birds or night owls, it turns out there’s a whole range of hours when one may be predisposed to do their best thinking. For me, I’m sharpest in the morning; by 3 p.m., I have to fight to stay focused. That’s hardly the case for everyone — in fact, recent research from the Journal of Sleep Research found four discrete circadian profiles, including but not limited to those who hit their stride in the afternoon. 

What determines which profile you fall into? Largely genetics, though age plays a role too — teenagers and young adults tend to skew later, while older adults are often at their best earlier. Light exposure, exercise and even meal timing can nudge your rhythms, but nothing you do will fundamentally rewire them. You are, to a significant degree, born with your clock.

Why should leaders care? Because understanding how your employees operate best has a direct impact on their effectiveness. When we schedule our most demanding work without any regard for when our people are at their cognitive peak, their performance is going to suffer, and your bottom line is, too.

Building around your teams’ best hours

Presumably, you already know when you, personally, work best. If not, I suggest keeping an energy journal to note the times of day you feel alert and motivated, and when you start to flag. 

But leaders tend to have more flexibility than their teams — as a CEO, no one is raising any eyebrows about my comings and goings from the office. I can head out for a midday walk or have a long lunch with a colleague, and not worry about what my supervisor will think of my absence. It’s one of the perks of being the boss. 

Your employees don’t have that luxury. And many won’t volunteer information about their peak hours unless you make it explicitly safe to do so. Writing for Harvard Business Review, management professor Stefan Volk suggests using a free tool, like Munich ChronoType Questionnaire, to learn more about your team members’ most productive hours. “Used thoughtfully, those assessments reveal where energy levels align and where they diverge, helping leaders decide when to schedule demanding discussions, assign complex tasks and hand off less demanding work,” he writes. 

Obviously, it’s not possible to completely redesign the standard workday. But it is possible to be more conscious about what tasks are completed when. If you know your lead engineer is most focused in the late morning, for example, that may not be the best time to schedule your weekly check-in call. For collaborative projects, an awareness of everyone’s chronotype can help determine how to determine when the bulk of work gets done. 

At Jotform, I find it’s helpful to lead by example. Aside from having some necessary overlap during the day, I am agnostic as to when employees do their work. For me, mornings are my deep work time, and I don’t schedule anything superfluous during the hours when my mind is at its sharpest. When leaders model this kind of self-awareness, it gives employees permission to do the same.

Dr. Abbot’s night crawlers thrive in the wee hours, and that’s great for them (and anyone with a 3 a.m. emergency). It’s highly likely that some of your team members do, too. By building around when your people think their best, you’re encouraging them to perform at their highest level. And who doesn’t want that?

Like much of the rest of the country, I just finished devouring HBO’s gritty medical drama, The Pitt. As much as I love Dr. Robby and the rest of the show’s day crew, around whom the series revolves, it always thrills me when their grueling, 15-hour shifts start to wind down and the night shift shows up. 

It takes a specific kind of person to become an emergency room doctor, and an even more specific kind to become one who particularly loves working overnights. As the night shift’s attending, Dr. Abbot, tells his staff in a pre-shift pep talk, “We are the night crawlers. We deal with the weirdest and the wildest because — ” and here the group says in unison — “we are the weirdest and wildest of them all.” 

This delightful scene got me thinking, and not just about how grateful I am that there are men and women out there who are staffing our hospitals in the wee hours of the night. It also reminded me that everyone has their own circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs when they feel their sharpest.