As a brief background, I founded, grew and ultimately sold Pocono Rentals & Management (PRM), a short-term rental property management business in the Poconos, from 2019 through 2024. This was my “Real World MBA” of sorts, and as a look ahead I want to be thoughtful about what comes next.

Growing a business from scratch is very hard. Matter of fact, PRM was the 2nd business I created, with my first business (2u Cleans, mobile car cleaning) closing up shop after only a year. Unfortunately, this is common. The statistics say 80% of new businesses don’t make it 5 years, so while PRM was a success by many metrics, it was the exception, not the rule. It would be easy for me to sit here and say “I figured it out! I cracked the code. I now know how to create and scale a business so I’ll be poised to succeed once again” but my sensibility says that’s hubris. For a business to succeed, there are many factors that come into play, many of which lay within your control and many of which do not.

Regarding PRM, we battled through COVID (bad external factor) but then the Real Estate market became favorable and demand for STR’s spiked (good external factor). In many ways, it felt like I was trying to swim to shore (internal factors) and the current is pushing me farther and closer to shore (external factors). As much as I swam, which was very important, it felt largely insignificant compared to the current.

So I would attribute a large amount of PRM’s success to luck. I won, but not solely based on skill. To use an analogy, it felt like I won big at blackjack. I studied the rules of the game, but also didn’t play my cards perfectly. Yet, I won. Should I take my “winnings” and keep playing, feeling confident that I know the rules of the game? Or should I walk away knowing that the house normally wins unless you cheat?

But here is where that analogy falls apart. In Blackjack, you can win 49% of the time. In this arena, you win 20% of the time. And you don’t sit at the table for an hour before you collect your money, you sit there for multiple years before you get your payout, and there’s an opportunity cost.

To elaborate further, I didn’t strike success in year 1, and most business that ultimately succeed are not considered successful in year 1. You have to build your brand reputation, get clients, ask for referrals, use promotions to bring people in, advertising and marketing… the profits come later. Using my specific example, in year 1 I walked away from a 6 figure advertising job to make 1/3 of that operating PRM, with a significant amount more risk (80% failure rate). Only in the latter years did I approach the earning potential I would have had remaining in my previous “trade”.

So to sum it up – if I were to start another business, I would be facing…

• 70-80% failure rate
• Have multiple years of diminished income
• Risking the money I earned from selling my business (initial capital investment)
• Risking my time (something I have far less of, now with 3 young children).

Luckily, there is a better way. Enter – ETA, or Entrepreneurship Thorough Acquisition. Instead of starting a business, you buy a successful one with someone else’s money. Sounds too good to be true, right? Don’t worry, there’s still risk but risk that I find palatable. Let me dive in.

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The Plan – acquire a local, successful business that been in operation 10+ years, with consistent profitability, where the owner lightly involved in the daily operations. Maybe this business has archaic operating systems (i.e. paper invoices) or a lack of proper brand awareness (i.e. no Google Reviews). I can utilize my strengths to improve the business without disrupting the operations, draw a salary based on the business’ existing profitability, scale it to a new height, and continue to build valuable equity.

Let’s use an example…

Jimmy Pest Services:

• Asking Price – $600,000
• Revenue – $1,000,000
• Cash Flow* – $300,000
• Operating Expenses – $700,000

* Just think of this as “profits”

So this business makes $300k/year and I can buy it for $600k, which is considered a 2x multiple and is on-par with what businesses of this size sell for. Jimmy is ready to retire. He has 4 technicians, one of which has been a part of his team for the last 10 years, 2 vehicles, but only 20 reviews on Google (all 5-stars). There are residential contracts in place, and no commercial contracts in place.

At this point it should begin to be clear how there is less risk compared to starting a business; the business is there! It’s existing, it’s profitable, it’s… expensive… Who wants to pay $600k for a business? Not me! But the good news is this is where debt financing options become available.

I won’t dive in too deep, but there’s a few routes here to make sure I’m not spending my hard-earned money.

• SBA Loan – this is a business loan partially backed by the US government. Bank looks at the business opportunity, makes sure it’s a good deal, and lends the money to acquire the business. The loan is paid back over 10 years with interest, at as little as 10% down.
  • The catch – it requires the dreaded “Personal Guarantee”, so if I fail to repay the loan they can come after personal assets (i.e. my house) in order to be made whole.
• Seller’s Financing – instead of borrowing money from the back, some sellers are agreeable to being that financing option. So instead of receiving their full sale payment upfront, they can receive a part of it in installments over a period of time, with interest, giving them a continued revenue stream instead of a lump sum of cash all at once.
  • The catch – a seller might not be agreeable to this, for fear that you may not run the business well and they don’t receive their full sale price

To better understand this, let’s look at specific numbers. In this example, I am putting 10% down ($60k), borrowing 90% in the form of a SBA Loan at 12% interest.

• Down Payment (10%) – $60k
• Additional Closing Costs (another 10%) – $60k
• Cash Flow (profit) – $300k/year | $25k/mo
• Loan (90% of sale price) – $540k | repaid at $7,747/mo
• Cash Flow after Debt Service (CFADS) – $17,253/mo

So in this example, I am spending $120k in order to buy a business that makes $270k/year! The break even occurs in less than 6 months?!

Obviously, this is a overly simplistic example, and a bit of a rosey one, but this is not supremely uncommon. Sure, I’ll need to promote someone to be the Head Technician, perhaps splitting them in with equity over a period of time, not to mention all the issues that are uncovered after you step into the business and get a sense of the real reality… Buuut this is still before I have the ability to scale and grow the business!

At this point, it should be abundantly clear that this makes a lot more sense than starting a business from scratch. Going the SBA route should be a valid option, having already successfully ran/sold a business as well as having enough collateral to put behind the loan as a “Personal Guarantee”.

Let’s go a little further. Sure, the revenue stream is nice but that wouldn’t be the end goal. I would be motivated to grow the business, responsibly, and this is how that might look. Let’s go 10 years into the future, when the debt is fully paid back, to see what that reality looks like.

At Acquisition (2025):

• Sale Price – $600k
• Revenue – $1 million
• Cash Flow – $300k/year
• Profit Margin – 30% (revenue / cash flow)

Let’s say I’m able to grow the business by 10% a year for the next 10 years, keeping the profit margin the same. Once again, this is rosey but also realistic.

After Debt is Paid Off (2036):

• Revenue – $2.35 million
• Cash Flow – $707k/year

There’s a few really, really exciting parts to this…

• The Debt is Paid Off – which means there’s an additional $7,743/mo that is being kept, or $92k/year!
• The Multiple Increases! – while businesses in the $600k range sell for ~2x multiple, larger businesses sell for higher multiples, and a business of this size would sell for closer to a 4x multiple.

Not that the goal would necessarily be to sell at this point, but it would be an avenue, and that avenue could be around $2.8 million as a Sale Price!

So why isn’t everyone doing it? It’s not for the faint of heart. Not everyone is willing to trade to trade away the steady income for something more variable, in an arena that they don’t have experience, and putting a Personal Guarantee behind that belief. Private Equity tends to focus on larger deals, where the Small Business arena is being left largely under-served, which is one of the reasons why the multiples being sold at are in the 2-3x range (fewer buyers, supply and demand). The search process can be taxing, both mentally and financially. It requires a heavy time investment, usually meaning you either need to spend your 9-5 actually searching for the right business or raising money to help fund the search (allowing you to quit your job).

I could go on and on, but I’ll put a bow on things here. While I’m extremely excited for this next chapter, I am approaching it very cautiously. We’re excited for this phase of life, and everything we have, but the reward appears disproportional to the risk if the right precautions are taken.

An important part of the entrepreneurial journey is understand what worked and what didn’t. To reflect on this, I completed a business postmortem, helping me better prepare for what’s next!

The business: Pocono Rentals & Management, a full-service property management business for individuals with homes in the Poconos. We step into your shoes and manage your home on your behalf. Owners didn’t have to be hands-on with managing their home, and we could use our time, tools, team and technology to maximize the returns while being local.

Successes:

• WOW Factor: we received a lot of referral activity. While we didn’t keep everyone happy, typically the homeowners who came from self-managing or other PM companies were very impressed by our solution and wanted to tell others about it!
• Pure-Players: most other PM’s were real-estate agents who were more focused on buying/selling homes rather than focusing their efforts on managing. We stepped in as “pure-players” and maintained that property management was a full-time job
• Positive-Sum Game: by operating on a % of revenue model, it was an easy sell to clients. “We don’t make money unless you make money”, and the goal was to make the pie bigger so we could offset our management fee by bringing more money in the door. We had the time, tools, technology and team to make our clients more money than they could make on their own.
• Tech-forward: There ended up being a lot of parallel lines between Ad Agencies and PM. We leaned in to tech-forward solutions (dynamic pricing, PMS, etc.) which spoke the language of our clients
• Leads and SEO: Originally “Pocono Rental Management”, not because it was sexy but because it made it very clear what we did (what’s “Evolve” do?) as well as ranked well in SEO. We ended up spending less than $5k in advertising in over 5 years, with our leads coming organically (the best kind! active hand-raisers finding us, not us convincing someone to consider us) which kept the pipeline full with 3-5 leads/week.
• Yes to Less: I learned how to not say yes to everyone. There were homes we chose not to manage. There were communities that we walked away from for employee happiness reasons (too much work, not enough reward). It wasn’t about pleasing everyone, but instead the right people.
• Delegating without Abdicating – by not being local, I couldn’t simply “do” and I was forced to create solutions, systems and processes to allow by team to operate without me. I stayed involved in the business, but made sure to delegate responsibilities to team members while creating “playbooks” for the next time similar situations arose.
• Sale!: I purposefully created a sell-able business. I made sure I didn’t do too much myself, delegated responsibilities to the team members, and if something were to happen to me the business would continue operating.

Note – I’d be remiss not to mention the timing. I was fortunate. We started right before COVID (Sept ’19) which posed some initial growth pains, but once the market normalized, people fled the cities, and interest rates hit historic lows (important for new clients/new homeowners) we were able to ride that momentum with a sound solution.

Challenges:

• Managing Remotely: The larger we got, the more I needed to be local. It became increasingly difficult to stay connected to the homes (and homeowners) when I wasn’t able to get into homes for months instead of weeks. I also owed more face-time to the local team, which I wasn’t able to provide with a growing family and moving father away.
  • This also posed challenges to the culture we were building. I think we had about as strong of a culture that you could have in a remote environment, but it left more to be desired.
  • Also not being in an office with the team meant I had to trust them more. Trust, but verify only got me so far, and I felt myself wondering fairly often if the team was actually working or if they were just taking it easy (i.e. I have to hire another team member? Are we maximizing our time or are we being lazy?)
• Hire, then Grow: We would have to hire before winning more clients, which always kept profitability as a lagging metric.
  • For example, at 60 homes we might have 2 account managers and 2 maintenance managers, fully maxed out. So if we want to grow to 61 homes, I have to hire another AM and MM now, pay them a full salary, and not get back to this level of profitability until we hit 80 homes (one step back to go two steps forward)
• Seasonality: We made 35% of our money between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And we were buuuuusyyyy. This meant we had to hire a team for the busy months, but when the Fall came around we would be over-staffed (mostly was able to avoid this problem by always growing, but that can’t last forever).
  • I tended to avoid seasonal help because so much of the business was trust-based for me (not being local) and I relied on the narrative of “we’re building something great together” to help motivate the team. My fear was temporary help wouldn’t share in that same vision and would thus prove unreliable.
• Contracts and Agreements:
• Lawsuits and Insurance:

Considerations for the next one…

An important part of the entrepreneurial journey is understand what worked and what didn’t. To reflect on this, I completed a business postmortem, helping me better prepare for what’s next!

The business: 2u Cleans, a mobile car cleaning business. Instead of going to a car wash or a detailing shop, we bring the experience right to you, in your driveway!

Successes:

Not a whole lot. It was a battle from day 1 to day 365. I think there is a problem worth solving but my solution was not the right one. My biggest success is learning what not to do next time, and taking the time to reflect on that. I think I showed the courage to try something daring, and even though I failed I chose to learn and treat this as a real-world MBA.

Challenges:

• Scaling: Hard to scale because as I grow I need more employees. Employees proved unreliable without oversight
  • Reliability – Employees cancelling appointments last minute (employees cars kept “breaking down” on the way to the job)
  • Consistency – Increased customer service concerns. Employees not caring to do the job right or not being property trained, but the experience was not satisfactory
• Margins: Avg $30/car after all expenses, etc.
  • Need to get over 5 cars/day (on average) to get to close to $70k/year (and in hindsight, this was probably optimistic)
  • $120/car, profit only $30… about 25% profit margin on a hard to scale business
• Seasonality: Cold-weather was a challenge (spray would freeze to rims of car before you could wipe it off!)
  • Can’t clean cars below 32 degrees, lower demand, poor conditions for employees…
• Monthly revenue: thought more people would sign up for memberships. Perception issue. I wanted it to replace a car wash but it was viewed as a detailing (which it was). If we cleaned every week it would be less work, we could charge less, etc. but our customers just wanted it every once-in-a-while
• Touch-less: Not a good way to hand-off keys, can’t get copies… (unlike home cleaning or grass cutting when its friction-less)
• Cost per Lead: Ends up being too much in ad costs per new lead. Referral program wasn’t working (wasn’t something our clients were raving about).
• Partnerships: thought apt complexes and businesses would be a good fit
  • I should have leaned in more heavily here, but I wanted the solution to be for everyone, with a bigger vision. Not just a small business with a few apartment building partnerships.
• Unmotivated: have to believe in the product so you can grind day after day
  • I’m not a big believer in having a clean car, so why solve that problem?

Considerations for the next one…

• Product-based business: Easier to scale. Can ramp up with suppliers when you need more items. Don’t have to hire a new employee every time you grow (have to hire first, THEN grow.)
  • Also allows for more life-freedom (i.e. New Rich)
• Clients vs Customers: Want to sell into a client one-time, and then have a revenue stream. Contract based business with residual revenue.
• Evergreen: not specific to the season. Keeps from having to hire and fire employees when seasons oscillate.
• Don’t follow all the rules: Knowing when to cut some corners and not following all the rules until there is traction (Derek Sivers, Anything You Want)
• Passion: actually want to solve a problem
  • I don’t even clean my own car. Hard to rationalize others wanting it too…
  • Entrepreneurship is tough, need to believe in the solution to get through the hard times
• WOW Factor: Make it a remarkable experience that people have to tell their friends about! (Seth Godin, Purple Cow).

My relationship with booze has played out as follows…

• 0-15 years old – never drank. Had a sip of my Dad’s Rum and Diet one time, and never wanted a taste again (or so I thought!)
• 16-17 years old – was introduced to beer when playing MarioKart with stolen Coronas after a parents New Years Eve party. Bunch of us 16 year olds, drinking in a basement, safely and responsibly. And while this was a highlight, I never actively craved it. Shortly after, we began regularly playing ‘King’s Cup‘ at a friends house while drinking Malibu and Cokes. In hindsight… I think the parents were trying to responsibly introduce us to booze, and it was once again a safe and fun environment.
• 18 years years old – this is when I really started binge drinking. My older friends went to University of Delaware, and while I was a senior in High School I would visit them on the weekends and really started to get in to drinking. I remember having a really hard time drinking Brunette’s Vodka and Milwaukee’s Best (BEAST!), but sticking through it and teaching myself to deal with the taste.
• 19-22 years old – COLLEGE! I was a ring-leader, joining a frat, drinking myself into oblivion. Luckily, I was a good drunk and didn’t really want to picks fights, pee in closets and none of that mess (for the most-part, my drunk alter-ego is just a sleepy and hungry one; pretty harmless to society!). I never smoked, drinking was my vice and I did a good job keeping my drinking limited during the week, especially my first two years of college.
• 23-29 years old – Bachelor Life! Moved to Philly, and every weekend was drinking-focused. In college, I still had hockey and other distractions, but post-college drinking was really the focus. Going to a Flyers game? Smuggle in some whiskey. Playing soccer? Let’s bring some beers and hit the happy hour after. I never let this bleed into being a bad employee, I still worked hard and was very motivated, so I never saw it as a problem (after all, we even had beer and Jager on tap in the office!). Everyone was doing it! I was very into craft beer, and even brewed my own beer a few times a year.
• 30-36 years old – Get married, have a kid, have another kid… have one more kid. “The bars” was no longer a thing, and the drinking was mostly taken place in the home. I began to realize that craft beer, and beer in general, didn’t do things I liked to my stomach, so I began drinking more whiskey and wine. At worst, I was splitting a bottle of wine every night with maybe 6-8 drinks/night on the weekends.

And here we are now… I’m 36 years old and about 50 days into not drinking, which is also the longest streak I’ve went through since I was 18 years old. This is also somewhat notable to me, realizing I have spent half my life not drinking and then half my life drinking heavily. As you read above, I wasn’t an alcoholic. “An alcoholic was someone who has a problem, and has to find another drink. That’s not me! Maybe a functional alcoholic, but I’m doing well in my career, got married, had kids… no problem here!”. Or that’s what I told myself, and many others do too I’m sure.

I can’t point my finger at the one point where I decided not to drink. It was more of a “straw that broke the camels’ back” type moment rather than a “he really hit rock bottom and was told my the doctor he has to stop drinking or his liver will fail” type moment. So in no particular order, I’ll try to recall what specifically lead me to this moment and why I’m done drinking indefinitely.

Envy – I always envied those who cut booze out of their lives. Probably because I felt a bit captive to it! I didn’t particular love the taste, and in general I don’t like being in positions where I had to have something, where I felt captive to it. While I could “stop at any time” I did still feel that I had to indulge on a societal level. “People who don’t drink have a problem” is the norm, and instead of feeling that way, I always had a feeling of envy when I heard someone wasn’t drinking.

A Close Friend – a close friend of mine successfully quit booze. Did so for a few years, reintroduced it for a little while, and then realized it wasn’t for him. Up to this point, I really thought the only way to quit drinking would have some type of “moment”. The wife threatens to leave them, the doctor encourages them to stop, etc. The “tipping point” is fascinating to me, and I believed that not too many people would just choose to not drink anymore. Being a close friend, I would like to believe if he had a big moment like that he would tell me, so since no news of that was shared with me I believe he just chose to not drink anymore, and if he can do that so can I!

No Longer Required – there was certain a time in my life where if I didn’t drink it would have social ramifications. My go-to first-date move was go to the bar and have a few drinks. And in the wild world of advertising, it was common to hit the happy hour after work. But now I’m in my 30’s, with young children and no social life. Being a drinker is no longer a requirement.

Who Cares What Other People Think – I know this quote is miss-attributed, but the saying goes…

When you’re 20, You care what everyone thinks. When you’re 30, You stop caring what everyone thinks. When you’re 40, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place

This is how I feel. Sure, there’s a societal stigma with not drinking, and I just don’t care what you think anymore. You can think I have a problem, or you can think I’m no longer fun, but truthfully you’re probably not even thinking about me at all.

Focus on Health – Year over year, I have paid more and more attention to my health. Maybe it’s getting old, maybe it was COVID, but in the last 5 years I have really taken to running, and working hard to lose weight and feel good about myself. This year I have aggressive goals, and the first few months of the year I didn’t hit my goals. I was working hard, running more than I have ever ran in Jan/Feb, and still, weight isn’t coming off. “Something needs to change! I need to make an adjustment” and the answer was so obviously in front of me. I so badly didn’t want to give up drinking, it was very much associated with my identity, but my identity is also being an athlete, and I was at an impasse where I couldn’t be both simultaneously in a way that achieves my goals.

Recapturing the Early Mornings – even after a wine or two, 5am can be rough. But it doesn’t have to be, and with my free time become more and more scarce with more and more needy bodies in the picture, I needed to find ways to make the most of my days. Getting up early and going for a run was something I always saw a benefit from… when I did it… which was practically never. I’m a heavy sleeper, and a very convincing negotiator, so sleeping 5am Dave was wildly successful at convincing myself to stay in the bed when what I really wanted to achieve was an early morning run to kick-off my day. Said another way, drinking is borrowing happiness from tomorrow, and the happiness I received in the moment was less than the happiness I was borrowing the next day. In college, it certainly had a higher ROI but for this phase of my life it’s a pretty garbage ROI.

Brainwashing – Now I see it ever where! The billboards, the TV commercials, the social events. So much in our society directly revolved around drinking. If you don’t do it, there must be something wrong with you. If you’re going to do something fun, you should bring some booze to make it more fun. I got completely red pill’ed by it. I could not see it all before my eyes, and how we’re really pawns in Big Booze’s agenda. Reminded me of cigarettes, where everyone is silently wishing they could quit, and how it’s no longer as enjoyable as it used to me, but we keep going through the motions because everyone does it. I wanted off the ride.

The Alcohol Experiment – Recommended by that same friend mentioned above, he passed this along which really codified my beliefs. Matter of fact, much of this post is probably in lock-step with the way that book is written. It poses to encourage individuals to stop drinking for 30 days to see how they feel. To be observant, and really understand what alcohol gave them, and how they feel without it. It’s very observation-based, not sales-y, and scientific. Oftentimes with books, they have to reach you at the right time, and this book could not have been delivered to me at a better time!

30 Day Spells & Failed Experiments – Unspecific to the book above, once/year for about 5 years I would kick out drinking for 30 days at a time (in reality, probably 20-25 days. I think I only made it to 30 once). The purpose was to make sure I wasn’t developing a problem and proving such! While I could mostly do it, the feeling very much was to GET TO THE 30 DAY MARK! There was a clear finish line that I was trying to get to, and the goal was to go back to drinking (unlike the Alcohol Experiment above). To taste it and enjoy it. To not drink during the week and to make it a enjoyable experience. To drink water between drinks so I’m staying hydrated and not overdoing it. But then the creep sets in… “Pool is open (on a monday), let’s have a drink!” | “Oh shoot, I forgot to do water between that last drink.” | “Well of course I’m going to drink at the Eagles Tailgate!”. After failed experiment after failed experiment, I was getting frustrated, but maintaining the belief that I don’t have a problem. However, the signs were there. I wasn’t able to have a few without having a few more. And while I wasn’t blacking out or missing work, I was still letting it interfere with what I wanted to be reality (losing weight). That might not be a massive problem but it was a problem.

• As a quick aside, I looked gooooood! I could see it in my face, in one specific family portrait when I wasn’t drinking, and I was amazed at how refreshed I had looked.

Chasing the Dragon – Drinking in your teenage years was FUN! You’re flirting, people are being silly, booze is novel and new. That shit really worked! But after 18 years of consistent drinking, like most things it really loses it’s luster. You have to drink more and more in order to get a certain level of drunk, and still that “drunk” feeling really just doesn’t hit the same. So maybe you try to drink more (chasing the dragon) or maybe you just settle in to the casual 2 glasses on wine/night. But in either event, it just wasn’t the same as it used to be no matter how badly I wanted it so.

Family Man – What message does this send to my children? I still remember the first time I had a sip of my Dad’s Rum & Diet, and these kids are like sponges soaking everything up. What message does it send if I drink? Or prioritize drinking? And conversely, what message will it send if I don’t drink? Will they view that positively, as a virtue? Can it be a life lesson? It’s hard for me to see where me not drinking leads them down a worse path.

Cannabis – And in comes legalization! Up until about 35 years old, I could probably count on one hand how may times I had actually been high. It wasn’t the vice for me, drinking was! When I did get high, I always got a bit anxious and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience… But I began to open my mind a bit more, and began introducing myself to it. Why? It seemed healthier than drinking. A lot of the stigma of it has been dispelled. And while I don’t like smoking, I could just take a gummy. I could then use this as a crutch to move off booze.

So all-of-the-above? There were a lot of reasons for the change, but ultimately it didn’t happen over night. This is something I have struggled with for years now. How can I control my drinking better? Can I try this? Maybe that? 2 steps forward, 1 step back, and another step back… My focus was on continuing to improve and grow, and I’m happy I was able to be honest enough with myself to realize I can’t show restraint and I should find a better plan. Maybe at one point I will change my mind, but for now I am sober and I have no deadline on that to expire.

Thus far, I feel really good! I haven’t developed any Superpowers like I had hoped, but I think I’m about 20% happier. The weight is coming off, I feel more clear headed, less emotional and reactive, and once again, I like the way I look! I probably feel a bit of smugness but revealing that I’m not drinking, and I’m not sure it’s the way it is received but I do feel it deep down. After all, I admired those who could quit drinking and now I was one of them! And I apologize to you as you read this, but yes, there is a bit of me that does feel a bit superior by being able to still have fun and not be reliant on a substance (don’t worry, I don’t feel far superior to you, and I know this foolish logic, but it helps me stay motivated by feeling a bit holier than even if it isn’t true!).

Still haven’t peaked!

First, a backstory on how this mindset came to be for me.

It started when my wife and I were expecting our first child. If you are not yet a parent, I will play spoiler and let you know that everyone will come out of the woodwork and feel obligated to give you unsolicited advice, followed up by letting you know how hard it’s going to be. Everybody.

“It’s so hard. You can’t prepare for it…”
“Enjoy your sleep now because you won’t get any for 3 months…”
“They just cry all the time and you never know why…”

And they’ll always follow up it by softening the blow by saying something like…

“Oh, but it’s totally worth it and your kid will be so cute!”

I took this a few different ways, but my first thought was “just because it is hard for you doesn’t necessarily mean it will be hard for us.” We may read more books, have better coaching, exhibit more discipline or really anything that can make our experience easier. This is ignorant though. I don’t know how much they prepared, how much they read or how much discipline they exhibited. What if they were the ones that were more prepared AND it was still a lot of work?

This lead me to a better thought. A better mindset.

“We get to do this”

We get to be parents. We get to go through the hardships. We get to wake up at 3am to see if our daughter is okay. We get to listen to them cry and try to communicate with us.

Sure, there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with the territory. A lot of work. Perhaps a lot of sleepless nights. But we get to bear the responsibility, do the work and stay awake with them.

I don’t have to wake up at 3am to see if my daughter is okay. I get to.

There are a lot of great couples out there that aren’t lucky enough to be parents naturally. They would give anything to be able to wake up at 3am to tend to a daughter. To trade their weekends in for parenthood. And unfortunately, they don’t get to. We’re lucky. We do. And we will remember that even when times are tough and challenging. We will do our best to not take that for granted.

But this isn’t specific to parenthood. I get to do a lot of things that may otherwise seem burdensome.

Running. I’m able bodied, in decent shape, joints are in operating order… There are a lot of people who physically can’t run and they would give anything to be able to do so.

Work. I’m lucky enough to live in America, have enough financial freedom to start a business and have the cognitive faculties to be successful. Everyone has those days where they don’t want to work, but I like to remind myself that I get to work.

Just changing my mentality from “have to” –> “get to” has changed a lot for me. It reminds me to be grateful in moments where it not immediately apparent.

In order to comprehend the importance of UBI, you really need to understand the rise of A.I., Algorithms and Automation. You might want to start there.

UBI Explained – One version of UBI proposes that every citizen above 21 years old received $1,000 per month (after tax) to do whatever you want with it. You don’t need to do anything to deserve it besides be alive and be a citizen.

Most of UBI conversations boil down to the fear of worst case scenarios. Let’s explore them…

Pro-UBI fear, if we don’t implement UBI then we will face economic turmoil. Algorithms/Automation/A.I. will not only replace physical jobs (think truck drivers) but it will also replace cognitive jobs (think human analysts). This is one of the biggest differentiators of the A.I. revolution as compared to the Industrial Revolution. When this happens, the lower and middle classes will be crippled, resulting in unprecedented amounts of unemployment. Instead of people being ‘unemployed’ there will be the birth of a new ‘unemployable’ class where a whole class of people do not possess any skills to be employed.

Anti-UBI fear, by giving citizens a free handout of $1,000/month they will be disincentive to work. Instead of creating innovation it will backfire, resulting in a large percentage of the population spending their handout on booze/drugs, sit in the basement and play video-games. This will result in massive amounts of people not working, stagnating the economy.

Both scenarios are possible. While there have been a few small UBI tests done (Present day Alaska, pockets in Finland, Canada in the 1970’s) it is unfair to extrapolate that data to see how it would affect urban, suburban and rural areas across the US. But when comparing the downsides, I would argue that a full economic collapse is a far greater negative consequence as compared to a percentage of unmotivated and noncontributing citizens.

Furthermore, many economics believe that UBI will breed innovation. By having a safety blanket of income, UBI would incentivize more individuals to take the leap into entrepreneurship and, naturally, some of the individuals will be successful. If this happens then all we’d need to understand is if the economic positive (of new and created entrepreneurship) outweighs the free-loaders (videogame, drug users). Will it? Once again, without a crystal ball its hard to say. However, based on today’s economic structure it would probably only take one ‘Uber’ to counteract a nation of freeloaders.

Its important to note that $1,000/mo is not a lot of money. It’s below the poverty line. Behavioral economists have mentioned that this will not be enough to have people quit their jobs and it will be supplemental to their jobs.

But how can we pay for it? If we gave each citizen above 21 years old $1,000/mo, that would be $2.36 trillion (197 million citizens @ $12k/year). However, this program wouldn’t necessarily be additive and could serve as a replacement program. Programs like unemployment, social security and SNAP not only have enormous budgets but also require very high levels of administration. Example, for Unemployment there are officials who monitor individuals making sure they are applying for jobs, interviewing, being fired justly, etc. UBI does not require this level of administration. If you’re alive and over 21 years old, you get a monthly check. Social Security is set to payout $1 trillion this year so it seems well within the realm of possibility that we could fund a ~$2.5 trillion initiative

So, what’s the rush? If the jobs aren’t gone now and they aren’t going away tomorrow, why do we need to implement this program now? Simply put, I don’t think we need to, however, technology advances exponentially and politics moves at a snails pace. We’ve already seen tremendous advancements in self-driving car technology which represents one small sliver of what will soon be affected. As we see the technological writing on the wall, I believe it makes sense to start testing UBI programs, learning how people react to it (i.e. the Pro-UBI and Anti-UBI fear arguments) so we’re not unleashing $2.36 trillion on the American people with no idea of what the outcome would be.

In summary, The effectiveness will come down to if the positives (innovation, increased spending) outweighing the negatives (freeloaders, booze/drugs). A minimal UBI of $1k/mo would keep citizens under the poverty line, keeping them working jobs, contributing to society and affording them the ability to live comfortable lives.