As a digital nomad, I get to pick anywhere in the world I want to live. Recently I’ve grew fond of Dallas, Texas and I’ve been asked several times on my reasoning behind Dallas. It’s not as common of a pick as other cities (someone asked me why I didn’t move to Hawaii) but a lot of thought has went into why Dallas. Before I dive into Dallas, I should explain why the US. Being Canadian, I’ve occasionally (not often) been asked why the US?

I decided on America because:

• Unlimited opportunity. This could be a book of its own but things like the market size play a big factor here. There’s money here and a lot of people with it. Even look at something as simple as shipping. In the US I can ship a book for $3 or so. In Canada, that same book costs $20 to ship. You can see how someone in e-commerce would struggle in Canada.
• Cost of housing. The average house in Toronto was $1.35 million CAD in April 2022 whereas Zillow pegs the average Chicago home at $320,442 USD. These are two very comparable cities. Dare I say more?
• Weather. Snow is scenic but it’s also dangerous and makes life difficult for no reason. The salt from the roads ruins cars, shoes – everything.
• Ease of living. This is kind of tied into weather but America has everything. If something is invented, it comes here first. We don’t wait for it to come to this country. We have it and we had it first. Medicine? Comes here first. Then it comes to Canada about 5 years later.

Those are 4 random points that came to mind about the US. Let’s move onto what I planned to talk about, why Dallas?

I think it’s first important to open our eyes – nowhere is perfect. Every city that you think is awesome, someone is looking to escape. So let’s first look at a complain from someone who hates Dallas.

Why not Dallas

Why even consider Dallas? How is it even on a short list? I’ve been here since 2018 and am trying to relocate ASAP. It sucks balls. It’s flat. There’s barely any nature. It’s too hot. The drivers are assholes and dangerous. There’s a lot of crime. People are not nice. Everyone has a gun and are eager to use it. Did I mention how hot it is? Its a sucky place to live for kids. The mosquitos are insane. Allergies! One of the worst place for allergy sufferers in the country. Super high property tax. There’s a bunch of people waiting for the second coming of JFK Jr – that’s just weird, man.

I think we’ll break this down piece by piece.

It’s flat

Most people don’t live in mountains. Colorado is nice. Lots of people vacation there for that reason but to say a city isn’t nice because it’s not mountainous is wrong. There are plenty of great cities without mountains.

No nature

It’s a city, of course there’s no nature.

It’s hot

This is fair. The heat is bad in the summer. The heat can also be dangeorus like snow.

The drivers are assholes and dangerous

When I think dangerous, I think Chicago drivers. I think driving I-90 north heading into Chicago. People are driving fast, and swerve across manly lanes. In conclusion, you get this in any city. Toronto is notorious for it too. In fact, Toronto is the only place where I’ve seen people pull over and get out of their car because of road rage. It happens in the US too – it happens in cities.

There’s a lot of crime

You can basically just look at stats to understand this. Most major metro areas in the south have a lot of crime.

People are not nice

This is a city thing. People tend to be on edge in cities. Again, visit Chicago or Toronto.

Everyone has a gun

This seems more of a dig to America rather than Dallas.

Mosquitos and allergies

I grew up in a marsh so I can’t really say this bothers me but I guess it would bother some. This is definitely a first-world problem.

High property tax

The idea here is that since there’s no state income tax, it levels out, and it does.

Weird people

People are weird, but checkout Florida.

Why Dallas

In no order, this is kind of how I thought about choosing my next city.

Weather

I enjoy the sunshine. I don’t like getting pale in the winter and hibernating. The idea of waiting until summer to do an activity is not something I’m fond of and where I’m from, summer is 3 months and hibernation is close to 8. The thought of having two garden seasons per year? Awesome.

So split the country in half. Let’s look at the sunny portion. Anywhere that’s red, orange or yellow is good. I’ll stay away from the blue and purple.

Entertainment

Now I’m not someone who likes to go out a lot but I like having the option. I don’t like waiting for events. I want to have the option of going to an event every night of the week if I wanted. I want something for my guests to go do if they’re in town visiting, and being from Canada, I’m expecting a lot of visitors and I expect them to stay at my house. I work long hours, so it’s nice if there’s a big city with things to do.

I also like the idea of friends passing through the city for events. Being a digital nomad, my friends are spread out. If I plop myself in Dallas, there’s a high chance they’ll see me rather than 90% of other places in the US.

Sports are also a huge part of entertainment. I like hockey, but I’m sick of cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs because I just can’t afford going to games that often. Tickets are often 10x the price. Not to mention, Canada doesn’t have football like the US. I’m really looking forward to Cowboys games.

Now we’re able to get down to a list of cities which is something we can work with. Working left to right, I can explain why I didn’t choose other cities, because realistically, that’s how my thought process was for much of it. It was a process of elimination.

Cost of living

Looking at the 3 California cities, COL comes to mind. California has beautiful weather but the costs of living are very high. I lived in San Diego a few years ago and I’ll never forget whenever I drove to Vegas for a weekend, I would try to get pass the state line to Nevada because gas prices would drop $1 per gallon. California is a big economy but it is losing some of it’s talent. It’ll be strong for years to come but it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe if their economy crashes I’d reconsider going there because the weather there is unbeatable.

Scenery/livability

Phoenix is really hot, but as they say, “it’s a dry heat.” However, it’s a desert. It’s a different lifestyle than what I’m used to growing up. There’s no grass. People don’t go outside midday. It would be kind of culture shock to me so I would have to live there a bit before diving into any consideration of long term.

Family and lifestyle

Las Vegas has a lot. Actually, it has everything. It’s an incredible city but it’s just not ideal for a family. Not that a family is on the horizon (it’s not) but it doesn’t really make sense to me to park myself in the biggest party city in the country at this point in my life. Besides, Vegas flights are incredibly cheap if I decide to go.

Miami is also a big party city, which is why I decided against it as well.

Cities where families live also have more stability in home prices. Vegas is too reliant on tourism. During the pandemic, the city was very quiet.

Population

I like places with population because population breeds opportunity but it also breeds things to do. Carbone has 5 locations – New York, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas and Hong Kong. Those are big cities.

Population has things like auctions. There are stores. There’s a booming used market on places like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. You don’t have to buy a brand new – well, anything – because someone’s selling it in these cities.

This in turn is why I chose to not go to North Carolina. There’s just not enough going on there. This would make sense if I was about 40 and less motivated.

This leaves us with Dallas, Nashville and Tampa, which were basically my top picks. My other top picks are:

• Charleston. Amazing but just not enough going on. Atlanta and Jacksonville are each 4-5 hours away.
• Austin. Similar to Charleston, not enough going on but at least Dallas is a reasonable drive.
• Pheonix, specifically Scottsdale. It’s a nice spot but I chose to remain on this half of the country because family.
• Denver. Colorado is awesome, but I think I’d be mad at myself if I moved somewhere with snow.

Social media is funny, especially when older people get on it. I’m not much of a Facebooker but I do use LinkedIn occasionally. recently I saw this quote being shared aggressively.

Most people would think, “well no sh*t.” The idea here isn’t that unique at all. Why would that get millions of likes?

These viral virtue-signaling posts actually have nothing to do with their point taken face value. What we have here is an extremely simple thought but it’s getting an insane amount of praise. Are these words really that unique? No.

The reason? The meaning behind this an attempt to take quantitative analysis of an individual and turn it into qualitative… and guess who does the qualitative judging, the other person.

Quantitative (fact)

• I’m the mayor of Detroit
• I’m married and have 2 kids
• I weight 185 pounds

Qualitative (opinion)

• I’m a nice guy
• I’m an attractive person
• My hair doesn’t look funny

So shifting one’s worth from quantitative to qualitative really means, “you don’t determine your worth, I do.”

“Take away the indisputable facts and let me judge you how I want.” Cruel, huh?

Having example sales decks can be useful. I’m always asked by industry friends to send over decks, because of how useful they can be to learn from. Even if you’ve been in the industry for 15 years and make a few million dollars a year, you can always learn from how others are pitching themselves.

I also hate getting spammed and iHeartMedia is always spamming me. Maybe someone here can benefit off the spam.

Here are the decks (3 attachments):

Amazon-OTT-Premium-Deck.pdf

iHeartMedia-Luxury-Category-Insights.pdf

iHeartMedia-Assets-Overview-Presentation.pdf

Here’s the cold email they send with it:

Hoping this email finds you and the team at [company] well.

I wanted to reach out today to personally introduce myself and see if it would be possible to set up a time to speak this week or the week after, as I would be pleased to share some opportunities for [company] with iHeartMedia.

Additionally, I also like to share that I love what you are currently doing marketing-wise on social media, as it’s very creative and engaging. I also really respect what you are doing as a company, as [company] is truly a premium product that provides true custom precision nutrition to each individual, and as a person that takes health and wellness seriously, I am definitely going to be a customer.

If you aren’t already aware, iHeartMedia is the number one media company in the US with insight and data on millions of registered users, and health & wellness is a core category for our company. We can hyper-target various interests and demographics including the HNW & UHNW consumers through our exceptional, targeted capabilities with OTT, digital, podcasts, social, influencers, events, etc. I am presently speaking with health and wellness companies about custom opportunities that will generate the necessary interest and awareness to create real results for them, and I know we could do the same for [company].

We also have some incredible partnerships that just came online that raise the bar quite a bit.

For instance, we recently became partners with Amazon & Amazon Advertising, giving us access to Amazon Shopping Behaviors for targeting OTT (Streaming TV) campaigns.

Amazon has created customer audiences based on what people stream, browse, watch, shop, and purchase. As an example, the Amazon + iHeart partnership allows companies to reach the 74% of audiences reached by Amazon OTT who were not reached by linear TV. Furthermore, Amazon OTT complements our iHeartOTT product by adding access to IMDb TV, Twitch, Fire TV News, and Amazon data targeting, allowing us to provide companies with opportunities to generate exceptional interest and awareness to create real results for them.

I believe that this new partnership could provide even more amazing results for [company], and I’d be grateful for the opportunity to set up a discovery/CNA call with you, and any other team members you would like to bring on.

Please kindly let me know what would work for your schedule and I will follow up with a meeting invitation.

Thank you.

Best regards,

I found a fair for about $60 one-way ORD to YYZ. I haven’t flown a budget airline before and I’ve never flown or heard of Flair before, so I gave it a shot. Let’s call this an experiment for the benefit for my close friends/family and anyone reading this.

The day before departure, I attempted to check-in online. I was given an error message which I later learned from the airline staff that it was down for everyone.

I start the day by getting into the Uber and not finding the airline in the list of 100+ airlines in the Uber and Lyft apps. Chicago has 5 terminals and the airport is quite large so I tried to find which terminal Flair flew out of so my rideshare could drop me off closest to my gate.

I started by searching my emails, texts and boarding pass. Everything showed no terminal and no gate. Yes, the boarding pass didn’t give any instruction as to where to go. So I ended up, choosing Air Canada on the rideshare. Once in the car, I continued to search further for flight info. Their site had a live chat thankfully, so I chatted with the agent and after 20-30 minutes I was told it would be in terminal 3. The live chat agent then corrected himself and said terminal 2. How encouraging. He also told me the flight may be operating under Freedom Airlines.

So I went to terminal 2, and looked for Flair Airlines. Nothing. Only option was to either chat with one of the big 3 (Delta, United, American) or go through security. So I went to security. Clear and TSA never heard of this airline and let me through after questioning. I admit, the Times New Roman boarding pass doesn’t look authentic.

Once through, I started looking for displays, which I couldn’t find before clearing security. The displays were specific to the brand of airline. United had their own, as did American and Delta. Flair was nowhere to be found.

So, I got on live chat again, this time I was told by a new agent that the flight would be out of terminal 3. So, off I go. When I got there, terminal 3 was entirely American Airlines flights. This doesn’t look good.

I asked live chat for the gate specifically. They delayed 10-20 minutes and came back with nothing. The best solution they had was to ask airport personnel where the gate is. Are you kidding me?

After some pacing and calm frustration, I decided to ask for some help because if I don’t figure this out in the next few minutes, I likely won’t make this flight. The only staff I could find were American Airlines staff.

The American Airlines agents never heard of Flair, but they were friendly and immediately helped by also searching the flight number on Google and other tools on their side.

Nothing. They had plenty of ideas on ways to track down where this flight was departing from, but sadly found nothing concrete. I was on the Flair site, looking for a place to check flight statuses, etc, but there wasn’t anything. The site was extremely broken (most of the client side CSS wouldn’t even load).

At this point, it was 20-30 minutes until boarding begins. That’s a nightmare in Chicago where changing terminals takes 10-20 minutes alone.

It was at that point, I got a text message from Flair. Finally some info.

Hello Flair Passenger, please be advise Flair Airlines is located in Terminal 5 in the International Terminal and our check in counters are 8 and 7A and 7B

The American Airlines attendants directed me as soon as the message came in. I exited the terminal and I hopped in the train to hop from terminal 2 to 5.

Once I got there, I found the counter and the agents were friendly. The airline staff told me they don’t have TSA Pre (Nexus) setup yet. So when I cleared security the second time, there was no way to get through quickly to make sure I make the flight. After all, I only had 15 minutes once they texted me the terminal and I arrived at it.

They printed my new boarding pass which included the gate, which was M3 out of Terminal 5.

Exhausted by this point, I clear security and get to my gate. It’s boarding time and nothing is going on. I wait until departure time, at which point they announce: “We regret to inform you that there will be a delayed departure for this flight due to unscheduled maintenance. We will inform you when we have an update along with a revised departure time.”

Flair was a 1 of 1 test. It was not worth the cost-savings that can sometimes be found with better low-cost airlines. I hope it helps someone who’s considering trying Flair.

Ethics behind lockdowns has been a common topic for the past year and a half. I wanted to introduce some utilitarian philosophy to the discussion, backed by the facts so readers can draw an opinion on their own.

A bit of a disclaimer – there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to lockdowns. Some people values believe it’s more important to have more years in your life while others believe it’s more important to have more life in your years. Your opinion will also differ based on how your lockdown experience was. If your health diminished because your gym closed, causing you to lose 20 pounds of muscle, then lockdown affected you more than most. If you experienced domestic violence, then it was harder for you than for others. If you or a family member lost control of their disease (like cancer or Crohn’s disease) due to cancelled screenings, then it was worse for you and your family than it was for others. If you were one of the 1 million Canadian children who called the Children’s help phone in 2020, then again, it was harder for you than it was for most. If you were one of the businesses that went bankrupt, and you lost your livelihood, then the lockdown was harder for you than most.

I used Florida as the worst-case scenario, who was mocked in media for their decisions, which experienced 2.69 deaths per 1000 over Ontario which had 0.67 deaths per 1000. These two provinces/states sit on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to lockdowns. This table will show you the decision they made.

The difference between Florida’s and Ontario’s death rate is the reason Ontario decided to lockdown harder than any other province or state in North America. As you can see from the data, the 29,384 people saved are the reason behind dramatic lockdowns in Ontario.

These people (who are dying from COVID-19) have an average age of 84 in Canadian statistics, and according to Actuarial Life Table from the Social Security Agency, are expected to live another 7.56 years without COVID-19 implications.

With the average age of COVID-19 death being 84, it’s worth pointing out that life expectancy in Canada is 82.

Doing the math, you can see Ontario locked down for 15.1 million years of life to save 211k years of death (ratio of 71:1).

What’s the right answer? You decide. Ontario and Florida had opposing opinions. Florida sided with the 99% and Ontario sided with the 1%.

If you decide it’s worth locking down 14.6 million people for 29k lives, what would you define the threshold as? 1000 lives? 1 life? If you could lock down an entire nation for a year to save 1 person, would you still do it?

Let me know your thoughts and where you draw the line, in the comments below.

According to data from MLS, the average house in Canada costs $716,828.

The 28/36 rule has different version but generally speaking:

The 28/36 rule states that a household should spend no more than 28% of its gross monthly income on total housing expenses, and no more than 36% on all debt, including housing-related expenses and other recurring debt service.

Meaning after a 20% down payment, a mortgage payment for the remaining $573,462 would be $3,181 on a 30-year fixed mortgage. For $3,181 to be at max 28% of your gross monthly income, you’d need to make $11,360 per month or $136,320.

This level of income would put you in the top 5% of income in the country.

So what does this mean for home buyers? If you aren’t already in the marketing, you need to make a lot of money.

Anyone my age (mid 20s) who owns a home either:

• Makes over $100,000 a year
• Jointly makes over $100,000 a year with a partner
• Had financial help from parents
• Got into the housing market several years ago
• Any combination of the above

What’s causing this?

It’s mainly supply and demand. During the pandemic, the demand for single family homes rose. Low interest rates can cause aggressive growth, but thinking interest rates are the leading drive is simply due to lack of knowledge/history.

Here are two charts showing lack of correlation:

In the 1950s, interest rates were low, but as you can see, housing prices generally remained untouched.

Now that the data has debunked interest rates as the primary driver, we can look at the real issue, supply and demand.

Canada isn’t losing houses. If anything, we are building and continue to live in old houses. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a house demolished and turned into a farmer’s field. If anything, people are buying old houses and fixing then flipping them. So supply is not decreasing.

Demand comes from population growth generally, in addition to people buying/owning multiple houses, sometimes as rental properties. While “boomer money” presents a problem for future generations, it’s not the primary driver.

Population growth comes from fertility rate and immigration rate. Looking at the fertility rate, it’s constant.

Let’s look at immigration.

Canada’s population (2019) – 37,590,000

Canada’s immigration (2019) – 313,600

Canada’s immigration rate – 0.83%

USA’s population (2016) – 323,100,000

USA’s immigration (2016) – 1,180,000

USA’s immigration rate – 0.36%

Canada’s immigration is 2.3x that of the US’s.

Immigration in Canada is necessary for the aging workforce but at this velocity, it’s not sustainable.

Recent election promises discussed a plan to build 1.5 million houses. At $300k per house, the project cost would be $450 billion. For comparirson, that’s 62% of the US’s military budget (a country 9x bigger in terms of population and 12x in terms of GDP), aka money Canada doesn’t have.

The solution to get us out of this mess? I don’t know. The solution on a personal level? Make a bunch of money hopefully, or move.

I’ve hired over 300 remote workers over the years. In this article, I want to briefly look at a few things I do when hiring for programmers, specifically on Upwork. If you haven’t checked out my book, The Non-Technical Founder, I suggest you do as many of my tips are explained in detail there.

Tip 1: Look for programmers with no active work.

Often programmers take on too many jobs and they’ll lose track of your work. I try to find someone who can dedicate at least 30 hours a week to my job. Even if they have a full time job, 30 hours per week is something many can commit. That’s less than 5 hours per day.

If they have active work, it may also be a sign of tardiness and disorganization. Programmers who focus heavily on a project then wrap it up are organized people. As a computer scientists myself, I know programmers can be messy. So finding one who is organized in their work is important and one way to measure that is by how many active jobs they are involved in.

Tip 2: Give them a technical test.

It can be difficult to determine what they’re worth. Once you see their code and analyze it, the picture becomes clear. If you don’t understand code very well, it’s often best to work with someone technical, like a consultant to help you with the hire.

Often times programmers and computer scientists will bill $25-30/hr but code at the level of $18/hr. When I’m hiring for a role, I’m open to the idea of a programmer within $5-50/hr, but the quality must match.

Tip 3: Hire urgently.

Do not wait for your schedules to line up. I sometimes post jobs on Thursday or Friday so I can do interviews leading into the weekend. Only the truly motivated will make the time to join you on the weekend.

I will generally allow for flexibility in the time of day, as most of them will not be on my local timezone, so as long as they make an effort to chat within the next 12-24 hours, then I’m happy. You can sense the effort and cooperation even over text.

Tip 4: Talk to them on the phone.

Phone communication speeds things up. It also established a higher level of connection. This is something I wish I did more earlier on in my entrepreneurial journey. Real programmers are used to chatting by voice or on call. Especially during the pandemic, programmers collaborated at home with coworkers via Zoom and other tools to improve efficiency.