Babbling Botkin: "What If My Husband Dies?" - Part Eight

 Fall has been fun.

My son is old enough that we got him into a Halloween costume for the second time in his life.  We dressed him up as an elephant when he was 11 months old.  At nearly two and nearly three, he flipped out at the idea of being dressed in a costume.   This year, he enjoyed being a "fire dog" when he dressed up as one of the characters from Paws Patrol.  

For the first time ever, I did all of my fall chores for my garden during the fall!  Crazy, I know - but I do like knowing that the past production plants are turning into compost as we speak.   

This next section in "What If My Husband Dies" by Geoffrey Botkin published on his YouTube channel gives a great example of privilege-blindness in CP/QF and how said blindness leads to horrible advice:

[00:08:33] I knew a.....knew a man who was a big executive at a large uh IT firm.  And he didn't have any time with his family. He realized that was wrong. He totally quit.  He came home and what he started with his boys.  He was making a lot of money at this job, this corporate job.  He started a small engine repair company with his boys.  Just so they could be with their dad.  The dad could be with the boys.  They could learn about business.  They could learn about good customers, grumpy customers, dishonest customers um difficult challenges, hard jobs, good work ethic.  And it it didn't make a whole lot of money but it made enough money,  But it gave those boys a powerful legacy and inheritance of wisdom and knowledge of how you do business.  And so by the time they were teenagers, and then older teenagers, they have a lot of knowledge practical knowledge about how how you do business in the real world with imperfect people.  That's really valuable.  So all boys needs to be getting everything they can from their fathers in the way of character by watching them at every single age of life.

When faced with so many assumptions in one place, I think the best option is to move sentence by sentence for discussion.   

Botkin knew a guy who was a "big executive" at a large IT firm.   What does that mean?  Was he a C-level executive or a manager?   How much was the man making a year?  How long had he been working at this large IT firm at a high rate of pay?  Did his earnings include access to company stock?  All of this matters because the total risk in starting a small business depends a lot on the owner's assets prior to starting the business.  Botkin's acquaintance had a small risk in starting a business since he had high income potential customers he knew from his former job plus a salary with stock options that he could leverage to set up the business and pay for his family's needs while the new business grew.

Compare that to a young married man from a cash-strapped CP/QF family or a man with 4 sons and COPD in the middle of a pandemic.......

I find the idea that the man  who had the soft skills needed to be an executive "totally quit" without having a solid plan in place.   I'd bet good money that the man planned out his exit strategy so that he was ramping up his business while working at his former employer prior to leaving.

We can safely assume this is not an option for the family writing Botkin for advice.  If they had the resources to weather the possible untimely death of the father, the wife would not be writing to Botkin.

The idealized dad set up his own small engine repair business.  Granted that the father probably had a non-compete agreement with his former company - this is still a rather huge change of career on top of starting a business.  Where did he get the cash for all of the tools and materials he needed for that?  How much start-up money did this take? How long had the father been doing small engine repair as a hobby or for personal use before he started this business?  Please tell me that he didn't quit his job randomly and start a business in an area he had no experience in; that's a horrible trope in CP/QF stories that rarely ends well in real-life.  Where did he get customers from?   How did he market his business?  How much did marketing cost upfront?   

There's no way most CP/QF men could leverage a full small engine repair business from scratch; it's just too much risk for a bank to take without assets or income.  How the letter writer in the video would pull this off is beyond me.  

The business also managed to make "enough" money without making "a lot" of money.  That construction leaves the change in economic status wide open.  A small family who was willing to drop in economic status from upper middle class to average middle class may well be fine on a small income from the business plus assets acquired prior to leaving corporate life.   A larger family who lived frugally and saved a lot might not notice the difference if they tapped into savings until the business got going.  The problem comes when faced with the reality of CP/QF families.  Most of these families are not making "enough" money to start with.   They can't afford to lose any part of their current income stream because they don't have enough left over to put money away or acquire much in assets.   Their most likely asset is their home - and betting a house on a business venture is a bad idea.  The LW is presumably in that category and cannot afford to fund a business while increasing her husband's risk of infection to COVID-19.

The weirdest bit to an outsider is Botkin's implication that the executive-turned-small-engine-mechanic's kids had a huge leg up on other kids because they understood business from watching their dad.   Plenty of other kids understand how business works thanks to getting a retail or food service job as a teenager.   Those jobs will teach a teen plenty about customer service and problem-solving skills.  Now, the teenager will not be involved directly in the nuts and bolts of making staffing choices or seeing how various actions affect margins - but every place I've ever worked will explain at least the rationale behind how those choices are made.   Equally important in my eyes is the reality that the teenager will be watching how a successful business is run.   In a family business, the teenager might be watching a successful business - or watching his father flail around because he's missing the real problems and solutions in his business.

All of this seems to have turned out well for Botkin's acquaintance - if he existed - but a single anecdote is poor support for risking everything a family has.

Good luck - and don't write to Botkin for advice.